‘We don’t want you to live here’: 50 years ago, the power to fight housing discrimination was granted

Event to celebrate 25th anniversary of Miami Valley Fair Housing Center and 50 years of the Fair Housing Act

Credit: Submitted

Credit: Submitted

The people depicted in Alice Gatewood Waddell's "Dance to The MOVEMENT" are celebrating, but they aren't victorious... yet.

“It’s not a celebration of something that is a done deal,” the Kentucky-based artist said of the piece she created for the Miami Valley Fair Housing Center’s 25th anniversary celebration. “It is still in motion.”

The vibrantly colored mix-media piece was also created in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the passage of the Fair Housing Act.

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Both anniversaries will be celebrated beginning at 6:30 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 18 at Sinclair Community College, 444 W. Third St.

“It wasn’t until 50 years ago that people could take action if they said ‘we don’t want you to live here’,” Jim McCarthy, president and CEO of Miami Valley Fair Housing Center explained.

The original work will be for sale for $3,995 at the anniversary celebration.

Individual tickets are $90 and available at the Miami Valley Fair Housing website, mvfairhousing.com,  until 1 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 18

Admission includes two drink tickets per person, an appetizer bar, a dinner buffet and a dessert bar.

The piece will be returned to Ed Dixon Art Gallery, 12 S. Ludlow St., Dayton if it does not sell at the event.

Prints of the piece will be sold at the event and later on the center’s website for $250 each as part of the fundraiser.

A special presentation will be made to the family of Willis E. Blackshear, a center board member and supporter, during the event.

Blackshear, Montgomery County’s longtime recorder, died in Feburary. He was 57.

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Part of Miami Valley Fair Housing’s mission is to eliminate housing discrimination against people due to “race, color, religion, national origin, sex, disability, familial status, or any other characteristic protected under state or local laws.”

The 1968 Fair Housing Act, Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act,  prohibits discrimination in the sale, rental and financing of dwellings, and in other housing-related transactions, based on race, color, national origin, religion, sex, familial status (including children under the age of 18 living with parents or legal custodians, pregnant women, and people securing custody of children under the age of 18), and disability, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's website.

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