It all begins in the home, which could be a place or state of being, said Anita Hill, senior advisor to the provost and professor of social policy, law, and women’s studies at Brandeis University.
On February 17, Hill gave the St. Louis Public Library’s Black History Month keynote address at the Central Library’s new auditorium. In 1991, Hill’s testimony against then-U.S. Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas pushed the issue of workplace sexual harassment into the national spotlight.
In front of a fully packed auditorium with audience members filling two overflow rooms, Hill reflected on the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, signed in 1863, and where we are today.
“Story of America is the story of a search for home,” Hill said.
The early immigrants to America were looking for a place where they could live out their lives and practice their religions which would not be hampered by the government.
“The people who came to search and find a home displaced entire peoples in the process,” she said. “The search for home is an imperfect story. It is our job to get the story right.”
When Hill looks at the foreclosure process, she said she sees how the idea of home has shaped America’s racial story since emancipation.
“Whether or not you can buy or own a home, race and gender comes into play,” she said, “and nothing made that more apparent than the foreclosure crisis.”
Booker T. Washington believed that African Americans should use the home as a tool for negotiating citizenship. As leader of the Tuskegee Institute, he led an initiative to build middle-class-looking cottages to show his students what they could achieve and where they could live. His students built the houses themselves to gain carpentry skills as well.
“We know that the home has been a place of battleground,” she said. “Not only interior but in terms of allowing entry into the community. We know for years, north or south, there were segregated communities.”
In 1940, Carl Hansberry, an investor and political activist, decided to change the stat quo. In the Hansberry vs. Lee case, the court sided with Hansberry to remove racial restrictions in neighborhoods, which pushed forward the development of new homes for African Americans.
However, the battle over segregation persisted, Hill said, and the government continued to honor segregation.
“We want white tenants in our white community,” she said. “These were preferences that were honored by the local officials. As federal government was allowing housing to be substandard, the government was putting money into the development of suburbs.”
President Harry Truman wouldn’t put the money into rebuilding the inner cities, she said. He wanted new neighborhoods, and racial restrictions on housing developments were replaced by gentlemen agreements. The banks were approved by the government, which was complicit in the redlining practices.
“The law, culture, racial prejudice all combined to shape our neighborhoods,” she said.
The March on Washington of 1963 was not about voting rights alone, she said, but also about public schools and feeling free in who you are and what you do.
“Where one calls home determines your access to a public education,” she said. “It determines your access to public services, whether or not you’re going to get your garbage picked up. Where you call home determines whether or not you will live safe and secure in four walls and whether or not you can walk out on the street.”
In the economic downturn, Latinos lost 65 percent of their wealth and assets and African Americans lost 60 percent. Yet Hill said she remains hopeful that people will have the desire to live in a community with each other.
“The government has and can and will play a role in making that happen,” she said. “However, the government will only move to support our desire to live in community if the people are urgent. We are at a historical point in our history. Everything significant didn’t happen 150 years ago.”
Over the course of history, people have had an idea of migration as a way to improve their way of life. Like the Jefferson’s, you have to “move on up,” she said, from the city to the suburbs.
“How about a different vision?” she said. “What if we say we are going to bring equal opportunity to everyone where they live. That is the vision of equality of the 21st century.”
She made a suggestion regarding the foreclosure settlement agreements – the agreements should include a superfund. Just like when there is a toxic waste spill, local people use a superfund to reinvigorate communities, she said.
“Some communities were devastated by the foreclosure crisis like a toxic waste spill,” she said.
Most importantly, the community has to come together, organize and unite resources.
“A new civil rights law won’t do it,” she said. “They have to be community and collective decisions.”