Discussion with Antero Pietila, author of "Not In My Neighborhood"

Join us for a discussion with author Antero Pietila - author of "Not In My Neighborhood: How Bigotry Shaped a Great American City" on February 9 at 4 pm in the Library Gallery

Book description:

Baltimore is the setting for one of the most penetrating examinations of bigotry and residential segregation to be published in the United States.
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The book tells the story of how discrimination toward African Americans and Jews shaped the cities in which we live. Eugenics, racial thinking, and white supremacist attitudes influenced even the federal government's actions toward housing, dooming American cities to ghettoization.

The Federal Housing Administration continued discriminatory housing policies even into the 1960s.

This all-American tale is told through the prism of Baltimore, from its early suburbanization in the 1880s to the consequences of white flight after World War II, and into the first decade of the twenty-first century. The events are real, and so are the heroes and villains.

The narrative centers on residential real estate practices, whose discriminatory tools were the same everywhere: restrictive covenants, red- lining, blockbusting, predatory lending.

After the Supreme Court invalidated residential segregation ordinances in 1917, other cities copied another Baltimore tradition - private agreements that prohibited blacks and Jews from specific neighborhoods. Redlining led to blockbusting.

When the sub-prime mortgage craze began, speculators turned Baltimore into a hotbed of risky lending. It became the first city to sue a bank for alleged targeting of minorities for sub-prime loans that would later be foreclosed. This engrossing story is an eye-opening journey into blocks and neighborhoods, shady practices, and ruthless promoters - the dark side of the American dream of owning your own home.