The non-fiction book starts with a history dating back to 1700 BC,[2] beginning with African civilizations such as the Ghana and Mandingo Empires.

Slavery was outlawed in 1863, and people were allowed to move freely, often to New York, The bondage About the twentieth century and the struggle to win rights and Making a new world After the Civil rights act was approved, there was still plenty to do to make the world an equal place.

[4] Of the first edition Bontemps related "I would have given my eye teeth to know when I was a high school boy in California—the story that my history books barely mentioned(...)I tried to make clear how American slavery came about and what causes lay behind the present attitudes toward Negroes on the part of some people."

[10][11][12] Bontemps had corresponded with his friend Langston Hughes about his desire to win a Newbery Medal saying, "near misses don't make me happy.

[13] Arthur Spingarn, the president of the NAACP gave a positive response to the book: ""In the past thirty years I think I have owned and read every published history of the Negro.