Undesign the Redline

By the late 1960s and early 1970s, reeling from a wave of urban uprisings, politicians finally worked to end the practice of redlining. Reasoning that the turbulence could be calmed by turning Black city-dwellers into homeowners, they passed the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1968, and set about establishing policies to induce mortgage lenders and the real estate industry to treat Black homebuyers equally. The disaster that ensued revealed that racist exclusion had not been eradicated, but rather transmuted into a new phenomenon--predatory inclusion. Race for Profit uncovers how exploitative real estate practices continued well after housing discrimination was banned. Narrating the story of a sea-change in housing policy and its dire impact on African Americans, Race for Profit reveals how the urban core was transformed into a new frontier of cynical extraction.

In this groundbreaking history of the modern American metropolis, Richard Rothstein, a leading authority on housing policy, explodes the myth that America's cities came to be racially divided through de facto segregation--that is, through individual prejudices, income differences, or the actions of private institutions like banks and real estate agencies. Rather, The Color of Law incontrovertibly makes clear that it was de jure segregation--the laws and policy decisions passed by local, state, and federal governments--that actually promoted the discriminatory patterns that continue to this day. Rothstein's invaluable examination shows that only by relearning this history can we finally pave the way for the nation to remedy its unconstitutional past.

Focusing on Chicago's West Side, After Redlining illuminates how urban activists were able to change banks' behavior to support investment in communities that they had once abandoned. American banks, to their eternal discredit, long played a key role in disenfranchising nonwhite urbanites and, through redlining, blighting the very city neighborhoods that needed the most investment. Rebecca K. Marchiel illuminates how, exactly, urban activists were able to change some banks' behavior to support investment in communities that they had once abandoned. A multiracial coalition of low- and moderate-income city residents, this Saul Alinsky-inspired group championed urban reinvestment. And amazingly, it worked: their efforts inspired national action, culminating in the federal Home Mortgage Disclosure Act and the Community Reinvestment Act. While the battle for urban equity goes on, After Redlining provides a blueprint of hope.

Despite the commonly held perception that most northern citizens embraced racial equality, As Long As They Don't Move Next Door graphically demonstrates the variety of methods--including violence and intimidation, unjust laws, restrictive covenants, discrimination by realtors and mortgage lenders, and white flight to suburban enclaves--used by whites to thwart the racial integration of their neighborhoods. Author Stephen Meyer offers the first full length national history of American race relations examined through the lens of housing discrimination, and he forces readers to confront and re-evaluate the deep and enduring division between the races. An original and captivating study that illuminates overlooked groups and individuals committed to the national struggle for civil rights, this is important reading for anyone interested in African-American history.

This book clearly links persistent poverty among blacks in the United States to the unparalleled degree of deliberate segregation they experience in American cities.

Eugenics, racial thinking, and white supremacist attitudes influenced even the federal government's actions toward housing in the 20th century, dooming American cities to ghettoization. This all-American tale is told through the prism of Baltimore, from its early suburbanization in the 1880s to the consequences of white flight after World War II, and into the first decade of the twenty-first century. Mr. Pietila's narrative centers on the human side of residential real estate practices, whose discriminatory tools were the same everywhere: restrictive covenants, redlining, blockbusting, predatory lending.

After decades of suffering redlining and disinvestment by financial institutions, many communities have learned to fight back successfully. In more than seventy U.S. cities, over 300 community-based organizations have negotiated at least eighteen billion dollars in reinvestment commitments in recent years. In original essays, well-known community activists and activist academics tell the stories of some of the most successful reinvestment campaigns in Boston, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, Atlanta, and California.

Strategies of Segregation unearths the ideological and structural architecture of enduring racial inequality within and beyond schools in Oxnard, California. In this meticulously researched narrative spanning 1903 to 1974, David G. García excavates an extensive array of archival sources to expose a separate and unequal school system and its purposeful links with racially restrictive housing covenants. He recovers powerful oral accounts of Mexican Americans and African Americans who endured disparate treatment and protested discrimination. His analysis is skillfully woven into a compelling narrative that culminates in an examination of one of the nation's first desegregation cases filed jointly by Mexican American and Black plaintiffs. This transdisciplinary history advances our understanding of racism and community resistance across time and place.  

Many of the places that helped make Dayton a center of innovation were lost to history, while others survived and adapted, representing the city's spirit of revitalization. Some of the city's distinctive and significant structures, such as Steele High School and the Callahan Building, were demolished, while others, including the Arcade and Centre City Building, saw hard times but now await redevelopment. Entire neighborhoods, such as the Haymarket, and commercial districts, such as West Fifth Street, vanished and show no traces of their past. Others, including the popular Oregon District, narrowly escaped the wrecking ball. From the Wright Brothers Factory to the park that hosted the first NFL game, Andrew Walsh explores the diverse selection of retail, industrial, entertainment and residential sites from Dayton's disappearing legacy.