Event details
Race & Housing 50 Years Later: the legacy of the Fair Housing Act
After several years of grassroots organizing, political wrangling, and ultimately the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., in the spring of 1968 “fair housing” became the law of the land. However, the struggle to achieve federal fair housing hardly marked an end to an ongoing struggle to end housing discrimination in the United States.
The fiftieth anniversary of the passage of Fair Housing lends itself to assessment and reflection of the reasons the legislation came into existence. But history is also concerned with change, as well as continuity, over time and this anniversary allows for an investigation of the changes and continuities to racial discrimination in housing, the legislation’s impact on urban and suburban life in the United States; and the ways that “inclusion” create new dilemmas as well as new opportunities.
This day-long conference will bring together scholars, journalists, and activists to discuss the history, current struggle for, and future of fair housing in the United States.
Organizer: Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor (African American Studies)
Co-sponsored by the Princeton-Mellon Initiative in Architecture, Urbanism & the Humanties, the Humanities Council, and the Department of Comparative Literature as part of the 1968/2018: Cities on the Edge series.
Sponsorship of an event does not constitute institutional endorsement of external speakers or views presented.