The Color of Law A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein (z-lib.org).epub

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After the Supreme Court prohibited enforcement of restrictive covenants, the FHAcontinued to subsidize projects that penalized sellers of homes to African Americans. InWestlake, Daly City, California, the total fine, $16,000, was greater than the typicalhome sale price.Although the 1948 Shelley ruling forbade courts from ordering evictions,parties to restrictive covenants continued for another five years to bring suits
for damages against fellow signatories who violated their pacts, and twostate supreme courts upheld the propriety of such damage awards. One wasthe Supreme Court of Missouri, the state where the Shelley case originated.The court took the position that neighbors of a homeowner who violated arestrictive covenant could sue the seller for damages, even though they couldno longer obtain a court order evicting the purchaser. The other was theOklahoma Supreme Court, which went a step further, finding that Shelleydid not preclude neighbors from suing both seller and purchaser forengaging in a conspiracy to diminish a community’s property values. In thisOklahoma suit, the complaining white owners alleged that “it is well knowngenerally . . . that the purchase, rental, or leasing of real property by [AfricanAmericans] will always cause the remainder of the property in the sameblock to decrease in value at least from fifty to seventy-five percent.”In some cases, the FHA continued to insure developments with raciallyexplicit covenants that provided for violators to pay exorbitant damagesrather than cancel sales and evict African American residents. In the case ofthe subdivision in Westlake, the first homes were sold in 1949 for about$10,000. By 1955 the typical price was about $15,000. The covenantprovided for damages of $2,000 to each of the eight closest neighbors, aprohibitive amount that exceeded the value of the property itself.In 1953, the Supreme Court ended this circumvention of Shelley. It ruledthat the Fourteenth Amendment precluded state courts not only fromevicting African Americans from homes purchased in defiance of arestrictive covenant but also from adjudicating suits to recover damagesfrom property owners who made such sales. Still, the Court refused todeclare that such private contracts were unlawful or even that county clerksshould be prohibited from accepting deeds that included them.It took another nineteen years before a federal appeals court ruled that thecovenants themselves violated the Fair Housing Act and that recording deedswith such clauses would constitute state action in violation of the FourteenthAmendment. As the court observed, such provisions, even if they lackedpower, still would make black purchasers reluctant to buy into whiteneighborhoods if the recorded deeds gave implicit recognition of the racialprohibition and gave an official imprimatur to the message that thepurchasers should not live where they were not wanted. Since the 1950s,new restrictive covenants have rarely been recorded, but in most states old
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THE COLOROF LAWA FORGOTTEN HISTORY
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CONTENTSPreface1. If San Francisco,
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PREFACEWHEN, FROM 2014 TO 2016, rio
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of slavery. Actions that made Afric
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view that an action is not unconsti
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Most disturbing about Justice Stewa
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segregation doesn’t fall into thi
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factors were also involved, we “n
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1IF SAN FRANCISCO, THENEVERYWHERE?
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to walk. In rural Louisiana in the
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when Richmond’s black population
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workers at different workstations w
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reserved for military use, the gove
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and other leading California banks
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2PUBLIC HOUSING, BLACKGHETTOS
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ITHE FEDERAL government first devel
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took office. The PWA’s goal was t
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Despite the neighborhood’s biraci
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played a particularly important rol
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be addressed to African Americans,
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dormitories for single men, and the
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Liberals, led by Minnesota Senator
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did not apply to housing. In 1955,
Page 49 and 50: cease building public housing altog
Page 51 and 52: * In New York City an unusually lar
Page 53 and 54: St. Louis, 1916. Leaflet urging vot
Page 55 and 56: the state’s public universities,
Page 57 and 58: basement toilets were constructed f
Page 59 and 60: twentieth-century segregation. The
Page 61 and 62: American areas in official planning
Page 63 and 64: draw African American families to s
Page 65 and 66: introducing into a neighborhood . .
Page 67 and 68: metropolitan areas today, and what
Page 69 and 70: In 1991, the Environmental Protecti
Page 71 and 72: Detroit, 1941. The Federal Housing
Page 73 and 74: Here, too, Secretary of Commerce He
Page 75 and 76: which modern homes can be built.”
Page 77 and 78: whites-only requirement, racial seg
Page 79 and 80: then blacklisted Mr. Cohn, advising
Page 81 and 82: couldn’t buy into the development
Page 83 and 84: were willing to give these concessi
Page 85 and 86: 1946 on Houston’s northwest side.
Page 87 and 88: listeners that such segregated proj
Page 89 and 90: Daly City, California, 1949. FHA di
Page 91 and 92: So increasingly in the twentieth ce
Page 93 and 94: obtained a legal opinion that each
Page 95 and 96: nearby the neighborhood but also lo
Page 97 and 98: and as such violated the Fourteenth
Page 99: the [two-and-half-month delay].”
