Dark Concrete is about how the Black Power movement re-shaped urban politics in the US-from expectations to practices. While the national and international dimensions of the Black Power are often focused on, Kimberley Johnson looks at the movement at the local level, highlighting Newark, East Orange, Oakland, and East Palo Alto and three policy areas: housing, education, and policing. She examines how the Black Power urbanism had its own local meanings as it was defined by local activists, neighborhood residents, parents, tenants and others who sought to repair cities and particularly black neighborhoods that were shattered due to urban renewal and highway construction, as well as ongoing political and economic disinvestment. Dark Concrete depicts how local conditions shaped the emergence of the Black Power movement, and in turn, the ways in which these local movements reshaped urban politics, institutions and place.
