(Image Credit: Now and Then)
​“Black people...were largely cut out of the legitimate home-mortgage market.”​​
​-Ta-Nehisi Coates, national correspondent for The Atlantic
          In 1925, neighborhood organizations began to pressure property owners into writing racially restrictive covenants into their deeds. These deed restrictions were legal agreements that were difficult to repeal and only allowed houses to be sold to white Americans. According to Richard Rothstein, restrictive covenants were created to replace previously integrated neighborhoods with white-only suburbs and prevent black Americans from purchasing houses in white communities. Since deeds remain with property for generations, racially restrictive covenants stayed with the houses they were originally enforced on and were imposed on future buyers. Generations of black Americans were prevented from buying these homes.
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(Image Credit: Haas Institute)
“It’s less than a slap on the wrist...it takes me to the back of the bus. Again, I’m looking at the white and colored water fountains.”
​-Nealie Pitts, a black American who was rejected from purchasing a home by a 1944 restrictive covenant that still exists in 2002
By using deed restrictions to segregate neighborhoods, ​"a favorable condition
​is apt to exist."
​-The 1936 FHA Underwriting Manual
“The restrictive covenant became so fashionable that in 1937 a leading magazine of nationwide circulation awarded 10 communities a 'shield of honor' for an umbrella of restrictions against 'the wrong kind of people.’”
-United States Commission on Civil Rights
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(Image Credit: Encyclopedia of Chicago)
          Racially restrictive deeds appeared on signs in front of property and in catalogs of homes for sale. Although discriminatory covenants are illegal to enforce, “this house is going to be sold to whites only... not [to] colored” and “Ownership by Negroes Prohibited” are common phrases you can still find in deeds today.      
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(Image Credit: Windsor Hill Parkway Association)
“The Federal Housing Administration’s [1939] Underwriting Manual recommended the use of restrictive covenants as they ‘provide the surest protection against undesirable encroachment and inharmonious use.’”
-The Fair Housing Center of Greater Boston, an organization with the aim to eliminate housing discrimination