Wayne County Community College District’s Institute for Social Progress conducted a national conference on May 10, 2024 titled Detroit Urban Summit IV: New Visions of Integration and Civil Rights in American Democracy focusing on the major educational, political, and economic issues critical to the vitality of the nation’s historically diverse populations and the founding philosophical ideals of the project of American democracy. 

The conference examined legal cases and current racial dynamics of integration in the U.S. public education and housing and focused on why racial and economic integration remain crucial projects for the future of American democracy and our nation’s nearing transformation into a multiracial majority society for the first time in its history.

The conference is the first of a two-part series examining what strategies and policies may be pursued to redress increasing segregation and political and social dynamics that threaten the foundations of our democracy. 

These discussions are framed by the broader conception of a “new vision” of a Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. and its crucial challenge to transition into the world’s first multiracial democracy. 

Featured Keynote Speakers:

Urban Summit IV included nationally renowned scholars, authors, and civic leaders john a. powell, Sheryll D. Cashin, Tomiko Brown-Nagin and Cheryl I. Harris and Alex Kotlowitz.