A Brief History of Segregation in Housing Laws

It’s not just red lining

Housing in the United States is more segregated now than it was in 1999, in spite of the end of explicit racial segregation in housing codes. The technical explanations for this are many, but a large part of it is racist zoning practices by cities. Many of us are at least aware of the more open forms of racial segregation in housing that were once common across America. In order to better understand how this situation may be playing out in Denton, I spent a week reading old city codes, reading over vintage newspaper articles, and examining old City Council Minutes. This article is backstory for that article, which you can read here (short version or long version).

This article will serve as a quick rundown of some of the most common ways that housing segregation was written into law prior to the 1968 Fair Housing Act. To begin:

• In 1910, Baltimore was the first city in America to enact racial zoning — a type of zoning wherein cities explicitly banned Black people from living in White neighborhoods, and White people from living in Black neighborhoods. Many other cities soon followed suit.
• In 1917, the Supreme Court banned the city of Louisville, KY, from continuing its racial zoning. Many cities ignored the verdict. In 1922, Atlanta, GA enacted racial zoning. Upon challenge in court, it argued that because it had enacted racial zoning in a slightly different way, it was fine. The court struck this down, as well as other variants done by New Orleans, LA, and Richmond, VA. Some cities, like Birmingham, AL, and West Palm Beach, FL continued to uphold racial zoning until the 50s or 60s. Cities like Austin, Atlanta, Kansas City, and Norfolk removed racial zoning from their official language, but kept off-record maps of Black and White neighborhoods that they used to guide zoning until as late as 1987. Zoning codes were explicitly promoted by the federal government as a tool for racial segregation — in 1918 the director of the Federal Town Planning Division told a conference of city planners — “if you try to force the comingling of people who are not yet ready to comingle” [the development cannot succeed]. (all facts for this paragraph were pulled from The Color of Law)
• In 1934, the Federal Housing Authority (FHA) began the practice of redlining — creating maps of how “good” an investment target neighborhoods were for federally backed mortgages. Black neighborhoods were bordered with red lines, indicating them “unsuitable for investment,” which prevented Black neighborhoods from accessing the wealth of subsidies the federal government supplied to white homeowners.

An example of a Red-lined map, from Dallas

• Alongside this, “private” segregation sprang up in the form of racial covenants — restrictions on property deeds that prohibited the sale of the property to Black people (in some cases, to non-white people). These deeds were challenged in court, but typically upheld under the idea that the government shouldn’t interfere in private contracts (although it did enforce them).
• The federal government also racially segregated its housing projects, which at the time accounted for a much larger share of housing construction. Cities, states, and private entities also engaged in other ways of segregating housing, some of which have continued to exist, such as discrimination in lending areas for banks.

bottom view of i-345

• Cities used highways, parks, and other “infrastructure” as an excuse to tear down Black and Brown neighborhoods. In Dallas, Deep Ellum was partially demolished to make way for I-345, which then segregated the historically Black neighborhood from Downtown. In Denton, Quakertown Park (originally, “Civic Center Park”) was planned as a way to remove Denton’s Black neighborhood, Quaker from their place between TWU and old inter-urban rail (now the A-Train station).

In 1966, the federal government began to consider an act that would become known as the Fair Housing Act. The Fair Housing Act ultimately banned racial discrimination through federal state, city, or private means. Lenders couldn’t lend or the basis of race. Landlords couldn’t rent on the basis of race. Cities couldn’t zone on the basis of race. Although private discrimination is hard to prove, it became more difficult for institutional actors to openly discriminate (Though they still continued to, e.g. Miami issued vouchers to White Section 8 beneficiaries, allowing them to move to the suburbs, while Black Section 8 beneficiaries were only granted access to the neglected urban housing projects (The Color of Law)).

In response to the banning of blatant racial segregation, institutions sought new ways to discriminate on the basis of race, without explicitly discriminating on the basis of race. Lee Atwater, a Republican Strategist and Advisor to Reagan and H.W. Bush expressed a similar idea in a 1981 interview:

You start out in 1954 by saying, “[n-word], [n-word], [n-word].” By 1968 you can’t say “[n-word]” — that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “[n-word], [n-word].” (redactions mine)

In 1960, Denton embarked on a project to make its segregationist housing policy “a hell of a lot more abstract” to the point that many are not aware that a — reasonably well discussed — portion of our city code was created explicitly to further segregation. You can read that story here — short version, long version.