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

insulate any racially discriminatory action from legal challenge. The Bill of
Rights and Civil War amendments are designed to restrict popular majorities
in just this way.
IV
AT THE time, condemning a proposed African American residence for park
purposes was a useful device for whites-only communities because, as a
Missouri appeals court ruled, also in 1959, the judicial system could not
inquire as to the motives for a condemnation, provided the purpose of the
condemnation was public, which a park surely was. In the Missouri case, an
African American couple had attempted to build a home in the white St.
Louis suburb of Creve Coeur. Again, permits had been approved and work
had begun when the town discovered that the purchasers were African
American. A hastily organized citizens committee then raised contributions
to purchase the property. White property owner groups frequently attempted
this ploy when faced with integration: in Lorraine Hansberry’s 1959 play, A
Raisin in the Sun, an owners’ group in a white Chicago community attempts
a similar buyout of African American neighbors. As in the Hansberry drama,
the Creve Coeur couple refused the offer. The city then condemned the
property for recreational use.
Condemnations of property and manipulations of zoning designations to
prevent African Americans from building occurred almost routinely in the
1950s and 1960s. But one case caught national attention. In 1969, a
Methodist church-sponsored nonprofit organization proposed to construct a
federally subsidized, racially integrated complex for moderate- and lowincome
families in Black Jack, an all-white suburb in unincorporated St.
Louis County. In response, voters in Black Jack incorporated their
community and adopted a zoning ordinance that prohibited future
development of more than three homes per acre. This made development of
new moderate-income housing impossible, although such modest units
already existed within the new city boundaries. Several African Americans
in St. Louis City sued. They claimed they had been unable to find decent