This collection of 12 new essays will tell the story of how the gradual transformation of industrial society into service-driven postindustrial society affected black life and culture in the city between 1900 and 1950, and it will shed light on the development of those forces that wreaked havoc in the lives of African Americans in the succeeding epoch. The book will examine the black urban experience in the northern, southern and western regions of the U.S. and will be thematically organized around the themes of work, community, city buliding, and protest. the analytic focus will be on the efforts of African Americans to find work and build communities in a constant ly changing economy and urban environments, tinged with racism, hostility, and the notions of white supremacy. Some chapters will be based on original research, while others will represent a systhesis of existing literature on that topic.