“Baltimore’s White L(ies) and the Black Butterfly”

On May 18, 1896, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision in Plessy v. Ferguson which legalized racial segregation in transportation and public accommodations. On December 20, 1910, Baltimore became the first city in the United States to pass a comprehensive racial zoning law. Based on census data gathered 100 years later, Princeton sociologist Douglass Massey describes Baltimore as still hypersegregated and ranks Baltimore in the top 8 currently racially segregated cities in the United States. In White L(ies) and the Black Butterfly, Dr. Brown will highlight how white supremacist theology helped sanctify and justify America’s racial segregation.

Dr. Lawrence T. Brown, the grandson of Mississippi sharecroppers & preachers, is an assistant professor at Morgan State University in the School of Community Health and Policy, with a doctorate in Health Outcomes and Policy Research. He was awarded an Open Society Institute Baltimore Community Fellowship for helping fathers connect with jobs and resources (2012). Dr. Brown worked as an activist with the Baltimore Redevelopment Action Coalition for Empowerment (BRACE) in the Middle East community dealing with the displacement of 742 Black families from their community.