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Living Apart
- How the Government Betrayed a Landmark Civil Rights Law
- Narrated by: Steven Menasche
- Length: 1 hr and 28 mins
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Living Apart
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Editor reviews
The 1968 Fair Housing Act, passed in the aftermath of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination, authorized the government to dismantle the nation’s segregated housing patterns. This investigation from ProPublica shows how the federal government failed to enforce the act, and at what cost. In performer Steven Menasche's smooth, even tones, Living Apart shows how Nixon squashed early desegregation programs, and explores the ongoing failures of the Department of Housing and Urban Development to follow up on the act. As a result of segregation, many African-American communities experience poorer health care, higher infant mortality, inferior schools, and other problems. Listeners with an interest in urban history and social justice will find this an eye-opening investigation of an under-explored topic.
Summary
ProPublica’s groundbreaking investigation into housing segregation, and the federal government’s large-scale failure to uphold the laws meant to prevent it.
More than 40 years after President Johnson signed the landmark Fair Housing Act into law, residential segregation in America remains unresolved. Designed to help dismantle the nation’s racially divided housing patterns, the act has gone largely ignored by every presidential administration - Democrat and Republican alike - since 1968. In Living Apart, ProPublica investigates this failing, particularly how subsequent leaders, following President Nixon’s lead, have declined to use the billions in grant dollars awarded by the Department of Housing and Urban Development as leverage to fight segregation. Their reluctance to enforce a law passed by both houses of Congress and repeatedly upheld by the courts reflects a larger political reality. Again and again, attempts to create integrated neighborhoods have foundered.
This ebook includes an exclusive afterword by the author, as well as an appendix of original documents dating from the Nixon administration, revealing the internal politics swirling around the Fair Housing Act shortly after its enactment.