James Baldwin was a uniquely prophetic voice in American letters. His brilliant and provocative essays made him the literary voice of the Civil Rights Era, and they continue to speak with powerful urgency to us today, whether in the swirling debate over the Black Lives Matter movement or in the words of Raoul Peck\u00b4s documentary I Am Not Your Negro. Edited by Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, the Library of America\u00b4s Collected Essays is the most comprehensive gathering of Baldwin\u00b4s nonfiction ever published. With burning passion and jabbing, epigrammatic wit, Baldwin fearlessly articulated issues of race and democracy and American identity in such famous essays as The Harlem Ghetto, Everybody\u00b4s Protest Novel, Many Thousands Gone, and Stranger in the Village.