Book Talk: Black Life and White Supremacy in Property, Finance, and the City

We are continuing our feature of Lance Freeman, Shennette Garrett-Scott and Elizabeth A. Herbin-Triant today with this book talk moderated by Ansley T. Erickson, co-editor of Educating Harlem: A Century of Schooling and Resistance in a Black Community. Watch their presentations (with time codes listed below) to better understand the racial history of property and finance in America. 

Elizabeth Herbin-Triant (6:31), author of Threatening Property: Race, Class, and Campaigns to Legislate Jim Crow Neighborhoods, starts the talk with her discussion of residential segregation ordinances and the role varying classes of white supremacy played in the community.

Next up, Shennette Garrett-Scott (19:20) draws on Banking on Freedom: Black Women in U.S. Finance Before the New Deal to explore the contradiction between the perception of black woman as existing outside of the economic realm and the reality of their active role. 

Lance Freeman (37:43), author of A Haven and a Hell: The Ghetto in Black America, presents the seemingly opposing duality of the ghetto’s role in America as both a center for promoting black rights and identity and a place of suppression and marginalization. 

Stick around after the presentations for a Q&A (or jump right to it at 51:37).

If you enjoy this video, make sure to read their Q&A from earlier this week and enter the book giveaway for a chance to win a copy of one of these works.