Week 5 Post 2

 Week 5 Post 2- Formal summary

Racial covenants were used in neighborhoods to be able to segregate through private agreement instead of through the law. In 1948, a supreme court decision that forbade government enforcement of racial clauses in deeds for housing. The chapter several times also made sure to highlight the fact that racial clauses usually excluded African American workers and servants living with white families. To get around lack of government racial regulation, communities began creating racial covenants that were signed by buyers of homes stating they would not sell or rent their home to an African American. Another strategy was to create a neighborhood association that every homeowner was required to join. The neighborhood could not prevent African Americans from buying homes, but because they could prevent them from the association, they had no way to live in the neighborhood. Private covenants and associations were held up by the Supreme Court of the United States, because they stated government could not interfere in private agreements. A strategy used in Culver City included air raid wardens who went door-to-door during World War II to instruct people to keep all of their blinds closed and lights off at night due to fear of Japanese attack. These wardens started going around with documents for homeowners to sign promising that they would not sell their home to a non-Caucasian person. During this time the FHA continued to refuse finances to integrated neighborhoods, and although the supreme court ruled their practice unconstitutional, it took them over two years to actually implement these policies, giving their agents time to enforce these policies wherever possible. The court decision Shelly v. Kraemer, which made the FHA racial policies illegal, was only voted on by six judges, since three of the judges had conflict of interest since they lived in segregated communities.

    The FHA is clearly a very defining factor in multiple sectors of residential racism throughout the twentieth century. Not only were they building entire developments and financing people's mortgages on a race-based system, but they were implementing these racial covenants into their neighborhoods to prevent even a chance of a black family ever moving there. The FHA actively resisted the federal government everytime they made a decision that could lead to any type of integration. They ignored the rulings of Brown v. Board of Education and stalled their implementation of Shelly v. Kraemer to give their agents time to enforce neighborhood associations and racial covenants. This agency was a vessel for racist public policy from it's fouding to the end of the twentieth century.

Comments

  1. Ms. DunleyMay 11, 2023 at 11:53 AM

    How were these racial covenants stated? Were any ever challenged in court?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sofia ReamMay 15, 2023 at 11:05 AM

      racial covenants often used discreet language, and some phrases became commonly understood to mean 'not integrated'. Things would be said like 'upholding the character' or 'keeping the neighborhood from deteriorating'. Often these covenants stated that trying to integrate would cause violence between races, and black and white people fighting if they were forced together was inevitable.

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