Born on March 23, 1940, John W. Blassingame grew up in Covington, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta. A historian, Blassingame received his doctorate in history from Yale University, where he wrote a dissertation on the socioeconomic history of African Americans in New Orleans from 1860 to 1880. He taught history, American Studies, and African American Studies at Yale from 1974 until his death on February 13, 2000. His other books include New Perspectives on Black Studies (1971), Black New Orleans, 1860-1880 (1973), and Frederick Douglass, the Clarion Voice (1976).

Blassingame’s scholarship was critical in the reevaluation of Black life under slavery, and his work drew heavily on original source texts such as interviews and the testimony of formerly enslaved Black people. This was a radical approach for the time and helped establish a picture of life under slavery that ran counter to the accepted narrative, which was largely uncritical of white accounts of the era. In presenting Black people on their own terms, Blassingame’s scholarship shifted the standard practice of viewing an enslaved person on white terms—as an Other who existed outside of American society as a piece of property—and instead presented enslaved people as a key part of American society with their own rich culture and humanity.