Enoch Pratt Free Library Podcast

The event is also part of OSI-Baltimore’s Talking About Race Series. Lawrence T. Brown is in conversation about his book, The Black Butterfly: The Harmful Politics of Race and Space in America. Presented in partnership with AARP Maryland and OSI-Baltimore Fellows Advisory Board. The world gasped in April 2015 as Baltimore erupted and Black Lives Matter activists, incensed by Freddie Gray's brutal death in police custody, shut down highways and marched on city streets. In The Black Butterfly—a reference to the fact that Baltimore's majority-Black population spreads out on both sides of the coveted strip of real estate running down the center of the city like a butterfly's wings—Lawrence T. Brown reveals that ongoing historical trauma caused by a combination of policies, practices, systems, and budgets is at the root of uprisings and crises in hypersegregated cities around the country. Putting Baltimore under a microscope, Brown looks closely at the causes of segregation, many of which exist in current legis