Housing continues to be the hot-button issue in Somerville.
Join the Somerville Public Library during Fair Housing Month to discuss our past and the future of our city’s housing with the Somerville Fair Housing Commission, the Department of Racial and Social Justice, and local experts in the field of housing.
We will be screening the short film Segregated by Design, followed by a conversation around fair housing and discrimination in Somerville with representatives from local organizations, City departments and commissions, and other experts in this field. We will cover themes and topics the film examines, as well as additional topics covered in Richard Rothstein's book, The Color of Law, and how these subjects impact us locally.
Refreshments will be provided.
Questions? For more information, please contact Shannon Lawler at slawler@somervillema.gov (phone: 617-625-6600 ext. 2569). At the Library you can reach out to Kerry O'Donnell: keodonnell@somervillema.gov
About the Film:
Segregated by Design covers many of the key points found in Richard Rothstein’s comprehensive book The Color of Law. It discusses how American housing segregation was not caused merely by the action of prejudiced individuals, but rather, by policies that enabled some people to enter the housing market while slamming the door shut for others.
About the Book:
The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein is a "groundbreaking history of the modern American metropolis, Richard Rothstein, a leading authority on housing policy, explodes the myth that America's cities came to be racially divided through de facto segregation--that is, through individual prejudices, income differences, or the actions of private institutions like banks and real estate agencies. Rather, The Color of Law incontrovertibly makes clear that it was de jure segregation--the laws and policy decisions passed by local, state, and federal governments--that actually promoted the discriminatory patterns that continue to this day.
Through extraordinary revelations and extensive research, Rothstein comes to chronicle nothing less than an untold story that begins in the 1920s, showing how this process of de jure segregation began with explicit racial zoning, as millions of African Americans moved in a great historical migration from the south to the north.
Copies of The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein will be available to order all month long from the Library's Catalog as well as digitally through the Hoopla and OverDrive/Libby apps. Please contact the Library if you'd like help getting a copy: 617-623-5000, ext. 2955.
Language interpretation is available upon request with at least one week’s notice before the event. Please call 311 (617-666-3311) to make your request. Persons with disabilities who need auxiliary aids or reasonable modifications should please contact Adrienne Pomeroy in advance 617-625-6600 x 2059 or ADA@somervillema.gov.
