Why read Black Picket Fences?

Book cover of Black Picket Fences

Book description

First published in 1999, Mary Pattillo's "Black Picket Fences" explores an American demographic group too often ignored by both scholars and the media: the black middle class. Nearly fifteen years later, this book remains a groundbreaking study of a group still under represented in the academic and public spheres. The…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Black Picket Fences as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Angela Simms

Author

As a Black woman who grew up in a Black middle-class household, this is the first book that put words to my lived experience.

Black Pickett Fences also led me to earn my PhD in Sociology and to study the Black middle class because this group of Americans uniquely enables social scientists to see how both race and class continue to shape Americans’ life chances, despite the breakthroughs of the Modern Civil Rights Movement.

This book provides a comprehensive explanation of the history of the Black middle class, from the Civil War Reconstruction Period to the present, and an empirical…

From Angela's list on The best books on how the Black middle class reveals the racial reality of the United States.