I thought of the people before me who had looked down at the river and gone to sleep beneath it. I wondered about them. I wondered how they had done it--it, the physical act. I simply wondered about the dead because their days had ended and I did not know how I would get through mine.

The essay was originally publiJames Baldwind in two oversized issues of The New Yorker and landed Baldwin on the cover of Time magazine in 1963 while Baldwin was touring the South speaking about the restive Civil Rights movement. Baldwin also provided her with literary. He became for me an example of courage and integrity humility and passion.

Some Baldwin essays are book-length for instance The Fire Next Time (1963) No Name in the Street (1972) and The Devil Finds Work (1976). Baldwin's best-known novel is his first Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953).