This book describes and interprets several key experiences among blacks according to the variables of time, age, sex, geographic location, vicissitudes in the local community and larger society, level of achievement, and social class status. Special attention is given to experiences related to selected aspects and conditions characteristic of the black subculture. Among these are the changing nature and tactics of the civil rights movement, leadership, the ghetto, poverty, the distribution of power, religion, black nationalism, family life, education, and the black middle class. Data is presented from an extensive study conducted in New Orleans in 1968-69. Its main purpose was to gather data according to which an assessment could be made of the nature and extent to which the family and the school cooperated in the process of socializing the child. Two elementary public schools in the black ghetto were chosen as the target area. All families with children enrolled in these two schools were included in the study. These families were studied in the context of the larger community as well as that of the particular neighborhood in which they were a part. Three interrelated research procedures were employed: the questionnaire, the interview schedule, and participant observation. There were about 2,000 pupils enrolled in the two schools, representing about 1,100 family units. (Author/JM)