"In 1997 Gary Younge explored the American South by retracing the route of the original Freedom Riders of the 1960s. His road trip was a remarkable socio-cultural adventure for an outsider, for he was British, journalistically curious, and black." "As he traveled by Greyhound bus through the former Confederate states, he experienced an awakening. He felt culturally tied to this strange yet familiar place. Though a Briton by birth and the child of emigrants from Barbados, he felt cuturally alien in his native land. In Dixie, however, he met African Americans whose racial distinctiveness was similar to his own."

"Awakened to his own identity as a black in a predominantly white society and absorbed by a sense of southern myth and racial history, he produced this account, a blend of travel writing, historical research, wit, and social commentary." "This examination of the South gives a fresh perspective on race relations in America."--Cover.