But things are different now. Just look at the nation's capital — home to the first black U.S. president, a large black middle class and many African-Americans who still live in extreme poverty.
Robinson details the splintering of African-American communities and neighborhoods in his new book, Disintegration: The Splintering of Black America.
His story starts in America's historically black neighborhoods, where segregation brought people of different economic classes together. Robinson says that began to change during the civil rights era.
