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Aerial view of the suburbs.

How Racist Policies Destroyed Public Housing and Created the American Suburbs

The systematic post-war displacement of communities of color.
Map of Southeast DC showing the Anacostia River

The Anacostia And Residential Displacement In Postwar Southeast DC

The long-polluted Anacostia bisects the District’s Potomac waterfront, segregating the majority-Black Southeast from the rest of the capital city.
Black family of a mother and six kids stting outside a cabin.

Segregation Doubled the Odds of Some Black Children Dying In U.S. Cities 100 Years Ago

Research shows structural racism in 1900s U.S. society harmed Black health in ways still being felt today.
A row of large new suburban houses at sunset.

The Ongoing Toll of Segregation

Sheryll Cashin’s “White Space, Black Hood” shows how economic discrimination combines with racial injustice in America’s housing policy.
Children play basketball in front of boarded-up houses in Baltimore.
Exhibit

Housing Injustice

This exhibit explores the complex legacies of redlining, urban renewal, and financial deregulation to explain the persistence – and costs – of residential segregation today.

Aerial photograph of the San Fernando Valley in 1953.

How Los Angeles Pioneered the Residential Segregation That Helped Divide America

After real estate agents invented racial covenants in the early 1900s, L.A. led the nation in using them. Their idea of 'freedom' shapes the U.S. today.
Margaret Watson, 93, touches a section of the Birwood Wall that runs behind her house

Built to Keep Black From White

Eighty years after a segregation wall rose in Detroit, America remains divided. That's not an accident.
East Detroit

Blight by Association: Why a White Working-Class Suburb Changed Its Name

The stretches one Detroit suburb made to justify a name change — the ‘burb’s supposedly colorblind arguments were anything but.
A race wall

A Nation of Walls

An artist-activist catalogues the physical remnants of 'segregation walls,' unassuming bits of racist infrastructure that hide in plain sight in neighborhoods.

Segregated by Design

The forgotten history of how our governments unconstitutionally segregated this country.

Fresno’s Mason-Dixon Line

More than 50 years after redlining was outlawed, the legacy of discrimination can still be seen in California’s poorest large city.

When Government Drew the Color Line

A review of "The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America."

Who Segregated America?

For all of its strengths, Richard Rothstein’s new book does not account for the central role capitalism played in segregating America's cities.

The Racial Segregation of American Cities Was Anything But Accidental

A housing policy expert explains how federal government policies created the suburbs and the inner city.

The Longest March

In August 1966, the Chicago Freedom Movement, Martin Luther King’s campaign to break the grip of segregation, reached its violent culmination.

Modern Segregation

Policies of de jure racial segregation and a history of state-sponsored violence continue to have an impact on African Americans.
Opening frame of documentary segment in question.
partner

Confronted: A Black Family Moves In

Northern whites reveal their deep-seated prejudice when a black family moves into their neighborhood.
Map depicting existing and proposed structures and modifications to the Hayti neighborhood in Durham, NC, 1960.

The Uneven Costs of Cross-Country Connectivity

Promoted as a social and economic savior, the US federal interstate highway system acted as a tool to promote racial injustices.
North Carolina Mutual executives.

Black Capitalism and the City

African American insurance and the actuarial double bind.
Cars on an interstate highway at sunset.

Interstate Lovesong

How popular and official narratives have obscured the damaging impact of the interstate highway system.
Opal Lee.

A Racist Mob Destroyed Her Home. She Was Given the Land 84 Years Later.

A racist mob forced Opal Lee and her family from their Fort Worth home. Now she has been given the land and a new house is being built for her.
Collage of George Romney giving a speech, the Baileys, their house, and riot police.

In 1967, a Black Man and a White Woman Bought a Home. American Politics Would Never Be the Same.

What happened to the Bailey family in the Detroit suburb of Warren became a flashpoint in the national battle over integration.
Robert D. Bullard

The Father of Environmental Justice Exposes the Geography of Inequity

Robert D. Bullard reflects on the movement he helped to create.
City of Kirkwood map.

Annexation Politics & Manufacturing Blight in a Black St. Louis Suburb

Unveiling the conflict and consequences in Kirkwood's expansion.
Christopher Newport University.

Erasing the “Black Spot”: How a Virginia College Expanded by Uprooting a Black Neighborhood

Sixty-plus years ago, the white leaders of Newport News, Virginia, seized the core of a thriving Black community to build a college.
Map illustrating legal erasure of roads in Fort Reno Park in 1943, following the clearance of a neighborhood.

Segregation by Eminent Domain

The Fifth Amendment allows the government to buy private property for the public good. "Public good" being the expansion of white neighborhoods.
Bylaw excerpt of racial restrictions in housing.
partner

A New Law Addresses the Harm Done by Decades of Racist Housing Practices

The Washington state law provides low-interest loans for down payments for those harmed by racially restrictive covenants.
Bars labeled First through Fourth depicting risk levels for housing loans.

The Shame of the Suburbs

How America gave up on housing equality.
A collage shows a white hand segregating Black Americans.

No Breakthrough in Sight

More than fifty years after the Fair Housing Act, inequality and segregation persists. What went wrong?
South Front Street House, Philadelphia, PA (credit LOC).

Black Homeownership Before World War II

From the 1920s-1940s, North, West, and South Philadelphia saw its Black population increase by 50-80% as white flight occurred.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference on March 3 in Fort Washington, Md.
partner

The Surprising Roots of Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Idea of National Divorce

Greene probably has visions of suburban Atlanta in the 1990s and 2000s, not the Civil War.

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