Fight Like a Tiger: Conway Barbour and the Challenges of the Black Middle Class in Nineteenth-Century America

Focusing on the life of ambitious former slave Conway Barbour, Victoria L. Harrison argues that the idea of a black middle class traced its origins to the free black population of the mid-nineteenth century and developed alongside the idea of a white middle class. Although slavery and racism meant that the definition of middle class was not identical for white people and free people of color, they shared similar desires for advancement.

Born a slave in western Virginia about 1815, Barbour...