A Legal History of Racially Restrictive Covenants

For many years, racial housing discrimination was a matter of public record. Under the “separate but equal” framework of Plessy v. Fergusson,[1] towns and cities across the country enacted racist public zoning laws that excluded non-white persons from the “nice” parts of town. This public racism was both legal and widespread. In fact, some of the country’s earliest zoning laws […]