Saving the neighborhood : racially restrictive covenants, law, and social norms / Richard R.W. Brooks, Carol M. Rose.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Brooks, Richard Rexford Wayne.

Contributor:

Rose, Carol M., 1940-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Real covenants--United States.

Real covenants.

Discrimination in housing--Law and legislation--United States.

Discrimination in housing.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (304 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 2013.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Saving the Neighborhood tells the charged, still controversial story of the rise and fall of racially restrictive covenants in America, and offers rare insight into the ways legal and social norms reinforce one another, acting with pernicious efficacy to codify and perpetuate intolerance. The early 1900's saw an unprecedented migration of African Americans leaving the rural South in search of better work and equal citizenship. In reaction, many white communities instituted property agreements-covenants-designed to limit ownership and residency according to race. Restrictive covenants quickly became a powerful legal guarantor of segregation, their authority facing serious challenge only in 1948, when the Supreme Court declared them legally unenforceable in Shelley v. Kraemer. Although the ruling was a shock to courts that had upheld covenants for decades, it failed to end their influence. In this incisive study, Richard Brooks and Carol Rose unpack why. At root, covenants were social signals. Their greatest use lay in reassuring the white residents that they shared the same goal, while sending a warning to would-be minority entrants: keep out. The authors uncover how loosely knit urban and suburban communities, fearing ethnic mixing or even "tipping," were fair game to a new class of entrepreneurs who catered to their fears while exacerbating the message encoded in covenants: that black residents threatened white property values. Legal racial covenants expressed and bestowed an aura of legitimacy upon the wish of many white neighborhoods to exclude minorities. Sadly for American race relations, their legacy still lingers.

Contents:

Introduction

Before covenants

The big guns silenced

Pushing down the ghosts

The calculus of covenants

The emergence of the norm breakers

The great dilemma for legal norms

After Shelley

Game changes in the twilight of covenants

Conclusion.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780674073715

0674073711

9780674073685

0674073681

OCLC:

836206008