Welcome!
The Black Butterfly Academy combines data, storytelling, maps, and art to deliver complex material in a digestible format. Courses are designed to empower residents, learners, teachers, community organizers, nonprofits, policymakers, and organizations. The academy is animated by the belief that the most powerful way to make Black Lives matter is to ensure Black neighborhoods matter!
Hello, I’m Dr. Lawrence Brown!
From 2013-2019, I served as a professor in the School of Community Health and Policy at Morgan State University. In June 2018, I was honored by OSI Baltimore with the Bold Thinker award for sparking critical discourse regarding Baltimore Apartheid.
My first book The Black Butterfly: The Harmful Politics of Race and Space in America was published by Johns Hopkins University Press in January 2021. I'm currently a research scientist in the Center for Urban Health Equity at Morgan State University.
I recently created a new board game called Urban Cipher, a hands-on tool that helps players to decode urban apartheid. I also sell more learning tools that are part of my Black Butterfly Dream Lab. You can find more resources at my website The Black Butterfly Project!
Learn about Baltimore Apartheid and Community Health Frameworks
Visualizing the Black Butterfly with Data
During the Baltimore Neighborhood Indicator Alliance's 2021 Data Week, University of Baltimore professor Colin Starger broke down how the Black Butterfly pattern shows up repeatedly across various measures in his presentation. Here's a snippet.
