Dr. Rachel Ferguson of the Concordia University Chicago faculty will present “Black Liberation Through the Marketplace” on Monday, Feb. 7, at 7 p.m. at Hope College in Winants Auditorium of Graves Hall.
The public is invited. Admission is free.
The event has been scheduled in conjunction with national Black History Month, which is February. The presentation will also be livestreamed at hope.edu/live and via the Hope College YouTube channel.
Ferguson is co-author, with Marcus M. Witcher, of the book “Black Liberation Through the Marketplace: Hope, Heartbreak, and the Promise of America,” forthcoming in May from Emancipation Books, an imprint of Post Hill Press. As explained in her presentation’s abstract, “Black Liberation Through the Marketplace” is the story of how Black Americans “coped with persistent denial of the rights so dear to the American constitutional system: property, freedom of contract, and the equal protection of the rule of law.” The description notes that although institutions like the Black Church fostered support networks for Blacks and made the rise of the NAACP and the Civil Rights Movement possible, Black Americans “had to constantly contend with new obstacles, including from progressive policies like the minimum wage, socially engineered neighborhoods, and federal highway construction.”
An economic philosopher, Ferguson is a professor of business and assistant dean at Concordia University Chicago. As director of the university’s Free Enterprise Center, she leads a nationwide, cross-disciplinary faculty network that engages questions of liberty and virtue through seminars, conferences, and pedagogy.
Ferguson has been a visiting fellow at the Eudaimonia Institute, and her work can be found in Discourse, the Journal of Markets & Morality, the Acton Institute Blog, and the Library of Economics and Liberty. She lives in St. Louis, Missouri, where she is actively involved in community building and empowering marginalized entrepreneurs through LOVEtheLOU and Gateway to Flourishing.
The lecture is co-sponsored by the college’s Center for Diversity and Inclusion, Department of Political Science, Markets & Morality student organization, and Tocqueville Forum.
Audience members who need assistance to fully enjoy any event at Hope are encouraged to contact the college’s Events and Conferences Office by emailing events@hope.edu or calling 616-395-7222 on weekdays between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. Updates related to events are posted when available in the individual listings at hope.edu/calendar
Due to the ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic, Hope is currently requiring that masks be worn by all individuals while indoors on campus unless in their living space or alone in their work space.
Graves Hall is located at 263 College Ave., between 10th and 12th streets.