Please join Busboys and Poets Books as we welcome authors Lisa Rice, Gregory D. Squires and Sam Fulwood III to Busboys and Poets 14th and V.Â
Fifty years ago, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Fair Housing Act into law on April 11, 1968—seven days after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Though it has been the law since 1968, a significant number of people still do not know their rights under the Fair Housing Act. The National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA) wants to change that. On Thursday, Jan. 25, 2018, NFHA announced the launch of #FHAct50, a year-long campaign to educate the American public about the importance of the Fair Housing Act, advocate for strengthened fair housing policies, and commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the law. The Fight for Fair Housing book event is part of the #FHAct50 Campaign and will bring together book chapter authors to discuss fair housing and the next 50 years of making every neighborhood a place of opportunity.
Sam Fulwood III is a Columnist with Think Progress at the Center for American Progress, where he has served as a Senior Fellow analyzing the influence of national politics and domestic policies on communities of color across the United States. Prior to joining the Center for American Progress, Fulwood was a metro columnist at The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, Ohio, the last stop in a nearly three-decade journalism career that featured posts at several metropolitan newspapers. During the 1990s, he was a national correspondent in the Washington bureau of the Los Angeles Times, where he created a national race-relations beat and contributed to the paper’s Pulitzer Prize–winning coverage of the Los Angeles riots in 1992. He has also worked as business editor and state political editor for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, as assistant city editor, business reporter, editorial writer, and Johannesburg, South Africa, bureau correspondent for The (Baltimore) Sun, and as a police, business, and sports reporter at The Charlotte Observer. Fulwood is the author of two books, Waking from the Dream: My Life in the Black Middle Class (1996) and Full of It: Strong Words and Fresh Thinking for Cleveland (2004).
Lisa Rice is the Executive Vice President of the National Fair Housing Alliance. She oversees the resource development, public policy, communications, and enforcement divisions of the agency. She is responsible for helping to achieve the organization’s goal of addressing the crisis of segregation in America and the ultimate objective of achieving equal housing opportunities for all Americans. Lisa joined NFHA after serving as CEO of the Toledo Fair Housing Center and the Northwest Ohio Development Agency (NODA). While serving at the organizations, Lisa developed and implemented the state of Ohio’s first predatory lending remediation program and worked to help pass anti-predatory-lending statutes in Ohio. Ms. Rice has been involved in the investigation and resolution of precedent-setting fair housing cases that have resulted in the elimination of systemic discriminatory practices in the lending and insurance arenas. Ms. Rice led NFHA’s efforts to ensure that fair lending provisions were a key component of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, and continues to lead the agency’s efforts to expand access to quality, affordable credit for under-served populations.
Gregory D. Squires is a professor of sociology and public policy and public administration at George Washington University. Currently he is a member of the advisory board of the John Marshall Law School Fair Housing Legal Support Center in Chicago, Illinois, the Fair Housing Task Force of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, and the Social Science Advisory Board of the Poverty & Race Research Action Council in Washington, D.C. He has served as a consultant for civil rights organizations around the U.S. and as a member of the Federal Reserve Board’s Consumer Advisory Council. He has written for several academic journals and general interest publications, including Housing Policy Debate, Urban Studies, Social Science Quarterly, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. His recent books include his edited volume Why the Poor Pay More: How to Stop Predatory Lending (2004); Privileged Places: Race, Residence and the Structure of Opportunity (2006; with Charis E. Kubrin); three books edited with Chester Hartman, There Is No Such Thing As a Natural Disaster: Race, Class, and Hurricane Katrina (2006), The Integration Debate: Competing Futures for American Cities (2010), From Foreclosure to Fair Lending: Organizing, Advocacy, Occupy and the Pursuit of Equitable Credit (2013); and, most recently, Meltdown: The Financial Crisis, Consumer Protection, and the Road Forward (2017; with Larry Kirsch).
This event is co-sponsored by The National Fair Housing Alliance, the voice of fair housing. NFHA works to eliminate housing discrimination and to ensure equal housing opportunity for all people through leadership, education, outreach, membership services, public policy initiatives, community development, advocacy, and enforcement.
Books will be available for purchase before and after the event. Please contact books@busboysandpoets.com with questions. Reserve your ticket here.
