Madison in the Sixties: Urban Renewal & Civil Rights

press release: Nov. 5,12, 19, 26, 2019, 7:00 - 8:30 PM, Pyle Center

$65. Register by phone: 608-262-2451.

Journalist/historian Stu Levitan will lead a four-week course examining urban renewal and civil rights in Madison in the sixties, especially the troubled effort to turn the Greenbush neighborhood into the Triangle Urban Renewal District. The course, presented Tuesday evenings in November by the UW Division of Continuing Studies, will use public accounts, private correspondence, oral histories, historical documents, rare photographs, and maps to explore how racism and anti-UW hostility fueled Madison's challenges.   The course will also trace Madison’s civil rights arc, from passage of the state’s first fair housing code to the National Guard coming to campus during the Black Strike.

About the instructor: In addition to being an award-winning print and broadcast journalist, Stu Levitan has had extensive experience in urban renewal and civil rights policy. As a county supervisor, he wrote the Dane County Fair Housing Ordinance, was later president of the Fair Housing Council, and served 13 years on the Community Development Authority, successor to the sixties-era Madison Redevelopment Authority.