Ginger Nolan Presents Inaugural SAH | Places Prize Lecture
Speaking to an audience at the Graham Foundation in Chicago, SAH | Places Prize winner Ginger Nolan delivered her prize lecture on African American-owned insurance companies.
On October 20, Ginger Nolan, an architectural historian at University of Southern California and winner of the inaugural SAH | Places Prize, delivered her prize lecture at the Graham Foundation in Chicago, with more tuning in to watch via livestream.
Through deep archival research and rigorous analysis, Nolan explored how African American-owned insurance companies in the 20th century negotiated the often contradictory goals of pursuing financial gain while also trying to make cities more equitable.
“The insurance executives maintained delicate balancing acts, often subscribing to actuarial forms of thought that tended to deepen class divides, while on the other hand actively agitating for civil rights,” she said. “Granted, most civil rights causes dovetailed with the company’s self-interest, as they needed healthy, financially stable households and neighborhoods to invest in. But the directors’ activism exceeded what might be expected of pure self-interest.”
Nolan explained that such balancing acts were manifest in everything from the companies’ lending practices to the construction of their corporate headquarters.
Nolan is at work now on the second component of the SAH | Places Prize — a major work of public scholarship on the same subject to be published in Places.
In the meantime, we’re pleased to present a video recording of Nolan’s lecture, including a generative discussion with University of Texas at Austin professor Charles L. Davis II, all of which was made possible through our ongoing collaboration with the Society of Architectural Historians.