Reading Order
No Name in the Street Reading Order
No Name in the Street (1972) by James Baldwin is his fourth book of extended nonfiction — a long meditation on the assassinations of the 1960s (Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., Robert Kennedy), on the civil rights movement and its defeat, on Baldwin's own years moving between Europe and America, and on what it has meant to be Black in America across the decade from the mid-1960s to the early 1970s. The book is personal and essayistic in mode — Baldwin begins each section with a memory or a reflection and moves outward into history and argument — and it is one of his darkest works, written after the hope of the civil rights era had been answered by assassination, riot, and backlash. No Name in the Street is less celebrated than The Fire Next Time (1963) — it lacks that book's fierce concentrated hope — but it is arguably a more accurate account of what happened to America in the decade that followed. Baldwin writes about the murders of his friends, about the imprisonment of Black Panthers he knew, about the failure of the American system to deliver what it promised, and about his own growing despair about whether change was possible at all. The book is essential for readers who want to understand how Baldwin's thinking evolved from the prophetic hopefulness of The Fire Next Time to the darker, more bitter analysis of his later work.
Where to start
Read The Fire Next Time (1963) first — it is Baldwin's most celebrated essay and the essential predecessor. No Name in the Street is best read as the darker companion that follows what happened after the hope. Any Vintage paperback.
Complete No Name in the Street Book List
- 1Buy
No Name in the Street
James Baldwin·1972·The long essay — the assassinations, the defeat of the civil rights movement, Baldwin's personal reckonings with the decade from 1965 to 1972; one of his darkest works and his most accurate account of what America became after the hope of the mid-1960s was answered by murder and backlash. - 2Buy
The Fire Next Time
James Baldwin·1963·The essential companion and predecessor — Baldwin's most celebrated essay; the prophetic hopefulness of The Fire Next Time is the counterpoint to the darker despair of No Name in the Street; the two books together trace Baldwin's evolving view of America's racial situation. - 3Buy
Go Tell It on the Mountain
James Baldwin·1953·Baldwin's debut novel — the companion in his fiction and the essential entry point to his work; the Harlem church community is the world Baldwin grew up in and the world he is thinking about in all his nonfiction. - 4Buy
Another Country
James Baldwin·1962·Baldwin's third novel — the companion in his fiction; the racial and sexual politics of Another Country are the fictional counterpart to the political analysis of No Name in the Street. - 5Buy
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Malcolm X·1965·Malcolm X's autobiography, as told to Alex Haley — the companion in African American autobiography from the same era; Baldwin and Malcolm X are the two great competing voices in the Black American political discourse of the 1960s, and No Name in the Street reflects directly on Malcolm's legacy after his assassination. - 6Buy
Soul on Ice
Eldridge Cleaver·1968·Cleaver's essays from prison — the companion in African American political writing from the late 1960s and the book that most directly challenged Baldwin's analysis; Cleaver's essays attacked Baldwin for his homosexuality and for what Cleaver saw as his accommodation with white society; reading both books together shows the full spectrum of Black political thought in the period No Name in the Street addresses. - 7Buy
The Sixties
Todd Gitlin·1987·Gitlin's history of the 1960s — the companion in historical analysis of the decade Baldwin is writing about; where Baldwin gives the personal, essayistic, Black American perspective, Gitlin gives the broader historical and political analysis of what happened to the hope of the 1960s. - 8Buy
I Am Not Your Negro
James Baldwin·2017·Raoul Peck's documentary and Baldwin's unfinished manuscript — the companion film and text that continues Baldwin's analysis of the three assassinations; the documentary is the visual companion to No Name in the Street's written account.
No Name in the Street — Frequently Asked Questions
What is No Name in the Street about?
No Name in the Street is a long essay in two parts, published in 1972, that covers roughly the decade from 1965 to 1972. Baldwin meditates on the assassinations of Malcolm X (1965), Martin Luther King Jr. (1968), and Robert Kennedy (1968); on the civil rights movement and its defeat; on the Black Panthers and the imprisonment of people he knew; on his own years moving between France and America; and on what it has meant to be Black in America across that decade. The book is organized associatively rather than chronologically — Baldwin moves between memory, observation, and argument — and it is one of his most personal and most despairing works, written from a place of grief over what he had hoped for and what had been destroyed.
How does No Name in the Street differ from The Fire Next Time?
The Fire Next Time (1963) was written at a moment of terrible possibility — the civil rights movement was at its peak, and Baldwin's essay, addressed partly to his nephew and partly to America, was an act of prophetic urgency that still held out the possibility of transformation. No Name in the Street (1972) was written after: after the assassinations, after the riots, after the backlash, after the imprisonment and destruction of the Black Panthers. The hope that animates The Fire Next Time has been replaced in No Name in the Street by something closer to grief and rage. Baldwin is no longer predicting what will happen if America fails to change; he is reckoning with the fact that it failed, and with what that failure cost.
What is Baldwin's relationship to Malcolm X in the book?
Baldwin's relationship to Malcolm X in No Name in the Street is complicated and moving. In his life, Baldwin and Malcolm were not close — they came from different traditions and had significant political disagreements — but Baldwin had deep respect for Malcolm and was genuinely grieved by his assassination. In No Name in the Street, Baldwin revisits his encounters with Malcolm and reflects on what his death meant for Black America. He is writing after Malcolm's rehabilitation in Black political thought — after The Autobiography of Malcolm X had made Malcolm one of the central figures of 1960s Black consciousness — and his account is a meditation on what America loses when it kills its prophets.
Who was Huey Newton, and why does Baldwin write about him?
Huey Newton was one of the founders of the Black Panther Party, which was founded in Oakland in 1966. Newton was imprisoned in 1967 after a confrontation with police in which an officer was killed; the 'Free Huey' campaign became one of the central causes of the late 1960s left. Baldwin writes about Newton and the Panthers in No Name in the Street as part of his analysis of what happened to Black political organizing after the civil rights movement was defeated: the Panthers represented a more militant, more explicitly anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist approach to Black liberation, and their systematic destruction by the FBI and local police forces is part of what Baldwin is documenting in the book.
What should I read after No Name in the Street?
After No Name in the Street, The Fire Next Time (1963) is the essential predecessor. Giovanni's Room (1956) is the companion in Baldwin's fiction. For African American political writing from the same era, The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Eldridge Cleaver's Soul on Ice are important companions and contrasting voices. Ta-Nehisi Coates's Between the World and Me is the contemporary companion in African American essayistic writing about race and violence in America.
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