From the inception of the state park under Robert Moses to the current summer concert series, Jones Beach has often been accused of ignoring lower-income blacks.

Mr. Ellington said there was evidence that lower-income blacks are also beginning to find their way onto the Net.

Like lower-income blacks - but unlike many whites - they were drawn to the notion of revival and redemption.

But at the same time, lower-income blacks were the only group on the Island to rank police brutality as one of the three biggest local problems.

In it, she celebrates the life of the neighborhood as she knew it in the 1950s, a place where African-American achievers and celebrities made their homes alongside middle-class families and lower-income blacks and whites.

Seattle'swhite middle class mostly lives north of downtown; lower-income blacks mostly live to the south.

And many cabbies, acutely aware of their high vulnerability to robbery and attack, undoubtedly take note of higher rates of crime among lower-income blacks and in certain areas of the city.

If the next step, a leap to City Hall, might seem ambitious, Mr. Barry's appeal to lower-income blacks makes it easier to understand.

Changes in Economy Both sides agree on one thing: Lower-income whites are being pitted against lower-income blacks in a larger arena over which they have no control.

But lower-income blacks may feel like Sara Hakim, 34, a nurse and former Gulf War veteran who parks cars at a downtown hotel and plans to leave: "There's no room for growth."