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

be addressed to African Americans, suggested that a vote for Frankensteen
would bring black families to white communities. It read:
NEGROES CAN LIVE ANYWHERE WITH FRANKENSTEEN
MAYOR.
NEGROES – DO YOUR DUTY NOV. 6.
By the late 1940s, as white families increasingly found shelter in the
private market, more African American than white families remained
dependent on public housing. Projects built for whites ran the danger of
having vacant units that only African Americans would want to fill. In 1948
and 1949, the Detroit City Council held hearings on twelve proposed
projects, seven of which were to be situated in outlying (predominantly
white) areas. If approved, they would have set Detroit on a hard-to-reverse
trajectory of residential integration. But Jeffries’s successor, Albert Cobo,
who had also campaigned against “Negro invasions” in public housing,
vetoed eight of the twelve, including all seven in the white neighborhoods.
Only projects in predominantly African American areas were approved,
further solidifying the city’s segregation.
In northern California, Richmond was not the only community in which
the government created segregation. The San Francisco Housing Authority,
in 1942, constructed a massive development to house 14,000 workers and
their families at the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard and began to assign
apartments on a nondiscriminatory first-come, first-served basis. The navy
objected, insisting that integration would cause racial conflict among
workers and interfere with ship repair. Local officials bowed to the navy’s
demand and moved African American tenants to separate sections.
Because discrimination by landlords left African American migrant war
workers facing a greater housing shortage than whites, the authority’s policy
resulted in many vacant units in the white sections while black war workers’
housing needs went unmet. The San Francisco Housing Authority attempted
to recruit white tenants by placing advertisements in light-rail commuter
cars, despite the long waiting lists of African Americans for apartments. This