Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake will deliver Emory University’s Hamilton lecture on April 7, to discuss “Baltimore: A City of Recovery, Resilience and Reform.”
Rawlings-Blake became a nationally known figure last year after the death of Baltimore resident Freddie Gray, who died while in police custody. Gray’s death led to rioting in Baltimore and protests in cities across the country against police brutality.
Before becoming Baltimore mayor, Rawlings-Blake had served on the city council for 15 years. She became mayor in 2010 when the sitting mayor resigned amid a corruption scandal. Rawlings-Blake won election to the office in 2011, but is not seeking re-election this year.
Last fall, Emory professor Lawrence Jackson focused his African American Studies course on Baltimore and the uprising following Gray's death. The class visited the city in December to present their research on mass incarceration, educational inequality, residential segregation and health care disparities to community leaders.
Jackson, a Baltimore native, has known Rawlings-Blake from childhood. The mayor’s talk is being sponsored by Emory’s African American Studies department and the James Weldon Johnson Institute.
Emory’s Grace Towns Hamilton lecture is named for the first black woman elected to the state legislature in the Deep South. When elected in 1966, Hamilton was also the first black to be elected to the Georgia legislature since Reconstruction, according to the school.
The lecture begins at 4 p.m. in the Winship Ballroom of the Dobbs University Center, and is free and open to the public.
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