Jelks employs a multitude of statistics, diary entries, editorials, biographical details and speeches in order to represent Grand Rapids as a microcosm of North America's burgeoning industrialization, ghettoization and racial antagonism between 1850 and 1954. In an accessible text, Jelks describes, in the earlier chapters, the central theme of an African American quest for middle-class status and racial acceptance based on religious notions about quality and self-accountability before God, both of which, he argues, played a defining and mediating role in community-building. With a sometimes staccato tendency to switch from one decade or topic to another, Jelks highlights macrocosmic issues of negative stereotyping and racial discrimination as the black community of Grand Rapids struggled against Jim Crow laws and continual white aggression.

The central chapters detail how class, “white” politics and black attempts towards civic involvement become entangled within an already politically divided African American community. Jelks goes on to consider how the early part of the twentieth century witnessed the complex contradictions of a paternal yet discriminatory political era, with black involvement gradually developing and metamorphosing into coherently formulated groups such as the Urban League and NAACP. As the NAACP's development is discussed, Jelks engages the reader within local and country-wide disputes concerning integration or self-segregation.

As the fight for desegregation continued, the African American political struggle became less acquiescent towards white counterparts and more rebellious in nature. These “New Negroes” were to lay the sociopolitical foundations for ensuing decades as their continuing legal efforts to reverse racial injustices began to transform the cultural fabric of the community. As southern migration to the North intensified, the black population of Grand Rapids grew steadily, leading to tension between ethnic whites and African Americans. Areas of employment and education may have superseded intraracial disputes; however, the seeds of ghettoization were sown as African Americans were forced, especially with regard to housing, to cluster together.

The final chapter deals predominantly with various local figures who helped to formulate and forge significant local gains and spread awareness regarding discrimination throughout the white community. However, history and Jelks's conclusion demonstrate that reality was by no means as positive. In general, this book does not presume a detailed knowledge of African American history, and, if considered as a historical text, straightforwardly details the lives of prominent individuals in Grand Rapids, albeit with some slight repetition. Its interest lies principally in those biographical particulars, as its broader academic perspective of racism is one that most African American scholars will already have a vast prior knowledge of.