Burning All Illusions is a collection from The Nation archives of the best writing on race and civil rights from the magazine’s founding in 1865 to the present. It features selections by such insurgent American writers as Martin Luther King, Jr., Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, Fannie Lou Hamer, Ishmael Reed, and Patricia J. Williams, representing a diverse range of political and personal points of view that illuminate The Nation’s steadfast commitment to racial justice, each infused with the moral passion and urgency that the subject demands. The writers in this anthology have addressed these questions not to embitter but to provoke, educate, arouse, and inspire. James Baldwin once wrote that “the story of the Negro in America is the story of America.... It is not a very pretty story.” Baldwin and others in this collection shed light on the ugliness of American racism to certify that it is intolerable, that America can—must—do better. “The Nation’s editors ... have provided space for those persistent and ... often lonely voices inveighing against the evils of racial injustice.”—Derrick Bell
Paula J. Giddings is the Elizabeth A. Woodson 1922 Professor in Afro-American Studies at Smith College and the author of When and Where I Enter and In Search of Sisterhood.
