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. The struggle to achieve federal fair housing hardly marked an end to an ongoing struggle to end housing discrimination in the United States. It did, however, represent a formal break with the previous federal policies that had either encouraged residential segregation or passively discouraged its use. Yet still, after fifty years of a federal ban on housing discrimination, cities and suburbs across the country resemble the segregated metropolis that demanded government intervention a half century ago. 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.

Breakfast 9 am – 10 am

From Redlining to “Predatory Inclusion”—Race and Housing after the Fair Housing Act (10 am – noon)
Rosemary Ndubuizu (Georgetown University)
Calvin Bradford (Calvin Bradford & Associates, Evanston, IL)
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor (Princeton University)

Lunch – Noon- 1 pm

Fifty years later—the Struggle for housing justice in the United States (1 pm – 3 pm)
Jack Macnamara (Contract Buyers League/Loyola University Chicago)
Emmanuel Martinez (Reveal, Oakland, CA, co-author of Kept Out)
Manissa Maharawal (American University)