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Postwar photograph of a white family holding hands, looking at a new suburban house for sale.
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Whites-Only Suburbs: How the New Deal Shut Out Black Homebuyers

Race-based federal lending rules from New Deal programs kept Black families out of suburban neighborhoods, a policy that continues to slow economic mobility.
via Retro Report on November 3, 2022
Plans for the Baldwin Terrace housing development (Plat Book 22, Page 35, St. Louis County Recorder of Deeds, Clayton, Missouri).

Who Segregated America?

Federal housing policies contributed to the segregation of American cities in the twentieth century. But it was private interests that led the way.
by Colin Gordon via Dissent on June 29, 2022
CORE members march down Fort Hamilton Parkway.

CORE’s Struggle for Fair Housing Rights in LA

A brief history of how the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) led organized protests against racially-discriminatory housing in Los Angeles.
by M. Keith Claybrook Jr. via Black Perspectives on March 1, 2022
A black and white photo of new suburban homes, 1963.

When Real Estate Agents Led the Fight Against Fair Housing

A new book argues that the real estate industry’s campaign to defend housing segregation still echoes in today’s politics.
by Gene Slater, Patrick Sisson via CityLab on September 28, 2021
Children play basketball in front of boarded-up houses in Baltimore.
Exhibit

Housing Injustice

This exhibit explores the complex legacies of redlining, urban renewal, and financial deregulation to explain the persistence – and costs – of residential segregation today.
Aerial photograph of the San Fernando Valley in 1953.

How Los Angeles Pioneered the Residential Segregation That Helped Divide America

After real estate agents invented racial covenants in the early 1900s, L.A. led the nation in using them. Their idea of 'freedom' shapes the U.S. today.
by Gene Slater via Los Angeles Times on September 10, 2021
Residential Security Map for Fresno, CA
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How Decades of Housing Discrimination Hurts Fresno in the Pandemic

Decades of discrimination in Fresno laid the groundwork for a housing crisis today.
via Retro Report on January 15, 2021

Racism After Redlining

In "Race for Profit," Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor walks us through the ways racist housing policy survived the abolition of redlining.
by N. D. B. Connolly via Black Perspectives on April 21, 2020

Contract Buying Robbed Black Families In Chicago Of Billions

A new study on the toll of contract buying in Chicago during the 1950s and 1960s: $3 billion to $4 billion in lost black wealth.
by Natalie Y. Moore via WBEZ on May 30, 2019

Housing Segregation In Everything

In 1968, the Fair Housing Act made it illegal to discriminate in housing. So why are neighborhoods still so segregated?
by Gene Demby, Maria Paz Gutierrez, Kara Frame via NPR on April 11, 2018

How to Build a Segregated City 

How can adjacent neighborhoods in the same city be so drastically unequal?
by Colette Shade via Splinter on January 19, 2018
Drawing of someone holding a photo of a Black family in front of a suburban home, and lighting the photo on fire.

America’s Shameful History of Housing Discrimination

The practice of “redlining” kept people of color from home loans for decades.
by Jamie Hibdon via The Nib on September 25, 2017

Rosa Parks’ Detroit Home And Hard Truths About The ‘Northern Promised Land That Wasn’t’

The civil rights activist and her family had to contend with racial discrimination beyond Montgomery.
by Jeanne Theoharis via The Root on September 7, 2017
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Fair Housing

Has the government done enough to stop housing discrimination?
via Retro Report on September 18, 2016
Map of Minneapolis showing density and locations of restrictive covenenants

Mapping Prejudice

Racial covenants and housing discrimination in 20th century Minneapolis.
via University of Minnesota on June 1, 2016
A young boy peers out from a hole in a fence as his friends play basketball in a court where police officers are gathering for a patrol.

How White-Collar Criminals Plundered a Brooklyn Neighborhood

How East New York was ransacked by the real estate industry and abandoned by the city in the process.
by Kristen Martin via The Nation on March 20, 2025
Aerial view of the suburbs.

