This research study on the black family was based on the position that black culture in the U.S. is the result of a special admixture of the continuation of an African world-view or cultural perspective which operates within the perspective of an Anglo-American world-view. Because this research is guided by this position, it is viewed as a "cultural continuity" approach to the study of black family life. This study offers a conceptual description of the contemporary black African-based family system embedded in an Anglo-American dominated culture. Based on interviews with fifty-two families in the metropolitan San Francisco Bay area, it delineates and describes guiding principles and/or philosophical bases of black family life. The black families used for the study are examined around the following five variables: (1) organizational purposes, (2) social (family organization), (3) role definition, (4) interpersonal relations, and (5) socio-political conditions. One of the most striking findings of this research is that in spite of the extreme urbanism and metropolitan isolation of San Francisco, the black families in this study revealed a close network of relationships between families not necessarily related by blood. A detailed description of the methodology used for the study as well as actual samples of interview schedules, are included. (Author/AM)