"Runyon Heights, a community in Yonkers, New York, has been populated by middle-class African Americans for nearly a century. In the first history of such a community, this book sheds light on the process of black suburbanization and the ways in which race and class have shaped residential development in the suburbs.".

"Relying on both interviews with residents and archival research, Bruce D. Hayne describes the progressive stages in the life of Runyon Heights, from the circumstances surrounding its founding through its development of 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.

This unique history reveals the ways in which a black middle-class community has dealt with the tensions between the political interests of race and the material interests of class."--BOOK JACKET.