Author to give Spencer Lecture addressing Black land ownership movement
LAWRENCE — The Commons will host the Spring 2025 Kenneth Spencer Lecture, "An Evening with Brea Baker," at 7 p.m. Feb. 20 at Liberty Hall.
Brea Baker is the author of “Rooted: The American Legacy of Land Theft and the Modern Movement for Black Land Ownership” (2024 Penguin Random House), which provides an in-depth analysis of systemic dispossession of land in the American South and presents a series of possibilities for community-building and repair moving forward.
In an effort to bring these national histories and movements to bear at a local level, many community organizations will be present with information about how to be involved with and learn more about land stewardship and policy issues in the region.
Baker’s writing has appeared in Refinery 29, Unbothered, Elle, Harper’s Bazaar and more. For her work in coalition with other activists and organizers, Baker has been recognized as a 2023 Creative Capital awardee, a 2017 Glamour Woman of the Year and 2019 i-D Up and Rising.
She earned a bachelor's degree in political science from Yale University, where she held internships with the U.S. Department of State and Public Defender Service DC, and she served as president of Yale’s NAACP chapter and co-director of AIDS Walk New Haven. Baker is on the board of Black Farmers’ Market and is a cohort member of The Highland Project and the BLIS Collective.
The Kenneth A. Spencer Lecture, hosted annually by The Commons, is an endowed lecture dedicated to bringing leading thinkers across disciplines and ways of knowing, to address the KU and regional communities. In recent years, the lecture series has featured writer/historian Rebecca Solnit, poet/scholar/artist Eve Ewing, activist/writer Jose Antonio Vargas, author/illustrator/screenwriter Jonny Sun, writer/scientist/enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation Robin Wall Kimmerer, climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe, poet/essayist Ross Gay, forager/land access advocate Alexis Nikole Nelson and poet/author/photographer Ocean Vuong.
Register for free tickets for the event. Books will be available for sale by the Raven Book Store.
Anyone needing special accommodations may contact The Commons for assistance at thecommons@ku.edu.