Break out your reading glasses and racial animosity: it's time for a very special alumni edition of Gawker Book Club! Patrice Evans is a current staff writer for Grantland and a generally accomplished writer online and off—you may know him by his alter ego, The Assimilated Negro. You may know him by his many pieces published on this very site!

In the long and storied history of the universe nothing has come so far, overcome so much, as Black. Some have theorized that in the beginning there was only Blackness. Here's the thinking on that.