Jerel McCants, who speaks at Tampa Union Station on Saturday, Feb. 1, 2025. Credit: Photo by Ray Roa

Buildings tell you a lot about themselves, and their architects, before you even walk in. In a beefy and enthralling text released last year on Tarpon Springs’ Two Penny Publishing, Jerel McCants dives right into the architecture of segregation.

“It’s more about how architects have influenced cultural decisions, legislation, and policies, more than just looking at different styles,” he told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay. “It’s about how people move through spaces.”

Inspired in part by his father, a veteran who grew up in Alabama when it was the hotbed of civil rights, McCants—a well-traveled, space-planning-obsessed architect himself—will be interviewed live by Nashid Madyun, Executive Director of Florida Humanities, inside Tampa Union Station (opened in 1912, it has separate entrances, and you know what those were for).

“I even go into a deep dive into Nazi architecture. Hitler was an evil genius, he wanted to create a new world society based on a totalitarian, dictator style, so he had an architect in his cabinet that created that,” McCants added. “For better or worse, historical figures valued architecture.”

Topical indeed.

Tickets to Jerel McCants’ book launch for “The Architecture of Segregation” on Saturday, Feb. 1 at Tampa Union Station are still available for $20.Readers are invited to submit their own events to Creative Loafing Tampa Bay’s things to do calendar.

Subscribe to Creative Loafing newsletters.

This article appears in Jan 23-29, 2025.