The Black population has age-specific all causes mortality rates among adults which are up to 3.5 times higher than for whites. There remains a pressing need to improve detection and treatment of coronary artery disease among Blacks in an attempt to reduce these unfavorable racial differentials. Also, many fundamental advances in our understanding of atherosclerosis have come from the study of geographic pathology - the epidemiologic comparisons of population groups with widely varying distributions of risk factors. Two prominent features of the epidemiology of coronary artery disease among United States Blacks which are fertile grounds for such comparative studies are the high prevalence of hypertension and the increased susceptibility of Black women to this disease. Knowledge gained from these studies can potentially be applied to coronary artery disease in all human population groups, as has been done with work among the Masai, Seventh-Day Adventists, and other groups.