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Sarah Shoenfeld in “Race Matters Locally” Zoom Series

Join the Zoom Talk Here at 7 p.m. Jan. 21

Housing is a key factor in shaping the opportunities available to people of all races and backgrounds. Homeownership is a platform for wealth creation and for giving people a say in shaping the city, but has historically been an unattainable goal for the majority of DC residents.

In our next session of an occasional series called “Race Matters Locally,” HCCDC’s Carl Lankowski will partner with the Chevy Chase Citizens’ Association’s Ted Gest to interview Sarah Jane Shoenfeld of Prologue DC, an expert on the intersection of race and housing.

The free Zoom presentation at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 21, titled “DC’s Racialized Housing Landscape,” will be an eye-opening discussion on the historic role racially restrictive deed covenants have played in shaping how neighborhoods look today, despite being outlawed more than 70 years ago. She will also talk about how former federal housing programs and redlining are responsible for today’s persistent racial wealth gap and widespread housing insecurity.

Shoenfeld, an independent scholar and public historian, co-directs the project Mapping Segregation in Washington DC with Mara Cherkasky. The map-based project documents the former extent of racially restricted housing in the nation’s capital along with other historic mechanisms of segregation and displacement. An earlier Zoom presentation with Cherkasky about the project can be viewed here.

Prologue DC engages in a variety of history projects, including research for exhibitions and films, historic landmark and district nominations, oral histories, and walking tours. Recent projects include a successful historic-landmark nomination for Barry Farm Dwellings, a World War II-era public housing project in Anacostia slated for redevelopment, and an online tour of African American Civil Rights sites in DC.