Runyon Heights, a community in Yonkers, New York, has been   populated by middle-class African Americans for nearly a century. This book--the first   history of a black middle-class community--tells the story of Runyon Heights, which   sheds light on the process of black suburbanization and the ways in which residential   development in the suburbs has been shaped by race and class.  Relying on both   interviews with residents and archival research, Bruce D. Haynes describes the   progressive stages in the life of the community and its inhabitants and the factors that   enabled it to form in the first place and to develop solidarity, identity and political   consciousness. He shows how residents came to recognize common political interests   within the community, how racial consciousness provided an axis for social solidarity as   well as partial insulation from racial slights, and how the suburb afforded these middle-  class residents a degree of physical and social distance from the ghetto. As Haynes   explores the history of Runyon Heights, we learn the ways in which its black middle class   dealt with the tensions between the political interests of race and the material interests of   class.

Red Lines, Black Spaces: The Politics of Race and Space in a Black Middle-Class Suburb PDF

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