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Dean’s Distinguished Lecture in the Humanities: Building the Black City: Expanding the Case for Reparations for Descendants of African People Enslaved in America
Presented by Dr. Joe Trotter Jr.
Friday, April 17, 2026
4:30 – 6:00 p.m.
Alumni Fireside Lounge – UWM Student Union
2200 East Kenwood Blvd.
Recent scholarship illuminates the many ways that Black people have shaped the built environment of American cities, while also double taxing their labor to build institutional infrastructure to serve their own class and racially segregated communities. Yet, the notion of a “Black City” is the subject of significant debate, partly because people of African descent have never fully controlled the cities in which they lived, worked, and helped to create from the trans-Atlantic slave trade through present times. Hence, in addition to the injustice of land dispossession, enslaved labor, and discriminatory low-wage free labor, this special forum provides an opportunity for scholars, students, and the broader public to consider the vibrant city-building activities of Black people as a vital part of the case for reparatory justice and reparations.
Dr. Joe William Trotter, Jr. is the Giant Eagle University Professor of History and Social Justice and past History Department Chair at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; the director and founder of Carnegie Mellon’s Center for Africanamerican Urban Studies and the Economy (CAUSE) and past president of both the Urban History Association and the Labor and Working Class History Association.