In conversation with KC Real Estate Attorney, Shomari Benton, Tanner Colby, the author of Some of My Best Friends Are Black: The Strange Story of Integration in America, will discuss the history of race and real estate practices and how our communities continue to be impacted today.
Colby’s book Some of My Best Friends are Black is a narrative history of modern race-relations in the United States, and was nominated for the American Library Association's 2013 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Non-fiction. After the election of America’s first black president, Tanner Colby realized that not only had he had no black friends, but he’d never even had a black teacher, college professor, or workplace mentor. Nearly everyone he knew and interacted with was white. Colby sought to discover how half a century after the Civil Rights Movement true integration has made few in roads in so many Americans’ lives. The Strange Story of Integration offers an honest portrait of race in America, and specifically traces the history of housing discrimination in Kansas City neighborhoods.
The conversation between Colby and Benton is facilitated by Educator Marlee Bunch and is made possible in part through a grant from Freedom’s Frontier National Heritage Area. The mission of Freedom’s Frontier is to tell the stories of our struggle for freedom. Freedom’s Frontier promotes heritage conservation, recreation, and economic development through its partnerships with organizations across Kansas and Missouri.
