CHESTERTOWN — Washington College’s Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience will host a community conversation titled “115 Years since Ordinance 610: The Origins of Redlining, Maryland’s Historic Reversal and America’s Path Toward Healing” on Tuesday, Dec. 2 at 12:30 p.m. in Hynson Lounge.
The public is invited.
There is no cost.
The program marks the 115th anniversary of Baltimore Ordinance 610 [enacted in December of 1910], which pioneered redlining in the United States.
There will be a discussion on the origins of exclusionary housing policies and Maryland’s innovative efforts to reverse their lasting effects.
The event will open with a public reading from “Key to the City: How Zoning Shapes Our World,” the latest publication by Sara C. Bronin. She is founder of the National Zoning Atlas, as well as an architect, attorney and professor at George Washington University Law School.
Following the reading, Bronin will join in dialogue with Cat Goughnour, an assistant secretary of the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development and head of the state’s new Just Communities Designation program.
Their conversation will be moderated by Washington College’s Thomas V. Mike Miller Director of Civic Engagement, Patrick Nugent, and “will demystify how equity can be realized in communities, centering Maryland’s first-in-the-nation policies and identifying pathways to fostering more equitable and connected places,” according to a news release.
Following the event, Bronin will sign copies of “Key to the City” made available by The Bookplate bookstore in Chestertown.
In addition to the Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience and the Holstein Program in Ethics, event co-sponsors include Maryland 250 Commission, Maryland Commission on African American History and Culture, Maryland Center for History and Culture, Maryland Humanities, Preservation Maryland, Washington College’s Office of Intercultural Affairs and Rose O’Neill Literary House, Chesapeake Heartland: An African American Humanities Project, Needle’s Eye Academy, Eastern Shore Land Conservancy, Kent Attainable Housing and Rebuilding Together Eastern Shore.
