The Evidence of Things Not Seen, a book-length essay by James Baldwin, covers the Atlanta murders of 1979–1981, often called the Atlanta Child Murders, and probes Atlanta's related social issues, especially race relations. Baldwin had ventured to Atlanta as a literary reporter on assignment by Playboy magazine, which by then had published a considerable catalog by black writers, such as Alex Haley and James Farmer, offering social commentary. Walter Lowe, the magazine's first black editor, had proposed this assignment to Baldwin. The resulting book's epigraph draws from Hebrews 11:1. Background Baldwin's collection of work had made him a prominent social critic. While researching the Atlanta Child Murders, he encounters Camille Bell, the mother of a 9-year-old, named Yusef, killed in this period. Camille Bell created a Committee to Stop Children's Murders, which advocated for the affected families. According to Derrick Bell, who wrote the foreword in the book's 1995 edition, the earlier outcry had revealed the need for Baldwin to write an essay that "eschews a search for clues and, instead, undertakes an exploration for truths."[3] Summary Race Relations The investigation into the Atlanta Child Murders was overseen by then police commissioner Lee Brown. Fear was heightened around the city and people grew anxious and more concerned as time passed. Lee held several city meetings during this time period hoping to calm public fear and reinstate public trust in the police to find the murderer. Lee brought together a task force of more than 100 personnel from Atlanta's own police force and nearby, governing law-enforcement agencies. During the tenure of Brown as Atlanta's police commissioner, efforts rose to diversify Atlanta's police force, which at the time was only 20% African-American officers. The same Atlanta police force in the late 1940s hired its first African-American police officers; however, it stripped them of enforcing all laws; for instance, black officers were not allowed to arrest white people. Baldwin remarks not only on the relationship between the African-American community and the police, but specifically, the relationship between said community and African-American police-officers. Some of Atlanta's black officers were Baldwin's guides while reporting in the city, which allowed for Baldwin to observe the officers reactions to the community's view of the black police force. Baldwin compares the relationship between the police and the community in Atlanta to that of his hometown, Harlem. In Harlem, the black officers understood the community distrusted them but Baldwin