Revelations

At the time of his death in 1989, Nathan Irvin Huggins ranked among the most influential and important historians in America, a scholar who was universally hailed as the leading chronicler and critic of the Harlem Renaissance. Now, in Revelations, readers will find a celebration of Huggins's many contributions to American history. It offers a superb collection of his finest articles, reviews, and essays, works that span the entire spectrum of his thought on the African-American experience. Whether he is discussing the literary style of Langston Hughes, the leadership roles of W.E.B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, and Martin Luther King, Jr., or the African-American contribution to the common culture of America, Huggins is at his eloquent best, by turns passionate and poignant, witty and reflective. Among the many moving pieces, readers will find a tour of the slave castles of the West African coast in which Huggins describes places like Goree Island and Elmina as a collective and horrific Plymouth Rock of the African-American past. There is a powerful new introduction to his seminal book Black Odyssey, which assesses the major writings on slavery over the past two decades, and an illumina