Page 103 and 104: 6WHITE FLIGHT
Page 105 and 106: neighborhood, would cause the value
Page 107 and 108: knocking on doors to see if homes w
Page 109 and 110: African Americans in Chicago had be
Page 111 and 112: 7IRS SUPPORT AND COMPLIANTREGULATOR
Page 113 and 114: ITHE IRS has always had an obligati
Page 115 and 116: one of the few times before Shelley
Page 117 and 118: whether to allow it to proceed. It
Page 119 and 120: require the nondiscriminatory appro
Page 121 and 122: subprime loans, and higher-income A
Page 123 and 124: In 2008 the City of Cleveland sued
Page 125 and 126: Miami, 1966. Mayor Chuck Hall sends
Page 127 and 128: recreational opportunities, a well-
Page 129 and 130: advise its black members in Richmon
Page 131 and 132: formed carpools to share the hundre
Page 133 and 134: wife forged ahead, scaling back the
Page 135 and 136: homes outside the ghetto and theref
Page 137 and 138: overcome the constitutional prohibi
Page 140 and 141: After Miami-Dade mayor Chuck Hall s
Page 142 and 143: construction on the Eastside of a n
Page 144 and 145: blocks were interspersed in central
Page 146 and 147: a frequent twentieth century slogan
Page 148 and 149: Levittown, Pennsylvania, 1954. A cr
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happened that in 1957 an African Am
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status than the white neighbors who
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Cicero’s council president boaste
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Nor can the failure to control mob
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A policeman inspects damage after t
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10SUPPRESSED INCOMESSausalito, Cali
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then these economic policies are al
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to permit African Americans to take
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membership or that segregated them
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African Americans could not promote
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First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt suppor
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Joseph James, leader of African Ame
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and agreed to include them on an in
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more than 300 families, mostly Afri
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impossible to know with certainty w
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described how, when his family live
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example, the minimum lot size for h
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11LOOKING FORWARD, LOOKINGBACK
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President Kennedy’s 1962 executiv
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• We waited too long to try to un
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who helped build Levittown but was
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good to succeed and exhibit more th
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above it. Notwithstanding the gover
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Along with the mortgage interest de
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rented in neighborhoods where the p
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___________* Whether African Americ
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Plano, Texas, 2016. Attorney Elizab
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achievement more difficult. Conside
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obligations. Short of that, we can
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information to do so. Giving suburb
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Of course, no presently constituted
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rule, then any suburb whose African
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housing or low- and moderate-income
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The housing subsidy that the federa
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six of the district’s elementary
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educated household as a result of T
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A New Deal housing agency drew maps
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have been fewer racially exclusive
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APPENDIXFREQUENTLY ASKEDQUESTIONS
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specialists. These discussions have
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this day, so it is up to our genera
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The idea that African Americans the
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duped. Integration cannot wait unti
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it considered school desegregation
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We should not overemphasize the ext
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added to higher incarceration and u
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many low-income Hispanic youth livi
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is rising. Higher rents and propert
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AUTHOR’S NOTE ANDACKNOWLEDGMENTSF
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Christopher Edley, then dean of the
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should be successful with a Court t
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Christian Ringdal, then a graduate
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If there was a question I didn’t
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Petersen, never once complained abo
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FRONTISPIECEWhen in his second inau
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Negro?” The agent answered, “No
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Americans, was constructed in a nei
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Alancraig 1953, 93-96; Broussard 19
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p. 35, 2 In 1987, more than a deca
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Americans as Reconstruction ended.
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understand how Roosevelt planned to
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Grumman during the war, then formed
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p. 80, 4 Pates 1948; Claremont Imp
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$2,000 paid to each of eight neighb
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group of neighborhoods that were in
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solely for charitable, religious, o
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studies (e.g., Squires, Hyra, and R
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African American workers when the p
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the personnel manager of a Fremont
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persuasive to an all-white jury, an
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p. 161, 2 Independent Metal Worker
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The floor leader for the Fair Housi
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wage immigrants, and because lower-
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Herbers 1969; Lilley 1970; Bonastia
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p. 212, 3 Kirp 1982, 142-44.APPEND
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“appreciated the difficulties of
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BIBLIOGRAPHYTHE AVAILABILITY OF sou
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crisis that we can, if we have the
Page 306 and 307:
Mayers v. Ridley. 1972. U.S. Court
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Barr, Michael S. 2009. “Community
Page 310 and 311:
Bonastia, Christopher. 2006. Knocki
Page 312 and 313:
Clark, Charles D. 1938. “Federal
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Drake, St. Clair, and Horace R. Cay
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Graves, Donna. 2004. Mapping Richmo
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———. 2000a. “Choosing Segre
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Kantrowitz, Stephen. 2000. Ben Till
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Little (Arthur D. Little, Inc.). 19
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Fargo, Case 2:09-cv-02857-STA-dkv,
Page 326 and 327:
Nixon, Richard. 1973. “Special Me
Page 328 and 329:
San Francisco Office of the America
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———. 2004. Class and Schools:
Page 332 and 333:
Sharkey, Patrick. 2013. Stuck in Pl
Page 334 and 335:
Thompson, David. 2014. “As a UCLA
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Waters, Mary C., and Marisa Gerstei
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Wood, Lewis. 1949. “Truman Puts B
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72 The Veterans Administration subs
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INDEXPage numbers listed correspond
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school placement decisions, 134-36A
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violence against movers, 146Bridgep
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CIO, see unions, Congress of Indust
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Country Club District (Kansas City)
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FBI, see Federal Bureau of Investig
Page 354 and 355:
Guilford (Baltimore County), 171Ham
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Ida B. Wells Homes (Chicago), 24, 2
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Kushner, James A., see “Apartheid
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Massachusetts, see Boston; Brooklin
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National Association of Real Estate
Page 364 and 365:
Ohio, see Cincinnati; Cleveland; To
Page 366 and 367:
during New Deal, frontispiece, ii,
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litigation regarding, 81-82, 85, 89
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see also specific citiesSan Jose (C
Page 372 and 373:
see also specific states and locali
Page 374 and 375:
UAW, see unions, United Auto Worker
Page 376 and 377:
mobility, see mobility, wealthWeave
Page 378:
Copyright © 2017 by Richard Rothst
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