By 1451, Africans were used as slaves in the Madeiras and Canary Islands. Not until 1502 did they arrive in the New World. All told, nearly 10 million Africans--equal to the year 2000 populations of Virginia and Mississippi combined--were transplanted across the Atlantic as slaves. Despite the termination of the U.S. slave trade in l807 and emancipation after the Civil War, members of a racial couple married as late as l958 were jailed for one year for breaking Virginia's antimiscegenation law.

So where are we today? This book, which provides historical perspective and a discussion of...