Waking from the Dream: My Life in the Black Middle Class

Sam Fulwood was an integration baby. He came of age during the post-civil rights era, a time when middle-class blacks—many carrying the scars of segregation and the struggles of the movement—wholeheartedly embraced a belief in the unlimited possibilities available to the new generation. The son of educated, prosperous parents, Fulwood shared their dreams: he excelled at integrated schools and believed in the promise of a color-blind America.

Waking from the Dream is the powerful chronicle of...