Racial Covenants, Still on the Books in Virtually Every State, Are Hard to Erase
If you teach about this in schools Fox news will scream about CRT… but there it is in black and white, racism written into nearly every deed in a 1700 tract HOA. This is still the case even though Johnson county Kansas is one of the few places that is reliably blue in this deep red state I call home.
“I heard the rumors, and there it was,” Selders recalled. “It was disgusting. It made my stomach turn to see it there in black-and-white.”
In Chicago, for instance, the general counsel of the National Association of Real Estate Boards created a covenant template with a message to real estate agents and developers from Philadelphia to Spokane, Wash., to use it in communities.What Selders found was a racially restrictive covenant in the Prairie Village Homeowners Association property records that says, “None of said land may be conveyed to, used, owned, or occupied by negroes as owners or tenants.” The covenant applied to all 1,700 homes in the homeowners association, she said.
While digging through local laws concerning backyard chickens, Selders found a racially restrictive covenant prohibiting homeowners from selling to Black people.
“There’s still racism very much alive and well in Prairie Village,” Selders said about her tony bedroom community in Johnson County, Kan., the wealthiest county in a state where more than 85% of the population is white.
More: Racial covenants, still on the books in virtually every state, are hard to erase : NPR