Resources
To learn more, click the links below to explore additional resources including primary sources, government documents, online archives, and art exhibitions to further your knowledge about the history of housing discrimination.
- 60 Years of Urban Change
The Institute for Quality Communities compared aerial views of American cities to identify their physical changes over the last sixty years.
- A 'Forgotten History' Of How The U.S. Government Segregated America
A May 2017 Fresh Air interview with Terry Gross and Richard Rothstein on his book The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America.
- A Look At Housing Inequality And Racism In The U.S.
A June 2020 Forbes article exploring how social injustice and racial inequalities being protested in the wake of George Floyd's murder were rooted in the nation's housing market.
- Building Suburban Power: The Business of Exclusionary Housing Markets, 1890-1960
Dr. Paige Glotzer explores the international funding for the Roland Park development in Baltimore, MD and its implications for how we understand American suburbanization.
- Chicago Covenants Project
A public research project under the direction of Virginia Tech's Dr. LaDale C. Winling to find restrictive covenants in Chicago to show the systematic nature of this discrimination.
- Confronting Racial Covenants: How They Segregated Monroe County and What to Do About Them
Report by City Roots Community Land Trust and the Yale Environmental Protection Clinic about racial covenants in Monroe County, NY.
- Crash Course Black American History - The Great Migration
A brief history of the Great Migration and its impacts on American life.
- Discriminatory Housing Practices Are Leading to The Devaluation of Black Americans
A 2020 Brookings Institute study of how Black homes and neighborhoods are devalued, resulting in an estimated $156 billion in lost assets.
- Fair Housing Initiatives Program- HUD
Fair Housing Initiatives Program (FHIP) works with people who believe they have been subject to housing discrimination and conducts preliminary investigations including sending testers to the property.
- Folded Map Project
A Chicago-based photographic project by social justice artist Tonika Lewis Johnson connecting residents who live at corresponding addresses on the North and South sides of Chicago.
- Great Michigan Read: The Sweet Trials and Detroit in the 1920s
A short documentary produced by Michigan Humanities about Detroit and the Sweet trials.
- History Channel, “Sound Smart: Plessy v. Ferguson”
Historian Dr. Yohuru Williams explains Plessy v. Ferguson and its impact.
- Mapping Inequality: Redlining in New Deal America
An interactive archive of Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) maps to understand how New Deal policies set the course for American homeownership since the 1930s.
- Mapping Prejudice
A team of geographers, historians, digital humanists, and community activists working to uncover restrictive covenants and map their location to reveal how they shaped the physical environment.
- National Association of Realtors Fair Housing Anniversary
Resources from the National Association of Realtors on Fair Housing.
- On The Line: How Schooling, Housing, and Civil Rights Shaped Hartford and its Suburbs
An open-access book that details how schooling and housing boundaries shaped Hartford, CT led by Dr. Jack Dougherty of Trinity College.
- On This Day: A History of Racial Injustice - May 4, 1921
Equal Justice Initiative's On This Day series: A History of Racial Injustice on Chicago Real Estate Board (CREB)'s 1921 decision to expel members who sell to Black Families in White neighborhoods.
- Origins of Everything - "Why Do We Have Housing Projects?"
A history of the relationship between government policy and housing in the debate over public housing.
- PBS NewsHour - "Black Families Were Pushed Out of Portland. Can This Program Help Them Return?"
A June 2018 PBS NewsHour story on Portland's Right to Return program.
- PBS NewsHour - "Struggle for Black and Latino Mortgage Applicants Suggests Modern-Day Redlining"
A Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting segment explores why the gap between White and Black homeownership was larger in 2018 than 1960.
- Race, Racism, and Baltimore’s Future: A Focus on Structural and Institutional Racism. Appendix: Residential Segregation in Baltimore City
Summary Report, Fifth Annual Symposium on the Social Determinants of Health from the Johns Hopkins Urban Health Institute in 2016.
- Racial and Religious Covenants in the US and Canada
Dr. Wendy Plotkin's research, writing, and primary sources associated with racially and religiously restrictive covenants in the United States and Canada.
- Racial Restriction and Housing Discrimination in the Chicagoland Area
Dr. Desmond Odugu’s exploration of the use of restrictive covenants across the Chicago Metropolitan Area by Digital Chicago out of Lake Forest College.
- Racially Restrictive Covenants
A map displaying how racially restrictive covenants appeared in St. Louis, MO produced by Metropolitan St. Louis Equal Housing and Opportunity Council.
- Reckoning: Racism & Resistance in Glendale
An exploration of Glendale, CA's past of racial exclusion and anti-Blackness along with resistance to those forces produced utilizing the Glendale Central Library's archives.
- Roots, Race, and Place
A history of exclusion and dispossession based on race and the logic of capitalism in the San Francisco Bay Area produced by the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society (HIFIS) at University of California, Berkeley.
- Segregated Seattle: Racial Restrictive Covenants
The Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project at University of Washington’s study on the use of restrictive covenants neighborhood by neighborhood across King County.
- SmartHistory - "Jacob Lawrence, the Migration Series"
A discussion about Jacob Lawrence's 60 panel work of tempera paintings and text, The Migration Series, 1940-41.
- Talking About Race
An online exhibit from the National Museum of African American History and Culture on productive ways to think and talk about race.
- The Negro Motorist Green Book and Route 66
Candacy Taylor discusses the experiences of Black motorists on Route 66 and the Negro Motorist Green Book.
- The New York Public Library Digital Collections: The Green Book
The New York Public Library has digital versions of Victor Green's travel guides to explore.
- Zoning Matters: How Land-Use Policies Shape Our Lives
A brief explanation for how zoning divided people and places produced by the Urban Institute.