52nd Annual Morris Fromkin Memorial Lecture
4th Floor Conference Center, Golda Meir Library
and virtually via Zoom
The 2021 Morris Fromkin Memorial Lecture will be presented by
Anne Bonds (Associate Professor, UWM Geography) and Derek Handley (Assistant Professor, UWM English), alongside Lawrence Hoffman (GIS Program Manager at Groundwork Milwaukee) and Reggie
Jackson (Journalist and Educator/Consultant, Nurturing Diversity Partners, LLC). With an introduction by Dr.
Robert S. Smith (Harry G.
John Professor of History and
Director of the Center for Urban Research, Marquette University).
Project Synopsis:
Milwaukee County’s racial geography is the result of an array of federal, state, and local policies and private practices that explicitly classified and separated population groups by race. Our research focuses on the role
of racial housing covenants, which prohibited non-white people from buying or occupying housing and certain parcels of land, in producing racial segregation and contemporary racial inequality. Though racial covenants have been illegal for over 50 years and
unenforceable for over 70, they remain embedded in property deeds throughout Milwaukee County as evidence of the ways in which racism and segregationist systems mapped race and urban development.
Our project represents the first effort to comprehensively document and map all racial covenants in Milwaukee County. We seek not just to analyze and visualize the historical geographies of racial covenants, but also to uncover
the voices/narratives/actions made by African Americans in Milwaukee in response to them. Our focus on efforts to challenge covenants explores the lived experiences of covenants and ways in which Black organizations and residents of Milwaukee County envisioned
and articulated their claims for racial and spatial justice.
