Blues For Mister Charlie.

BALDWIN, James.

Item Number: 103848

New York: The Dial Press, 1964.

First edition of Baldwin’s powerful second play. Octavo, original cloth. Signed by James Baldwin and his brother actor David Baldwin on the front free endpaper. David Baldwin acted in the 1964 Broadway play. Name below, near fine in a near fine dust jacket. Jacket design by Bernard Brussell-Smith.

In a small Southern town, a white man murders a black man, then throws his body in the weeds. With this act of violence--which is loosely based on the notorious 1955 killing of Emmett Till--James Baldwin launches an unsparing and at times agonizing probe of the wounds of race. For where once a white storekeeper could have shot a "boy" like Richard Henry with impunity, times have changed. And centuries of brutality and fear, patronage and contempt, are about to erupt in a moment of truth as devastating as a shotgun blast. In his award-winning play, Baldwin turns a murder and its aftermath into an inquest in which even the most well-intentioned whites are implicated--and in which even a killer receives his share of compassion. "A play with fires of fury in its belly, tears of anguish in its eyes, a roar of protest in its throat" (The New York Times). It was the basis for the 1964 Broadway play directed by Burgess Meredith.