Blair L. M. Kelley's book explores the complexities of race, class and gender in African American resistance to streetcar segregation from the 1890s to 1910. While scholars have widely referred to August Meier's and Elliot Rudwick's research published in the 1950s and 1960s, Kelley reexamines the topic in more detail. In her case studies of New Orleans, Richmond and Savannah, Kelley examines local racial encodings, the intricacies of race and class and how gender concepts were utilized to put forward the case against the segregation of public transportation.

After a short chapter on antebellum African American protest against streetcar separation in New York City, which demonstrates that this phenomenon was not confined to the postwar South, Kelley puts forward the argument that antisegregation campaigns and protest, while often initiated by the black professional class and religious or race leaders, did encompass the wider African American communities of these cities in their struggle to prevent or abolish segregation. By skillfully analysing her primary source material, the author widens the historical focus and includes the African American working class, the important role of women in the movements and the local fault lines of race, class and gender. In contrast to existing scholarship, Kelley argues that the protest movements spreading throughout southern cities could be indeed both radical and unifying, contradicting traditional views of the Progressive Era as an age of accommodation. Even if the movements did not achieve their goals, they served as an important point of resistance to Jim Crow and enabled African Americans to defend their citizenship rights and preserve their dignity. After efforts in New Orleans to end segregation through litigation failed, boycotts became the most promising means of resistance in a period of growing disfranchisement. The economic losses inflicted on streetcar companies could increase the pressure on local politicians to at least delay the separation of transportation, even if by 1910 segregationists had triumphed by means of federal, state or municipal laws and ordinances.

In her skillfully written narrative, Kelley delivers a fascinating portrayal of local conditions of protest, delineating the similarities and differences in the three southern cities from the 1890s to the late 1900s. Although the author could have laid out her theoretical and methodological framework more explicitly, she provides a detailed account of how race, class and gender interacted in the different scenarios and explains how local factors influenced the path and strength of resistance to streetcar segregation. Backed by a multitude of personal papers, census statistics, streetcar companies' records, legal records and contemporary newspaper accounts, Kelley closes a gap in the existing scholarship and makes an important contribution not only to African American history, but to a wider history of the South.