F.D. Bluford Library, Community Partners to Bring Hannah-Jones to N.C. A&T

EAST GREENSBORO, N.C. – (May 11, 2022) Nikole Hannah-Jones of The New York Times Magazine and Pulitzer Prize-winning creator of “The 1619 Project,” will headline the culminating event of North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University’s F.D. Bluford Library series, “The History of Redlining in East Greensboro: Conversations about our City’s Past and Present.” 

This keynote event will take place as part of the 2022 Greensboro Bound Literary Festival on Saturday, May 21, at 7 p.m. in Harrison Auditorium on the N.C. A&T campus. 

Hannah-Jones will be in conversation with Jelani Favors, Ph.D., Henry E. Frye Distinguished Professor at A&T and the award-winning author of “Shelter in a Time of Storm.” Their conversation will be a wide-ranging discussion about Hannah-Jones’ work to chronicle “the decades-long failure of the federal government to enforce the landmark 1968 Fair Housing Act” and her latest book, “The 1619 Project.” 

This series opened at the historic Dudley High School, one of the first high schools in Guilford County, North Carolina, created to serve Black students during segregation. These discussion panels sought to center the voices of East Greensboro residents and their experiences with redlining and housing inequality in this city. Redlining was practice in the 1930s where the federal government ranked homes by their loan worthiness. Homes in Black neighborhoods were often mapped in red and named a poor investment, making it difficult or impossible for Black Americans to receive home loans (New York Times, 2017). While this practice has ended, decades of lost opportunities for homeownership and investment continues to impact Black neighborhoods, including historically Black neighborhoods in Greensboro. 

Experts in health, politics, community activism, history, preservation and real estate policy came together to bring a wealth of knowledge and personal experience to this important conversation on housing equity in Greensboro and the nation.   

A traveling exhibit that documents the history of East Greensboro and A&T accompanied each panel discussion and will be present at “A Conversation with Nikole Hannah-Jones.” 

F.D. Bluford librarians Carlos Grooms, Katie Kehoe, Harvey Long and James Stewart created this series in collaboration with Dudley High School, Greensboro Bound, The Greensboro Public Library and the Greensboro History Museum after they won an NC Humanities Grant. 

This is a free ticketed event. Tickets are available at Central, Mc Girt-Horton Branch, Vance H. Chavis Branch and F.D. Bluford libraries.