Lucien E. Blackwell Regional Library will host Professor Laura Wolf-Powers, the author of the new book University City: History, Race, and Community in the Era of the Innovation District (2022), which traces the politics that empowered officials to demolish a predominantly Black neighborhood near the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University in the late 1960s, and documents efforts from the ‘60s to the present day to preserve those neighborhoods and to advocate for policies that would create a city that works for all. Professor Wolf-Powers will be joined in a panel discussion by several local community activists.

Panelists:

Rasheda Alexander, Coalition to Save the UC Townhomes
De’Wayne Drummond – co-founder & President of Mantua Civic Association; co-host of Iron Sharpens Iron Podcast; co-founder of We Embrace Fatherhood
W.D. Palmer, founder and director of the Palmer Foundation, lecturer on American racism in the Schools of Social Work, Urban Studies, Medicine, and Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania
Laura Wolf-Powers – Associate Professor of Urban Policy & Planning, City University of New York, Hunter College

Moderator:

Gigi Varlotta, Coalition to Save the UC Townhomes 

A limited number of copies of Professor Wolf-Powers’s book will be available free for attendees.  

Cover image: Funeral for a Home, May 31, 2014. Commissioned by Temple Contemporary, Temple University. Original support by the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, Philadelphia. Photo credit: Jeffrey Stockbridge