Black Odyssey

This classic work of scholarship and empathy tells the story of the self-creation of the African-American people. It assesses the full impact of the Middle Passage -- "the most traumatizing mass human migration in modern history" -- and of North American slavery both on the enslaved and on those who enslaved them. It explores the ways in which a nominally free society perverted its own freedoms and denied the fact that an inhuman institution lies at the heart of the American experience. The authority and eloquence of this work make it essential reading for all who want to understand the American past and present.

Nathan Irvin Huggins was W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of History and Afro-American Studies at Harvard University at the time of his death in 1989. He was Professor of History at Columbia when he wrote Black Odyssey and traveled through West Africa and the American South to research it. He is the author of Harlem Renaissance (1971) and Slave and Citizen: The Life of Frederick Douglass (1980) and the editor of Voices from the Harlem Renaissance (1976). He also edited the biographical series, Black Americans of Achievement.