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American Writers Video Lessons

Directions: Use the themes, questions and video clips below to teach and learn with portions of
C-SPAN's American Writers program featuring James Baldwin and The Fire Next Time. Link to the complete video clip list to identify clip descriptions and create your own lessons. Each theme contains questions and video clips appropriate for varying grade levels. Lesson Credit:
Curriculum Advisory Team Member, Axel D. Ramirez.

Choose from three themes:
Civil Rights
Level One
Watch  Clips 4-6		 Level Two
Watch  Clip 16		 Level Three
Watch  Clips 12-13
1. What events happened in 1963 that made James Baldwin appear to have been a prophet?
2. What connections did Baldwin make between our Civil Rights agenda and Foreign Policy?
3. Explain some of the major events in the Civil Rights Movement during the late 1950s and 1960s. What events, people, and movements led to the enactment of Civil Rights legislation?
4. Which views did Baldwin have in common with Martin Luther King, Jr.? Which were different?
5. Why was Baldwin criticized by other authors as being "political"?

Race Relations
Level One
Watch  Clip 15		 Level Two
Watch  Clips 41-42		 Level Three
Watch  Clips 30-32

1. Why did Baldwin feel he had to leave the country in order to finish his book?
2. Did Baldwin attempt to be a spokesperson for Black America? Is it possible for Baldwin or anyone else to be a spokesperson for Black America?
3. How did Baldwin feel about the Nation of Islam? Why?
4. How was Baldwin's writing a "protest vehicle to awaken the moral conscious"?
5. What would integration look like for James Baldwin?

A Changing Society
Level One
Watch  Clip 54		 Level Two
Watch  Clip 36		 Level Three
Watch  Clips 14-15

1. Why would Baldwin have been against the Vietnam War?
2. What did Baldwin mean when he said, "if we are to become a nation, we ALL have to be free"?
3. Why did readers in the late 60s and beyond want Baldwin's books to be like the books he had previously written? What was going on in society that made his books more controversial and less critically acclaimed?
4. How did religion affect Baldwin's writing?
5. Why was Baldwin critical of the "machinery of education"?


I   II   III   IV   V   VI   VII   VIII

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