Fall 2014 Events
11/6-11/20/2014: Economic Racism in Perspective: Past and Present in US and Germany
“Economic Racism in Perspective: Past and Present in the US and Germany,” was series of events in November 2014 that celebrated the 50th anniversary of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and considered the dangers of economic discrimination.
Serving as a backdrop to the events was “Final Sale: The End of Jewish Businesses in Nazi Berlin,” a historical exhibition on economic segregation in Nazi Berlin. Based on innovative research, the exhibition explored the fate of 16 small businesses, focusing on the entrepreneurs who built them and their struggle to survive in an increasingly segregated and racist business environment, from internationally renowned theater director Max Reinhardt to a family of egg wholesalers.
The event series opened with a reception for the exhibition on Nov. 6, then continued with an international conference on “Dispossession. The Plundering of German Jewry, 1933-1945 and Beyond” on Nov. 9-11, which explored the legal, financial, and cultural techniques used to exclude and expropriate German Jews and the retroactive legitimation of dispossession under the guise of “restitution” in the immediate postwar period.
To commemorate the anniversary of the pogrom that was conducted on November 9, 1938 against German Jewry, Christoph Kreutzmüller (Senior Researcher and Educator, Museum of the House of the Wannsee Conference) delivered a lecture on “Kristallnacht and the Destruction of Jewish Commercial Activity in Germany.”
On Nov. 13 and Nov. 20, Boston University faculty delivered lectures on on the insidious legacy of segregation in American commerce, turning to the American story of economic discrimination. Robert A. Margo, former chair of the BU Economics Department and incoming president of the Economic History Association, gave a lecture on “Obama, Katrina, and the Persistence of Racial Inequality.” Japonica Brown-Saracino, Associate Professor in the BU Sociology Department and author of the prize-winning book A Neighborhood That Never Changes: Gentrification, Social Preservation, and the Search for Authenticity (2009, University of Chicago Press), spoke on “The Last Store Standing: Commerce as Force, Symbol and Casualty in the Gentrifying American City.”
Program Director: Prof. Jonathan Zatlin, History Department
Lead sponsors: Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies, German Historical Institute, Washington D.C., BU Center for the Humanities, Florence and Chafetz Hillel House, BU History Department, Jewish Cultural Endowment, Arvind and Chandan Nandlal Kilachand Honors College, and the BU Alumni Association.
Co-Sponsored by the BU Law School, BU Economics Department, and BU Sociology Department.