Enoch Pratt Free Library Podcast

This program is in conjunction with Undesign the Redline, exhibited at Central Library November 1, 2019-January 31, 2020.Lawrence Lanahan is the author of The Lines Between Us: Two Families and a Quest to Cross Baltimore’s Racial Divide. In his deeply reported, revelatory story, Lanahan chronicles how the Baltimore region became so highly segregated and why its fault lines persist today. Writing from the Fair Housing Act to the death of Freddie Gray and beyond, Lanahan describes epic efforts to desegregate the Baltimore region and deconcentrate poverty in West Baltimore. As Baltimoreans “cross the lines” in the book, one theme emerges repeatedly: the struggle for self-determination. During the attempted revitalization of 1990s Sandtown, for example, and during the protests following Freddie Gray’s death, neighborhood leaders in West Baltimore worked the lines trying to ensure that their communities remained in control of their own destiny.Lawrence Lanahan will speak with three Baltimoreans whose lives and wor