Angela Simms with Lawrence Brown: FIGHTING FOR A FOOTHOLD

Join us for a conversation with scholar Angela Simms about her groundbreaking new book, Fighting for a Foothold: How Government and Markets Undermine Black Middle-Class Suburbia! It tells the story of Prince George’s County, Maryland, home to the highest concentration of Black middle-class residents in the United States, and reveals how race, class, and local jurisdiction boundaries in metropolitan areas interact to create different material living conditions for Americans.

In the words of Andre M. Perry: "Prince George’s County is a Wakanda of sorts. Its majority-Black residents enjoy higher incomes, stronger homeownership, and longer life expectancy than residents in many places—indeed, more than those in many non-Black-majority areas... Angela Simms’s rigorous work shows, however, that as remarkable as PG County is, it could be even better in a world without racism. Fighting for a Foothold invites readers from all places to remove the drags of racism that throttle growth that would otherwise occur."

We're so excited that Lawrence T. Brown, author of The Black Butterfly: The Harmful Politics of Race and Space in America, will join Angela Simms in conversation. We hope you will join us, too.

Books will be available for sale at the event.

Angela Simms is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Urban Studies at Barnard College-Columbia University. Prior to academia, Angela served in the federal government for seven years as a Presidential Management Fellow and legislative analyst at the Office of Management and Budget during the George W. Bush and Barack Obama Administrations.

Lawrence T. Brown is a writer, speaker, and scholar. Dr. Brown is the author of The Black Butterfly: The Harmful Politics of Race and Space in America which was published in 2021 by Johns Hopkins University Press. Dr. Brown is also the founder of the Black Butterfly Dream Lab and creator of the educational board game Urban Cipher. In February 2025, the Dream Lab released the educational comic book Journey and the Abolition Democracy.

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