Black Bourgeoisie: The Book That Brought the Shock of Self-Revelation to Middle-Class Blacks in America

An examination of the black middle class in America, first published in 1957, but increasingly relevant as the division between prosperous blacks and an increasingly desperate underclass grows wider.

When it was first published in 1957, E. Franklin Frazier's Black Bourgeoisie was simultaneously reviled and revered - revered for its skillful dissection of one of America

An examination of the black middle class in America, first published in 1957, but increasingly relevant as the division between prosperous blacks and an increasingly desperate underclass grows wider.

When it was first published in 1957, E. Franklin Frazier's Black Bourgeoisie was simultaneously reviled and revered - revered for its skillful dissection of one of America's most complex communities, reviled for daring to cast a critical eye on a section of black society that had achieved the trappings of the white, bourgeois ideal.

To read Black Bourgeoisie today is not only to experience one of the most important studies of African American life but also to realize how controversial and relevant Frazier's revelations and challenges remain.