Macon Sense: Faith Speaks to Redlining

Thursday, February 6, 7:00 p.m.

Thursday February 13, 7:00 p.m.

In the late 1930s, the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation graded neighborhoods all over the country based on their mortgage security and used red to indicate a hazard. Sixty-five percent of Macon’s neighborhoods were redlined because African-Americans lived there. This institutionalized racism denied African-Americans opportunities for homeownership and wealth-building. 
The effects are so lasting and visible that the twenty-three people—half HHBC members and half from the community—who participated in the first session were able to correlate present perceptions of Macon neighborhoods to maps developed nearly a century earlier. 

How does Christian faith compel us as citizens to address these systemic barriers in Macon?

Join the second session on Thursday, February 6, from 7:00-8:30 p.m., at Historic Macon, 338 Poplar Street. Mayor Robert Reichert and local historians Dr. Andrew Manis, professor of history at Middle Georgia State University, and Dr. Thomas Duvall, retired dentist and Pleasant Hill historian, will explore how racism has shaped Macon’s geography. Register for Session 2 here.

Make plans for the final session, Thursday, February 13, same time and place, when Dr. Paul Lewis, professor at Mercer University, and Rev. Dominique Johnson, pastor of Kingdom Life, will close the series with a reflection on a theological framework for and examples of taking action. Register for Session 3 here.