Newhouse Fellows: Jovonna Jones

We, the "Homies": Where Family Meets Urban Planning in Boston's South End

Jovonna Jones' book project, The Last Thanksgiving at Rutland Square, tells an intimate story of housing discrimination that spans one woman's Great Migration from the American south to the rise of gentrification in the north. That woman was Jones' late grandmother Mary Brown. Her prescient record-keeping of family history and tenant organizing in Boston's South End provides a window into a Black community fractured by social stigma, inconsistent housing policies, and private development. Jones' Newhouse lecture centers on the Brown family's early years in Boston in the 1940s through 60s. As they settled into the South End, they became part of a collective social image framed very differently depending on who was looking. Black residents' view of ordinary life, commerce, and leisure contrasted with leaders' and outsiders' perspective of the South End as a declining neighborhood in need of renewal. Through a close reading of family pictures and bureaucratic archives, Jones examines the perceptual distance between those presently living in a neighborhood and those scrutinizing it for its potential. 

Lunch will be provided. Kindly RSVP here by Friday, April 4th.