In Their Own Interests: Race, Class and Power in Twentieth-Century Norfolk, Virginia

Since the Civil War, African Americans have made great efforts to empower themselves. Focusing on Norfolk, Virginia, Earl Lewis shows how blacks have had to balance competing inclinations for conscious inaction and purposeful agitation as they sought to promote their own interests at home and in the workplace.

In Their Own Interests presents a cross-section of southern urban blacks—the power-brokers and lesser-knowns, Garvey followers and communist enthusiasts—who came to live in Norfolk bet...