From Superman to Man

The first book from “a tireless champion of African history” a novel that “challenged the theories that Blacks were inferior to whites” (New York Amsterdam News).. Joel Augustus Roger’s seminal work from the Harlem Renaissance this novel—first published in 1917—is a polemic against the ignorance that fuels racism. The central plot revolves around a train speeding to California serviced by an African American porter named Dixon. On board is a United States senator from Oklahoma a man obsessed by race who makes no attempts to hide his prejudice. Unable to sleep the politician encounters Dixon in the smoking car and thus ensues a debate about religion science and racial equality . . . . “A bold discussion novel in which a cultured well-travelled black Pullman porter is drawn into a debate with a white passenger a Southern senator on the question of the superiority of the Anglo Saxon and the inferiority of the Negro.” —The Guardian. “A genuine treasure. I still insist that From ‘Superman’ to Man is the greatest book ever written in English on the Negro by a Negro and I am glad to know that increasing thousands of black and white readers re-echo the high opinion of it which I had expressed some years ago.” —Hubert Henry Harrison. “A stirring story faithful to truth and helpful to a better understanding and feeling.” —Prof. George B. Foster University of Chicago