Social Context of The Fire Next TimeThe Fire Next Time was released in a time of great chaos. A civil rights revolution was sweeping the country. Many of the institutions of American life were being questioned, including religion. Author James Baldwin saw power as the key to the success of African Americans in the civil rights movement. In 1955, Rosa Parks refused to sit in the black section of a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. In the late 1950s Martin Luther King turned a racial protest into a massive resistance movement. In the early 1960s, the sit-in tactic was launched in Greensboro, North Carolina, when black college students insisted on serving at the local lunch counter. The “Freedom Riders” were sent to the South in 1961 by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) to test and overturn segregation laws. In a few years there would be a sexual revolution, as well as a trend towards peace and love. For the moment, however, hatred and misunderstanding were widespread. Baldwin realized the importance of these events and movements and responded with The Fire Next Time. As Baldwin became a teenager in Harlem, he began to realize the presence of temptations such as sex and drugs. To combat these evils, he fled to the church. Baldwin eventually realized that the church did not preach love to everyone, but only to those who believed as they did. Despite this bad experience in the church, Baldwin never forgot the positive elements of religion. According to Kenneth Kinnamon, Baldwin realized that Christians had kept blacks in check throughout history, but he still understood the need for religion. “As much as it may insult Christianity's historical role in the enslavement of blacks, The Fire Next Time attests that [Baldwin] never forgot the countervailing values ​​of his [adolescent] religious experience,” he writes (3). After a meeting with Elijah Muhammad, Baldwin realized that Christianity was not the only flawed religion. Baldwin understood that both Islam and Christianity had to compromise their strong beliefs in order for a unified black movement to have real power. Baldwin knew that empowerment would have to play a key role if blacks were to gain full civil rights. Baldwin writes, “The only thing white people have that black people need, or should want, is power – and no one holds power forever” (96). He recognizes that whites would be reluctant to give up the power they had over blacks.