In 1964, a white off-duty police officer on the Upper East Side shot and killed a black teenager named James Powell. The killing sparked six days of protest in Harlem, and ultimately transformed the career of the Black feminist poet June Jordan. She reflects on this turning point in the foreword of her book Civil Wars, writing “I realized I now was filled with hatred for everything and everyone white. Almost simultaneously it came to me that this condition, if it lasted, would mean I had lost the point. . . . I resolved not to run on hatred but, instead, to use what I loved, words, for the sake of the people I loved. However, beyond my people, I did not know the content of my love: what was I for?” Jordan teamed up with the architect R. Buckminster Fuller on a project to redesign Harlem: it would win the Rome Prize in environmental design six years later. The American Academy in Rome explores Jordan’s contribution to environmental design, which always included race, class, and gender in the conversation. Her poetry and designs are brought together with the art that inspired her, including paintings by Charles Alston, Colleen Browning, and Alice Neel. —Clara Molot