Day: March 1, 2018

Restrictive Covenants Stubbornly Stay on the Books

“RICHMOND, Va. – NEALIE PITTS was shopping for a house for her son three years ago when she spotted a for-sale sign in front of a modest brick bungalow here. When she stopped to ask the owner about it, at first she thought she misheard his answer.

“This house is going to be sold to whites only,” said the owner, Rufus Matthews, according to court papers filed by Ms. Pitts, who is African-American. “It’s not for colored.”

Mr. Matthews later testified before the Virginia Fair Housing Board that he believed a clause in his deed prohibited him from selling to a black buyer. A 1944 deed on his property restricts owners from selling to “any person not of the Caucasian race.”

Such clauses have been unenforceable for nearly 60 years. But historians who track such things say that thousands of racist deed restrictions, as well as restrictive covenants governing homeowner associations, survive in communities across the country.”

Other articles:

Why Is America’s Housing so Segregated?

Interview with Richard Rothstein, author of The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America

“How New York City became the capital of the Jim Crow North” by Brian Purnell and Jeanne Theoharis

“Ninety years ago, Donald Trump’s father was arrested at a Klan parade — in Queens. Fifty-five years ago, more than 10,000 white mothers marched over the Brooklyn Bridge to protest a very modest school desegregation program. Fifty years ago, 16,000 people packed into Madison Square Garden to cheer George Wallace’s candidacy for president. And a mere three years ago, New York City settled a federal lawsuit that had branded the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk practices unconstitutional and a form of racial profiling.”