2022 CAUSE & Heinz College Speaker Series
The Center for Africanamerican Urban Studies and the Economy (CAUSE) and the Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy are pleased to announce speakers for our 2022 virtual speaker series on racial disparities in America.
As part of Carnegie Mellon’s larger efforts to address these challenges, CAUSE (housed in the Department of History, Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences) and Heinz College created this series in 2021 to include collaborative programs designed to deepen our understanding of the historical and contemporary policy dimensions of persistent class and racial inequality in American society.
“Land, Lords, and Tenants,” Struggles for Rent Control in Lagos, Nigeria, 1941-60
Friday, April 8, 2022 | 4:30pm - 6:30pm ET
Amid the coronavirus pandemic, housing evictions continue to undermine public health and economic livelihood. This presentation exploreshow urban dwellers dealt with housing insecurities during a different moment of globaleconomic and political upheaval:World War II. Specifically, it willdiscusshow tenants in Lagos, one of the world’s populous cities, confronted rent inflation from the middle of the Second World War until Nigeria’s independence in 1960. Several factors, such as the rising cost of living, contributed to rent hikes. With the support of the Nigerian press, tenants pushed the British colonial government to pass rent restrictions laws in 1942. After Nigerian politicians began to take over the city’s administration during the 1950s, tenants ensured that rent control remained active. While some tenants used rent control to secure housing, many could not prevent their homeowners’ illegal eviction tactics. The history of tenants' struggles for rent control illuminates how ordinary residents improved their living conditions and claimed urban resources.
Halimat Somotan, Ph.D is a Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of History, working with Professor Joe Trotter. She is ascholar of colonial and postcolonial Africa, whose research and teaching focuson housing, decolonization, and African cities. Her current book project, Decolonizing the City: Popular Politics and the Making of Postcolonial Lagos,examines how ordinary Lagosians experienced and contested Nigeria’s transition from colonial rule to independence. It shows how landlords, tenants, and female traders challenged and sought to reform governmental policies concerning slum clearance, rent control, state land acquisition, and sanitation. The manuscript argues that Lagosians went beyond supporting nationalist movements but consistently pushed for urban reforms under both civilian and military regimes to improve urban policies. The research has implications for understanding contemporary megacity urban development and residents’ everyday contestationsagainst displacement. Somotan received her Ph.D. in History from Columbia University.Her research has been funded by organizations such as the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African-American and African Studies, the University of Virginia, the Council on Library and Information, and the Mellon Foundation.