Location: Architecture Building Auditorium
This event is open to the public.
Speaker
Emily Lieb
Author & Historian of U.S. cities
In the mid-1950s, Baltimore’s Rosemont neighborhood was a vibrant Black middle-class community, rich with rowhouses, parks, shops, and professional offices. By 1957, a proposed East–West Expressway threatened to slice through the neighborhood. Though the highway was never built, its shadow gutted Rosemont’s economy and stability. Drawing on land records, oral histories, media accounts, and policy documents, Emily Lieb reveals how racist education, housing, and transportation policies—alongside blockbusting, redlining, and predatory lending—destroyed wealth and opportunity while residents fought to preserve their homes. This is both a cautionary tale of systemic injustice and a testament to community resilience.
About the author:
Emily Lieb is a historian of U.S. cities. She has a PhD in history from Columbia University and an AB from Brown, and she taught history and urban studies at Seattle University for more than 10 years. She now writes about global health and climate change for a small writing consultancy based in Seattle, where she lives with her husband and a Labrador retriever named Orvy.