Down At The Cross Analysis

Arguably Baldwin’s greatest collection of essays are comprised in this section of the novel- articulating, in his recurring stance, the rightful frustration and anger of racial injustice throughout the early twentieth century, focusing mainly on the sixties- propelling his fame as the widest read African American writer of the era. He explains his obligation to return to America with intentions of engaging in the civil rights movement. These essays were offered in supplication as Baldwin writes how the races need each other in order to form a functioning nation- both the white and black community must acknowledge how their fates are dependent on the other. Through his personal experiences, he passes on his knowledge warning his nephew how America’s
poses a threat to the black community and challenges him to be a catalyst for positive progression. “My Dungeon Shook” addresses his nephew how America devalues a black man’s dreams- forcing a perpetual, static lifestyle that does not transcend Harlem’s street corners. His hopeful passages also lend hope to other African Americans- but it requires great responsibility for the Harlem community must be the ones to initiate change; to fight against white America and delusional innocence. To not understand history, is to allow repetition and Baldwin explains the release that comprehension will release and change America- white society must be forced to reexamine itself. Baldwin integrates his childhood in the ghetto and the influence of religion in the first section of “Down at the Cross” and how these factors shaped children into adults under a “single-mindedness” where they never exceeded previous generations.
Because of this, education is no longer prioritized for the majority, but in his pursuit of his own schooling it is inevitable that he faces ridicule of white society, therefore sending him back to the church as a refuge. He demonstrates how this complacency ignores the possibility of change borne from fear. Subsequently, black America continues to carry the scars of poverty and segregation, “even the most successful Negroes proved that one needed, in order to be free, something more of a bank account”, but to take advantage of that fear. “Neither civilized reason or Christian love” he writes does not embrace equal treatment, but instead the concern of retaliation. (Baldwin, 299.) He goes on to reflect deeper on black nationalism through his meeting with Elijah Muhammad, a black Muslim of the Islamic nation- in which his approach differs from others. He argues the idea of “white devils” as Elijah proclaims and accuses his single-minded behavior as his source of power. “The real reason, according to Elijah, that I failed to realize that the white man was a devil” because Baldwin has been exposed to white teaching and never received “true instruction” (324.) He reports daily racism experienced within the ghetto overwhelms and devastates his people. Black children are to fear not only their parents’ punishments, but the judgment from white society. He suggests the solution of the races to positively acknowledge each other to end the racial nightmare and to change the history of the world- regarding predictions of a failed unity if one does not risk it all- as recreated from the Bible in a slave’s hymn- “God gave Noah a rainbow sign, no more water, the fire next time”
(347.)