According to the book review at Amazon.com, "Black Picket Fences is a stark, moving and candid look at a section of America that is too often ignored by both scholars and the media: the Black middle class … It is the discontinuities in their daily life, both troublesome and hopeful, that (Pattillo) seeks to explain. Residents work in stable middle-class jobs, and many have single-family homes with a backyard and a two-car garage. Some send their children to private schools and are able to retire with solid pensions. Yet despite such privileges, (Pattillo) argues, they face unique perils."

In 2000, the book won the Oliver Cromwell Cox prize from the American Sociological Association, which honors the best book written on race and ethnicity. "That award means a great deal to me because it's recognition that came from my peers in sociology," she says.

Pattillo's career has benefited from winning several research fellowships. They include a visiting fellowship from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Michigan, and an upcoming fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. Currently, Pattillo is on academic leave from Northwestern and is a visiting fellow at the University of Chicago. Throughout much of her work, which includes dozens of articles and conference presentations, Pattillo has paid a great deal of attention to issues surrounding Black identity, especially among youth.

In addition to studying Black middle-class life and urban poverty issues, Pattillo has in recent years turned her attention to the explosive Black-White academic achievement gap issue, Black homeownership and gentrification.

— By Ronald Roach