Columbus Metropolitan Library is hosting this virtual community program. Live chat with panelists from your computer or mobile device.

Can’t attend the live stream? Sign up and watch the recording afterwards.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Speak Up/Speak Out: Conversations About Race

Join us for virtual community conversations as we continue to discuss race and social justice in Columbus and in America.

Each month we’re choosing a book, article, movie or music selection from our collection to experience and reflect upon together.

Our moderators and panelists are community leaders who strive to speak up and speak out to address institutional and systemic inequities that face our communities.

March Selection: The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein 
Genre:  Adult nonfiction (2017)
Check it out: Available in Book, eBook or eAudiobook

Patrick Losinski, Columbus Metropolitan Library

Judge Algenon Marbley, U.S. District Court

Carter Stewart, Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation

In The Color of Law, Rothstein describes how American cities became so racially divided through federal, state and local governments that systematically imposed residential segregation that includes racial zoning, public housing that segregated previously mixed communities, subsidies for builders to create whites-only suburbs, tax exemptions for institutions that enforced segregation and support for violent resistance to African Americans in white neighborhoods - policies that influence tragedies in places like Ferguson and Baltimore.

This “powerful and disturbing history” exposes how American governments deliberately imposed racial segregation on metropolitan areas nationwide.
New York Times book review, June 2017

Upcoming Speak Up/Speak Out Conversations

We invite book clubs, families and workplaces to read, watch or listen to each month’s selection and join us in the conversation.

Thursday, April 22 - Young Adult fiction 
The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

Tuesday, May 25 - Adult nonfiction
Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? by Beverly Daniel Tatum

Conversation about "The Color of Law" by Richard Rothstein