Beryl Satter

All history is personal, according to conventional wisdom – but for Dr. Beryl Satter, some history is more personal than others. Early in 2009, she published Family Properties: Race, Real Estate and the Exploitation of Black Urban America, a carefully researched, searing study of massive financial discrimination and its decades-long repercussions. The book is both factual and deeply personal, for it chronicles her late father’s battles against discriminatory and predatory lending practices in Chicago a half-century ago. In the process of researching the book, Satter undertook a quest to learn more about her late father, civil rights lawyer Mark J. Satter, who died when she was 6 years old. In 2010, Family Properties won the National Jewish Book Award in History, the Liberty Legacy Award in Civil Rights History, and the “Honor Book” award by the New Jersey Council for the Humanities. It was listed among the best books of 2009 by The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Progressive, and the Newberry Library.

Satter is a teacher and scholar of U.S. history, women’s history, and cultural and urban history. Her scholarship and teaching excellence have been recognized with many awards including a 2015 Guggenheim award. Satter, a New York City resident, is a graduate of Harvard Divinity School and holds a doctoral degree in American Studies from Yale University.