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

one of the few times before Shelley in which a state court held covenants to
be unconstitutional. In a widely publicized ruling, the judge said that there
was “no more reprehensible un-American activity than to attempt to deprive
persons of their own homes on a ‘master race’ theory.” Yet the IRS took no
notice; Reverend Wright’s activities didn’t threaten his church’s tax subsidy.
The violent resistance to the Sojourner Truth public housing project for
African American families in Detroit was organized by a homeowners
association headquartered in St. Louis the King Catholic Church whose
pastor, the Reverend Constantine Dzink, represented the association in
appeals to the United States Housing Authority to cancel the project. The
“construction of a low-cost housing project in the vicinity . . . for the colored
people . . . would mean utter ruin for many people who have mortgaged their
homes to the FHA, and not only that, but it would jeopardize the safety of
many of our white girls,” Reverend Dzink wrote, adding this warning: “It is
the sentiment of all people residing within the vicinity to object against this
project in order to stop race riots in the future.”
On Chicago’s South Side, signatures on a 1928 restrictive covenant were
obtained in door-to-door solicitations by the priest of St. Anselm Catholic
Church, the rabbi of Congregation Beth Jacob, and the executive director of
the area’s property owners association. Trinity Congregational Church was
also party to the agreement. In 1946, the Congregational Church of Park
Manor sponsored a local improvement association’s efforts to cancel an
African American physician’s home purchase in the previously all-white
neighborhood.
On Chicago’s Near North Side, a restrictive covenant was executed in
1937 by tax-exempt religious institutions, including the Moody Bible
Institute, the Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and the Board of
Foreign Missions of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Other nonprofit
organizations also participated, including the Newberry Library and the
Academy of Fine Arts.
Tax-exempt colleges and universities, some religious-affiliated and some
not, also were active in promoting segregation. In Whittier, a Los Angeles
suburb, the Quaker-affiliated Whittier College participated in a restrictive
covenant covering its neighborhood.
The University of Chicago organized and guided property owners’
associations that were devoted to preventing black families from moving