When asked by the white politician if Christianity has brought solace to Blacks, the Pullman porter replies: Most importantly, the book reveals Rogers' disillusion with Christianity. He addresses issues such as the lack of scientific support for the idea of race, the lack of black history being told from a black person's perspective, and the fact of intermarriage and unions among peoples throughout history. Many of the ideas that permeated Rogers’ later work can be seen germinating in From "Superman" to Man. The porter's arguments and theories are pulled from a plethora of sources, classical and contemporary, and run the gamut from history and anthropology to biology. Rogers used this debate to air many of his personal philosophies and to debunk stereotypes about black people and white racial superiority. The central plot revolves around a debate between a Pullman porter and a white racist Southern politician. From "Superman" to Man is a polemic against the ignorance that fuels racism. Rogers' first book From "Superman" to Man, self-published in 1917, attacked notions of African inferiority.
He self-published the results of his research in several books. Through this travel, he was able to feed his appetite for knowledge, by using various libraries in the cities which he visited. His job of Pullman porter allowed him to travel and observe a wide range of people. While living in Chicago for a time in the 1920s, Rogers worked as a Pullman porter and as a reporter for the Chicago Enterprise. He became a close personal friend of the Harlem-based intellectual and activist Hubert Harrison. He was there during the Harlem Renaissance, a flowering of African-American artistic and intellectual life in numerous fields. Rogers emigrated from Jamaica to the United States in 1906, where he settled in Harlem, New York. Some sources have implied that he became an autodidact later in life. Rogers himself claimed to have had a "good basic education". His parents were able to afford to give Rogers and his ten siblings only a rudimentary education, but stressed the importance of learning.
One of eleven children, he was the son of mixed-race parents who were a minister and schoolteacher. Joel Augustus Rogers was born Septemor 1883, in Negril, Jamaica.
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