The Fire This Time

Ward reacts to the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman on February 26, 2012, and seeks solidarity for her grief on Twitter. She reads responses to Trayvon’s death online in the midst of her pregnancy while editing a book. Ward is surprised that no one else sees Trayvon as a child.

She realizes how Trayvon’s black identity biases most Americans against him and draws their attention to his most rebellious habits. Ward identifies with the claustrophobia of Trayvon’s life in the South, where the legacy of slavery persists and continues to breed prejudice. 

Ward describes Senator Trent Lott from her home state, Mississippi. Lott supported Senator Strom Thurmond’s filibuster against the Civil Rights Act of 1957, and Ward recalls meeting Lott years earlier. The only black student in the group, Ward watched Lott snap a long whip in the air. She writes, “I remember the experience in my bones” (6). 

She compares the devaluation of her black identity with a “dark twin” (6). She lists the other dark twins the public ascribes to murdered black Americans such as Trayvon, Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, Sandra Bland, and Emmett Till. Although the mechanisms of racial prejudice may have changed, racism itself has not. 

Ward, finding online outlets too overwhelming and fleeting, finds solace in James Baldwin’s work. She discovered him in her twenties and devoured his words for their power, poetry, and relevance. Now, in the wake of Trayvon’s death, James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time comforts Ward and inspires her to assemble this anthology.

Ward wants to reach black youth across the country with this book and to reassure them. She wants the book to be a record of the grief, anger, perspective, and compassion of her community. Writing of a hypothetical reader, Ward paraphrases Baldwin as she says, “We want to tell her this: You matter. I love you. Please don’t forget it” (8). 

Although Ward intended to structure this anthology according to time like Baldwin structured The Fire This Time, few of the pieces she receives focus on the future; most focus on the past and present. This phenomenon shows Ward how writers must discuss America’s past to respond to current events. It also shows her a general fatigue with discussions about the future of black life in the United States, which anticipate the recurrence of past horrors. Ward finds hope in the anthology’s pieces that do reference the future and wonders if she could speak to the children in her life with those writers’ words. 

Ward also finds hope in the entire anthology, for she believes in the assertion of these stories and ideas as a means of connection. She wonders if racist readers might change their perspective after reading a piece from The Fire This Time. 

An excerpt from Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time details the deep, pervasive traumas of the black experience. He states that these traumas, although terrible, contain beauty. Baldwin expresses hope that willing black and white people might “end the racial nightmare” (11), but otherwise doom might befall the nation.

The intention of this book is for readers to connect with the writers featured inside. Ward expresses hope in a future where black Americans can live whole lives without the constant threat of racially motivated violence.