This edition of a classic work by one of America's premier
writers offers a new Foreword by Derrick Bell (with Janet
Dewart Bell) to the 1995 paperback edition, and is as
meaningful today as it was when it was first published in 1985.
In his searing and moving essay, James Baldwin explores the
Atlanta child murders that took place over a period of
twenty-two months in 1979 and 1980. Examining this incident
with a reporter's skill and an essayist's insight, he notes
the significance of Atlanta as the site of these brutal
killings-a city that claimed to be "too busy to hate"-and
the permeation of race throughout the case: the black
administration in Atlanta; the murdered black children; and
Wayne Williams, the black man tried for the crimes.
Rummaging through the ruins of American race relations,
Baldwin addresses all the hard-to-face issues that have
brought us a moment in history where it is terrifying to to
be a black child in white America, and where, too often,
public officials fail to ask real questions about "justice
for all." Baldwin takes a time-specific event and makes it
timeless: The Evidence of Things Not Seen offers an incisive
look at race in America through a lens at once disturbing
and profoundly revealing.
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