University research scientist uses comic books to teach history of redlining
It's one thing to learn about redlining by looking at a map or listening to a lecture. It's another to learn about it in a comic book.
"I think the big thing was, how do we tell the story about the research that we are doing here at Morgan State in a way that people can really understand?" said Lawrence Brown, a research scientist at the at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland.
Brown teaches and studies redlining in cities like Baltimore using federal documents and color-coded security maps from the 1930s. Redlining is a housing discrimination practice of denying qualified people federal home loans and lending opportunities because of where they live. It's a system born from racial discrimination that impacted Black people.
"Often, Black history is all the downtrodden and the deep, heavy trauma of everything that has happened, and I wanted to tell the story that showed the hope that the future of Baltimore could be beautiful, could be bright and that our children are smart and intelligent and able to talk about this history in a way that I think hopefully youth and adults can relate to," Brown told sister station WBAL.
His comic book, "Journey and the Abolition Democracy," follows a 15-year-old girl living in a futuristic version of Baltimore set in 2064. Journey gives a presentation at school about the Great Migration, a period starting in 1910 when Black people started moving from the South to the North, and the origins and impact of redlining. Her presentation uses actual federal documents and maps.
"I think that's the really clever part about what we are able to do with the comic book is put this evidence embedded in the text," Brown said.
The text and the pictures are meant to grab your eye and enrich your mind, not just about the past but also about the future, a future where historically redlined neighborhoods overcome and reach their full potential.
"I think it speaks to the faith and hope that something that was done intentionally can also be undone," Brown said.
For more information on how you can get the comic book, click .
