Lawrence Lanahan
Lawrence Lanahan (2017) will use the Logan Nonfiction Program to finish writing a book entitled “The Lines Between Us: Baltimore and the Long Road to Racial Equality in America” (New Press, 2018). The book chronicles the Baltimore region’s struggle to dismantle racial inequality and housing segregation in the five decades since the Fair Housing Act.
One “through line” in the book that became particularly timely is the organized resistance that arises when policymakers propose expanding subsidized housing to white suburbs and exurbs. The book soberly appraises the strength of the structural forces dividing Americans, but it also offers hope by showing how policymakers and everyday citizens are breaking down the lines between us.
Lanahan’s reporting on race and class in Baltimore began in 2008 with a widely-cited Columbia Journalism Review cover story about The Wire’s lessons for reporting on urban inequality. His year-long multimedia series about regional inequality in Baltimore, WYPR’s “The Lines Between Us,” won a 2014 Alfred I. duPont Award — the broadcast equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize. Since then, he has written for Al Jazeera America, Colorlines, Columbia Journalism Review and Slate.