“All citizens of the United States shall have the same right, in every State and Territory, as is enjoyed by white citizens thereof to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey real and personal property.” — Civil Rights Act (1866)
“Denial of these rights was merely a misdemeanor offense —
if a case were taken to court and if a court decided that a crime had, indeed,
been committed. Intimidation and lack of resources prevented most victims
of discrimination from seeking legal recourse; lack of political power made
victory highly unlikely.” — Promises Kept: A Study in Organizational
Evolution, a HOME history by Patricia S. Morris
De jure segregation laws were passed around the nation.
“…Additional laws to establish legal segregation in housing were passed in Virginia between 1911 and 1913, when Ashland, Norfolk, Portsmouth, Richmond, and Roanoke all adopted ordinances… establishing separate black and white districts in their cities.” — American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass, Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton
In 1917, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Buchanan v. Warley, a case in Louisville, Kentucky, that racial zoning ordinances requiring segregation were unconstitutional and a violation of the Thirteenth Amendment. This case was particularly noteworthy because the “separate-but-equal” ruling that the 1896 Court made in Plessy v. Ferguson was rejected by the 1917 Court. Not to be deterred, segregationists then devised restrictive covenants, which were private agreements among landowners limiting the occupancy of the land in the future. A typical covenant contained the following language:
“No part of the land hereby conveyed shall ever be used, or occupied by or sold, demised, transferred, conveyed unto, or in trust for, leased or rented, or given, to Negroes, or any other person or persons of Negro blood or extraction, or to any persons of the Semitic race, blood, or origin, which racial description shall be deemed to include Armenians, Jews, Hebrews, Persians, and Syrians” (HOME Law Manual, 1991).
“FORESCORE AND SEVEN YEARS AGO OUR FATHERS BROUGHT FORTH ON THIS
CONTINENT, A NEW NATION, CONCEIVED IN LIBERTY, AND DEDICATED TO THE PROPOSITION
THAT ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL”
President
Abraham Lincoln