Waking from the Dream

Jacket Description/Flap: Sam Fulwood was an integration baby. He came of age during the post-civil rights era, a time when middle-class blacks--many carrying the scars of segregation and the struggles of the movement--wholeheartedly embraced a belief in the unlimited possibilities available to the new generation. The son of educated, prosperous parents, Fulwood shared their dreams: he excelled at integrated schools and believed in the promise of a color-blind America. "Waking from the Dream is the powerful chronicle of his disillusionment with that dream. Like other high-achieving black men and women who defied the assumptions of society to become respected members of their communities and professions, Fulwood learned that assimilation into mainstream America was at best superficial, at worst a betrayal of his own individuality and values. He realized that race would always be the most vital component of his identity, one that would continue to define him in a suspicious, often hostile, white world. As he describes his move into the self-protected, isolated cocoon of the black middle class, a world separate from poor blacks and all whites, Fulwood issues a strong warning, "I can't escape the thought that white America, which stopped short of embracing middle-class blacks at the moment we wanted inclusion, may have already lost its opportunity."Publisher Marketing: Sam Fulwood was an integration baby. He came of age during the post-civil rights era, a time when middle-class blacks-many carrying the scars of segregation and the struggles of the movement -wholeheartedly embraced a belief in the unlimited possibilities available to the new generation. The son of educated, prosperous parents, Fulwood shared their dreams: He excelled at integrated schools and believed in the promise of a color-blind America. "Waking from the Dream" is the powerful chronicle of his disillusionment with that dream. Like other high-achieving black men and women who defied the assumptions of society to become respected members of their communities and professions, Fulwood learned that assimilation into mainstream America was at best superficial, at worst a betrayal of his own individuality and values. He realized that race would always be the most vital component of his identity, one that would continue to define him in a suspicious, often hostile, white world. As he describes his move into the self-protected, isolated cocoon of the black middle class, a world separate from poor blacks and all whites, Fulwood issues a strong warning, "I can't escape the thought that white America, which stopped short of embracing middle-class blacks at the moment we wanted inclusion, may have already lost its opportunity."Publisher Marketing: Sam Fulwood was an integration baby. He came of age during the post-civil rights era, a time when middle-class blacks-many carrying the scars of segregation and the struggles of the movement -wholeheartedly embraced a belief in the unlimited possibilities available to the new generation. The son of educated, prosperous parents, Fulwood shared their dreams: He excelled at integrated schools and believed in the promise of a color-blind America. Waking from the Dream is the powerful chronicle of his disillusionment with that dream. Like other high-achieving black men and women who defied the assumptions of society to become respected members of their communities and professions, Fulwood learned that assimilation into mainstream America was at best superficial, at worst a betrayal of his own individuality and values. He realized that race would always be the most vital component of his identity, one that would continue to define him in a suspicious, often hostile, white world. As he describes his move into the self-protected, isolated cocoon of the black middle class, a world separate from poor blacks and all whites, Fulwood issues a strong warning, I can't escape the thought that white America, which stopped short of embracing middle-class blacks at the moment we wanted inclusion, may have already lost its opportunity.

Contributor Bio:  Fulwood, Sam Sam Fulwood III is a metro columnist for The Plain Dealer. Before coming to Cleveland in 2000, he was a Washington, D. C., correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, where he created a national race relations beat; he also contributed to that paper's Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the Los Angeles riots in 1992. He has served as state political editor for the Atlanta Journal and Constitution, as assistant city editor, business reporter, and Johannesburg bureau correspondent for the Baltimore Sun, and as a reporter for the Charlotte Observer. He is the author of Waking From the Dream: My Life in the Black Middle Class (Anchor, 1996). Fulwood was an Institute of Politics Fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University (2000) and a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University (1993-1994). He earned a B. A. in Journalism from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has been listed in Who's Who Among Black Americans since 1992.