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mitskacir's review
4.0
I am giving this book a 4 because of content, but I'd give it a 3 in terms of readability. I'll start with the cons: This is a huge book that covers a lot of content, but it is not written in the most accessible way. I think the book would benefit greatly from being shorter and more concise. Many parts seemed repetitive, as if Brown was more focused in having an extensive bibliography than making her point efficiently. The pros: This is very well researched and is the first book I've read that satisfactorily presents history from an intersectional lens. It was fascinating to take the black-and-white racial narrative that is usually presented in books about the Jim Crow era and complicate it with cross- and inter-racial class differences and elitism and the concept of "Jane Crow." Despite its density and the fact that it was not an easy read, I think that this should be reading for anyone living in Durham who is interested in Durham history or social justice.
me2brett's review against another edition
3.0
Leslie Brown does an excellent job of profiling the African-American population of Durham between 1890 and 1950. While she does not describe in-depth the living conditions of the working class, she manages to convey their overall quality of life and contrast it with that of the elites of Durham's African-American community. She supports her argument that intraracial conflicts were frequently grounded in differing responses to the Jim Crow system. Moreover, she manages to explain the the rational behind the positions of the elite, middle, and working classes; not always an easy task when the middle and elite classes took positions which seem in retrospect naive or contrary to their own interest.
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