Language that once prohibited property ownership based on race remains in hundreds -- if not thousands -- of homeowner covenants, even though such restrictions have been illegal since 1968, because of the difficult process to remove it, historians and other experts say.
Many homeowners don't even know that the language against selling property to African Americans and people of Jewish, Hispanic or Asian descent is in their covenants, says James Gregory, a history professor at the University of Washington in Seattle.
Gregory, who is the director of the university's Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project, says the project has identified racially discriminatory language in more than 400 properties alone in Seattle and its suburbs.
"These restrictions just sit there quietly ... kind of casting a shadow of segregation in neighborhoods to this day," Gregory says.
The Supreme Court ruled in 1948 that racially restrictive covenants were unenforceable, but it wasn't until the passage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968 that they became illegal, says Wendy Plotkin, a former history professor at Arizona State University who is writing a book about the history of the covenants in Chicago.
Some states, including California, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Ohio and Washington, have passed legislation making it easier to remove racially restrictive language from property records, says Carol Rose, a law professor at the University of Arizona.
Source: USA Today | Greg Latshaw
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