In Minneapolis, the first racially-restrictive deed appeared in 1910, when Henry and Leonora Scott sold a property on 35th Avenue South to Nels Anderson. The deed conveyed in that transaction contained what would become a common restriction, stipulating that the "premises shall not at any time be conveyed, mortgaged or leased to any person or persons of Chinese, Japanese, Moorish, Turkish, Negro, Mongolian or African blood or descent."
Examples of racial covenants used in Hennepin County.
Henry Scott would soon become the first president of the Seven Oaks Corporation, a real estate development company that put this same language into thousands of deeds across the city.
When this first racially-restrictive deed was written, Minneapolis was not particularly segregated. But covenants changed the landscape of the city. As racially-restrictive deeds spread, African Americans were pushed into a few small areas of the city
And even as the number of black residents continued to climb, ever-larger swaths of the city became entirely white. This laid the groundwork for our contemporary patterns of residential segregation.These unjust deeds," as one scholar has dubbed them, were the brainchild of the real estate industry
But they were quickly embraced by public officials, who saw them as a way to promote neighborhood stability. In the 1930s, federal housing administrators endorsed these legal instruments, requiring them for projects that used federally-backed financing. Lenders followed suit, accepting the rationale that covenants provided essential insurance for their investments in residential property. Banks made it a routine practice to "redline" or deny loans for properties in racially-mixed neighborhoods.
How Covenants Changed Minneapolis
These maps illuminate how the racial landscape of Minneapolis shifted in the wake of covenants. They use raw census data compiled by the Minnesota Population Center to explore how racially-restrictive deeds came to determine where people lived. As covenants multiplied, African Americans were concentrated into a handful of small neighborhoods.
And even as the number of black residents continued to climb, ever-larger swaths of the city became entirely white. Nascent black communities in Northeast Minneapolis and around Lake Harriet were completely eradicated by 1940. Black residents were pushed out of all of the neighborhoods on the east side of the Mississippi River.
The NAACP recognized covenants as a fundamental threat to racial equality. The legendary civil rights organization launched a sustained legal campaign against covenants in the 1940s, prompting the Supreme Court to rule in the landmark 1948 Shelley v. Kramer case that covenants were unenforceable.
A The Minnesota Legislature prohibited the use of racial restrictions in warranty deeds in 1953. But covenants remained commonplace in much of the nation until 1968, when the Fair Housing Act made them explicitly illegal.Once they were outlawed, most white Americans were happy to forget about covenants and the troubling questions they raise about race and opportunity in the United States. But the memories of these discriminatory deeds remained vivid in the communities hurt by these practices. Here in Minneapolis, Jewish elders believed covenants contributed to a hostile environment in the city, which journalist Carey McWilliams declared in 1946 to be the capital of anti-Semitism in the United States."