Phoenix's Black Residents Trade Sense Of Community For American Dream

"Bari-Ellen Ross moved to a gated neighborhood in the Phoenix suburb of Litchfield Park from the East Coast four years ago. Newly married and adventurous, she and her husband, Charles, left their corporate jobs to start a new life.

But once the moving boxes were unpacked, culture shock set in for the black couple. It was rare to run into people who looked like them. And where were the jazz clubs, the soul-food restaurants and black beauty salons?"

" 'I've settled into the mentality that that part of my life, that intimacy with my culture, is gone,' Bari-Ellen, 54, said."

"The Rosses' experience is beginning to define what it's like to be black in metropolitan Phoenix as the area's growing black population evolves from a tight-knit community concentrated mostly in south Phoenix into a patchwork scattered throughout the area."