Content Warning: This text contains racist language, including racial expletives, and violence, as well as depictions of oppression, enslavement, and death by suicide. This study guide quotes and obscures the author’s use of the n-word.

The first foreword is a fictionalized letter from the author, Sutton E. Griggs, claiming to have received the text from Mr. Berl Trout, the Secretary of State of Imperium in Imperio. Griggs states that Berl was honest, and Griggs believes the text is true.

The second foreword is a fictionalized letter, and dying declaration, by Berl Trout. Berl says that he has betrayed his own race and should receive the punishment and burial of a traitor. However, he also asserts that what he did, he did for the entire human race. He believes he has betrayed other Black people, but that, eventually, people will learn they are all part of the human race, and his actions will be viewed as for “the whole human family” (v).

The chapter opens with a message from Mrs. Hannah Piedmont to her son, Belton, who is eight years old. Mrs. Piedmont, who was not educated, stresses the importance of Belton’s education, no matter the cost.