The black migration to San Francisco and the Bay Area differed from the mass movement of Southern rural blacks and their families into the eastern industrial cities. Those who traveled West, or arrived by ship, were often independent, sophisticated, single men. Many were associated with the transportation boom following the Gold Rush; others traveled as employees of wealthy individuals.

Douglas Daniels argues for the importance of going beyond the written record and urban statistics in examining the life of a minority community. He has studied photographs from family albums and interviewed members of old black San Francisco families in his effort to provide the first nuanced picture of the lives of black San Franciscans from the 1860s to the 1940s.

Douglas Henry Daniels is Associate Professor of Black Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

"Daniels has provided us with a great deal of important information about 'cultured' black San Franciscans. . . . Moves us beyond the ghetto into an examination of the variety and complexity of black life in urban America."—Vincent P. Franklin, Journal of American History

"A well-balanced study of the cultural history of black urbanites before their confinement to certain neighborhoods as well as a cultural history of a West coast black community."—Michel Laguerre, Oakland Tribune

"Makes us rethink community formation in the United States. Cliches about the frontier melting pot can no longer abide. The emerging community that Daniels describes is one of multi-ethnic diversity and tension. Equally important, this is a rare study of the birth, development, and transformation of an Afro-American community."—Nathan Irvin Huggins, author of Harlem Renaissance