From an acclaimed legal scholar, Dividing Lines delivers an account of how transportation infrastructure―from highways and roads to sidewalks and buses―has become an essential means of maintaining segregation and inequality since the fall of Jim Crow. While state-sanctioned racism became illegal, Archer shows how officials across the country used transportation infrastructure to keep Americans divided. A wealthy white neighborhood, for example, could no longer be ​“protected” by racial covenants and segregated shops, but a multilane road with no pedestrian crossings could be built along its border to keep out people from lower-income communities. Highways could not be routed through Black neighborhoods based on the race of their residents, but those neighborhoods’ lower property values could be used to justify the seizure of its properties. A new suburb could not be for ​“whites only,” but planners could refuse to extend sidewalks from Black communities into white ones.

“A brilliant and persuasive call to action for all who are concerned about creating a more just society,” according to Pulitzer Prize-winner Annette Gordon-Reed, Dividing Lines presents a sweeping, national account―from Atlanta and Houston to Indianapolis and New York City―of our persistent divisions. With immense authority, Archer examines the limits of current civil rights laws, which she argues can be used to thwart the plans of racist officials but lack efficacy as a means of addressing deeper, more enduring, structural challenges.

Our nation’s transportation system is crumbling, Archer writes, but, before we can think about rebuilding and repairing, we must address the role racial prejudice has already played in the creation of our transportation infrastructure.

This event offers both an in-person and a virtual option