How Racist Policies Destroyed Public Housing and Created the American Suburbs

The systematic post-war displacement of communities of color.
by Tracy Rosenthal, Leonardo Vilchis via Literary Hub on September 25, 2024
Herbert Hoover breaking ground on a model home in front of a crowd.
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Home Sweet Home

On the early years of the real estate industry, and the racist effort to convince white Americans to buy single-family homes.
by Adrienne Brown via HNN on June 20, 2024
Home of a Black family living in New Brighton, Pennsylvania, January 1940.

Taxed for Being Black

The long arc of racist plunder through local tax codes is shocking—or, well, maybe it’s not, really.
by Victor Ray via Democracy Journal on June 13, 2024
Collage of George Romney giving a speech, the Baileys, their house, and riot police.

In 1967, a Black Man and a White Woman Bought a Home. American Politics Would Never Be the Same.

What happened to the Bailey family in the Detroit suburb of Warren became a flashpoint in the national battle over integration.
by Zack Stanton via Politico Magazine on December 22, 2023
African American factory worker assembling an automobile engine.

How the UAW Broke Ford’s Stranglehold Over Black Detroit

The UAW's patient organizing cemented an alliance that would bear fruit for decades.
by Paul Prescod via Jacobin on October 23, 2023
Bylaw excerpt of racial restrictions in housing.
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A New Law Addresses the Harm Done by Decades of Racist Housing Practices

The Washington state law provides low-interest loans for down payments for those harmed by racially restrictive covenants.
by James N. Gregory via Made By History on May 10, 2023
Bars labeled First through Fourth depicting risk levels for housing loans.

The Shame of the Suburbs

How America gave up on housing equality.
by David Denison via The Baffler on May 9, 2023
A collage shows a white hand segregating Black Americans.

No Breakthrough in Sight

More than fifty years after the Fair Housing Act, inequality and segregation persists. What went wrong?
by Kaila Philo via The Baffler on May 9, 2023
Black college students at Morgan State University, 1955.

No, the GI Bill Did Not Make Racial Inequality Worse

Popular narratives say that black veterans got no real benefits from the GI Bill. In truth, the GI Bill provided a rare positive experience with government.
by Paul Prescod via Jacobin on April 1, 2023
South Front Street House, Philadelphia, PA (credit LOC).

Black Homeownership Before World War II

From the 1920s-1940s, North, West, and South Philadelphia saw its Black population increase by 50-80% as white flight occurred.
by Menika Dirkson via Black Perspectives on March 29, 2023
From left to right, Langston Hughes with Charles S. Johnson; E. Franklin Frazier; Rudolph Fisher and Hubert T. Delaney.

Why Harlem? Considering the Site of “Civil Rights by Copyright,” 100 Years Later

The confluence of Black modernity, self-determinism, and belongingness of Harlem's housing.
by Bo McMillan via Literary Hub on February 13, 2023
Traffic moves along the Interstate 76 in Philadelphia.
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We Mythologize Highways, But They’ve Damaged Communities of Color

Planners of the Interstate Highway System ignored warnings that they were damaging poor Black and Latino neighborhoods.
by Ryan Reft via Made By History on January 19, 2023
Welder-trainee Josie Lucille Owens plies her trade on the SS George Washington Carver at the Kaiser Shipyards in Richmond, CA, 1943.

Toxic Legacies of WWII: Pollution and Segregation

Wartime production led to environmental and social injustices, polluting land and bodies in ways that continue to shape public policy and race relations.
by Matthew Wills, Alistair W. Fortson via JSTOR Daily on November 27, 2022
Redlining map from the 1930s

The Tyranny Of The Map: Rethinking Redlining

In trying to understand one of the key aspects of structural racism, have we constructed a new moralistic story that obscures more than it illuminates?
by Robert Gioielli via The Metropole on November 3, 2022
Map of Moreno Valley.

The Blackest City

Not just in Riverside, but in all of the Inland Empire!
by Candice Mays via Mapping Black California on October 18, 2022
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