The reader will note that the terms “black,” “African American,” and “Afro-American” are used interchangeably in this study. Although I have used “African American” a great deal, there are places in which I chose not to use the designation precisely because the usage seems anachronistic and inappropriate when applied to certain figures whose relationship with Africa was ambivalent at best. I have rejected the outmoded terms “Negro” and “colored” to refer to black Americans, but I continue to alternate among “African American,” “black,” and “Afro-American” partly because I wish to preserve a contextual option for using all three terms. After all, anyone who remembers the decisive and seemingly permanent historical shift from “Negro” to “black” around 1966 will doubtless hold a measure of skepticism toward recent claims that there is a single, normative usage. I have chosen not to capitalize “black” because I prefer not to reify color as a basis for group identity, the logic of which would also seem to require that I capitalize “white.” Thus, for quite personal reasons, among them the realization that it is far easier to agree on incorrect designations for group identity than on a single “correct” one, throughout the book I will alternate primarily between “African American” and “black.”