CHICAGO–(ENEWSPF)–October 1, 2014. Ta-Nehesi Coates, senior editor and writer for The Atlantic, and author of the magazine’s recent bombshell cover story, “The Case for Reparations,” will discuss the issue, including Chicago’s central role in the article, at 5 p.m. Oct. 9 in Roosevelt University’s 10th floor library, 430 S. Michigan Ave., Chicago.
A journalist-in-residence at City University of New York and a leading voice on race, culture, politics and history, Coates will present his views on the need for a national discussion as well as action on the issue of reparations for African Americans during the University’s continuing St. Clair Drake Center Lecture Series.
Touching on centuries of damage done to African Americans by slavery, Jim Crow laws, segregation and racist housing policies, Coates advocates for a reckoning by America of its moral debts to African Americans in the May 2014 article, “The Case for Reparations,” which was one of The Atlantic’s best-read and most frequently discussed cover stories of the year.
The lecture will be Coates’s only appearance in Chicago, which is central to his case for a national reckoning on reparations. In particular, his article focuses on Chicago’s west-side North Lawndale neighborhood where Coates has documented African Americans subject to 20th Century red-lining insurance practices that not only left them ineligible for home mortgages, but also the victims of contract-buying schemes in which they paid for homes that they didn’t end up owning.
“The Drake Center’s mission is to honor the intellectual-activist tradition of Professor Drake, and we believe that Ta-Nehesi Coates embodies that model in the 21st century,” said Erik Gellman, associate director of the St. Clair Drake Center for African and African American Studies at Roosevelt. “We welcome the opportunity to continue the discussion Coates recently sparked about reparations and we believe that Roosevelt provides an ideal site to bring together the University’s community and Chicago residents from across the city to examine racism and antiracist activism, past and present.”
Made possible with generous financial support from Robert and Rose Johnson (BA, ’58), the St. Clair Drake Center Lecture Series also includes: an Oct. 23 lecture by historian Jeff Helgeson, whose 2014 book Crucibles of Black Empowerment: Chicago’s Neighborhood Politics from the New Deal to Harold Washington.
The lecture series is free and open to the public. Media interested in attending should contact Laura Janota at 312-341-3511 or [email protected]. For more information on the lecture series or the St. Clair Drake Center for African and African American Studies at Roosevelt, contact Erik Gellman at [email protected] or 312-322-7138.
Source: roosevelt.edu
