galenet.com, pg. 15). As the civil rights movement intensified during the early 1960's, Baldwin became an active participant. As various groups struggled to end racial discrimination and segregation, Baldwin became an increasingly spirited spokesman, stating in essays and speeches the agony of being black in America. While the role was not new for him, the activities of the 1960's were undertaken because of his reputation. Whe!.
ther he was the Medgar Evers or James Meredith in Mississippi, at a session with Robert Kennedy in New York, on a speaking tour for the Congress of Racial Equality, or helping in the voter registration in Alabama, Baldwin was committed "to end the racial nightmare of our country and change the history of the world" (http://www.galenet.com, pg. 15).
During the winter of 1944-1945, he met the distinguished black writer Richard Wright, who became a mentor and father figure to him. Wright also recommended him for the Eugene Saxton Fellowship that he received in 1945. Until that time, Baldwin had been working only on an unpublished draft of a novel, but in 1946 he published his first essay in the Nation. He soon became well known as an essayist, publishing in the New Leader, Commentary, and Partisan Review. In 1948 Baldwin was awarded a Rosenwald Fellowship, and used the prize money to buy a one-way ticket to Paris. Baldwin published three collections of essays, which sold over a million copies each. It was the nonfiction books - Notes of a Nation Son (1955), Nobody Knows My Name (1961), and The Fire Next Time (1963) - "that secured his reputation as an important American writer and social critic" (http://www.africana.com, pg. 1). Many critics have praised Baldwin for "his ability to make his readers feel intensely his!.
view of the damage that racial prejudice inflicts on both whites and blacks" (World Book Encyclopedia, pg. 31). .
Notes of a Native Son marked the formal entry of Baldwin into the literary tradition of the personal essay.