[4][5] Gwaltney lost his eyesight soon after birth[6] and was the first blind student to attend his local high school in Newark, NJ.
[7] Gwaltney earned a BA from Upsala College in 1952, an MA from the New School for Social Research in 1957, and in 1967 a Ph.D. in anthropology from Columbia University, where he won the Ansley Dissertation Award and studied under Margaret Mead, who called him ""a most remarkable man...[who] manages his life and work with extraordinary skill and bravery".
The book includes a glossary of African American terms, and interviews with 41 people from the Northeast United States.
In a terse introductory statement chosen by Gwaltney from an interviewee not included in the broader text, factory worker Othman Sullivan says "I think this anthropology is just another way to call me a nigger."
The New York Times described it as "The most expansive and realistic exposition of contemporary mainstream black attitudes yet published."