Chicago Real Estate Board Creates Racially Restricted Covenants

 

May 4, 1921 In an example of harsh segregation and strong redlining the Chicago Real Estate Board adopted a policy of expelling any member who sold property in an existing white majority area to a Black family.

This began a larger segregation of the city where Home Owner Associations were created to enforce covenants blocking Black ownership in the majority of north Chicago neighborhoods like Hyde Park. Racial restrictive covenants, explicitly forbid the sale, transfer, or use of property to any Negros and many other ethnic groups. 

The president of the Real Estate Board, M.L. Smith stated that there were many neighborhoods beginning to develop on the South and West sides of Chicago and in Cook County for Blacks. “There are financial interests who see this immigration from the Southern states and are making plans to provide,” Smith told reporters. Smith was known though to strongly favor segregation of the races. “If you provide the places,” Smith said. “The Negroes will naturally segregate themselves and this isn’t a concern.” 

This also happened at a time when rents in the city were increasing and the great migration was putting intense pressure on the limited housing of Chicago. Many rental properties also blocked Black tenants while nearly 50,000 blacks moved into the city.

The previous year had also seen one of the most violent incidents of the “Red Summer of 1919”. The Chicago Riot lasted from July 27 to August 3rd and destroyed the homes of 2,000 Black residents. This new policy and the enforcement of it and the restrictive covenants placed a huge burden on the Blacks of Chicago, at one point 80% of Chicago had racially restricted covenants. 

Illinois State Senator Harold Kessinger had drafted two bills that would have introduced rent control and the Chicago Tenants Association greatly favored the bills and campaigned for them but could not get them passed. 

Residents of the “Black Belt” on the south side of Chicago were expected to deal with problems no White resident had, such as an average of seven people in their homes compared to an average of 4 in White homes. Many of the apartments for Black residents usually had limited plumbing with one bathroom per floor. it wasn’t until the 1948 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Shelly V. Kraemer that the restrictive covenants were outlawed.

Sources:

https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/shelley_v_kraemer_(1948)#:~:text=Primary%20tabs-,Shelley%20v.,provision%20of%20the%20Fourteenth%20Amendment.

https://digitalchicagohistory.org/exhibits/show/restricted-chicago/restrictive_covenants

http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/27.html