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residential segregation

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Map illustrating legal erasure of roads in Fort Reno Park in 1943, following the clearance of a neighborhood.
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Segregation by Eminent Domain

The Fifth Amendment allows the government to buy private property for the public good. "Public good" being the expansion of white neighborhoods.
by Matthew Wills, Mara Cherkasky, Athena V. Scott via JSTOR Daily on June 2, 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
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
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference on March 3 in Fort Washington, Md.
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The Surprising Roots of Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Idea of National Divorce

Greene probably has visions of suburban Atlanta in the 1990s and 2000s, not the Civil War.
by Michan Connor via Made by History on March 14, 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
Mexican American men standing near a mural and a low rider car in Chicago in 1987.

The Past and Future of Mexican Chicago

From the machine politicians in La Villita to the radicals in Pilsen, Mexican Chicagoans have played a central role in defining their city. 
by Juan Ignacio Mora via The Nation on January 10, 2023
Collage of people and water.

America’s Blueprint For Urban Inequity Was Drawn in Philly. Where Do We Go From Here?

From a bus line named Jim Crow to racial violence at public parks, racism shaped Philadelphia. Can we imagine a more equitable city?
by Layla A. Jones, Dain Saint via Philadelphia Inquirer on December 6, 2022
Brooklyn Bridge with the city skyline in the background.

When Panama Came to Brooklyn

“For those Afro-Caribbean Panamanian who had lived through Panama’s Canal Zone apartheid, Brooklyn segregation probably came as no surprise.”
by Kaysha Corinealdi via Public Books on November 30, 2022
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
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
Lucille Walker, a domestic servant, holding a child on a suburban lawn.

Living in White Spaces: Suburbia's Hidden Histories

The Black women and men who worked and slept in white homes are mostly invisible in the histories of suburbia.
by David S. Rotenstein via The Metropole on October 10, 2022
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Redlining is Only Part of the Story

An annotated collection of resources from the Bunk archive that help explain the long history of housing discrimination.
by Julian Maxwell Hayter on October 5, 2022
Black and white photo of Ishmael Reed as a child in Willert Park Courts, 1943.

The Buffalo I Knew

The city is at a crossroads. Which path will it take?
by Ishmael Reed via New York Review of Books on July 9, 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
People walking towards the vigil for mass shooting victims.

Hiding Buffalo’s History of Racism Behind a Cloak of Unity

Officials have described the recent shooting as an aberration in the “City of Good Neighbors.” But this conceals the city’s long-standing racial divisions.
by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor via The New Yorker on June 9, 2022
A 1948 color-coded map of Robeson County identifying racially segregated schools.

Financing Schools

On school funding and America’s kleptocratic public school divide.
by Esther Cyna via Phenomenal World on May 12, 2022
Albert Turner and Bob Mants are walking directly behind Williams and Lewis across Edmund Pettus Bridge
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Biden’s Push for an Infrastructure Presidency Risks Sacrificing Black Communities

Infrastructure has a long history of cloaking racism and preventing justice.
by N. D. B. Connolly via Made by History on March 15, 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
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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.

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