Subject Matter Expert (SME) - Civil Rights Blog #4:
Matters Involving Housing Rights in Federal Records
Ray Bottorff Jr
Matters concerning housing and property ownership have been an integral part of the United States since its founding. After American Independence, owning property allowed white men the opportunity to vote in elections. As the country grew, property ownership requirements that restricted voting began to disappear by the 1828 election. With a few exceptions, they were gone by the time of the American Civil War.
Owning property provides numerous benefits, ranging from tax breaks to a sense of self-pride in being a homeowner. It also provides an opportunity for generational wealth that can be passed down through heirs.
For the United States, settling beyond the original thirteen colonies solidified claims for territory against European and continental rivals. It also undercut Native American claims to the same land, the policy used to justify their forced relocation westward and later onto reservations. American foreign and domestic policy encouraged settlement across the continent.
Until 1855, Bounty Land claims by military veterans were used to settle lands East of the Mississippi River. Afterwards, The Homestead Act of 1862 helped settle the territory West of the Mississippi RIver. The 1866 Civil Rights Act and the Fourteenth Amendment allowed Homesteading for African-Americans, many of whom clustered into one of the Black Homestead Colonies.
The National Archives Bounty Land Warrant Record Card found in “Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty Land Warrant Application File W. 1331, for Henry Tabor, Rhode Island” from the series Case Files of Pension and Bounty-Land Warrant Applications Based on Revolutionary War Service, ca. 1800 - ca. 1912, in Record Group 15: Records of the Department of Veterans Affairs, 1773 - 2007.
Private Henry Tabor, identified in his Pension and Bounty Land files as a “man of color”, had a Bounty Land Warrant claim made on November 4, 1794. The records of that original claim appeared to have been destroyed in the November 9, 1800, War Department fire. Consequently, it is unknown if he was awarded the Bounty Land and later sold the Warrant (he never moved from Rhode Island) or was denied the claim.
He and his widow did later receive a veteran’s pension.
National Archives Identification Number (NAID): 144296063
For Chinese and Japanese immigrants, first the States and then the federal government discouraged and / or banned these groups from obtaining homes or property. As an example, Alien Land Acts in states like California prevented Chinese and Japanese families from owning land, a practice not outlawed until 1952 by the Supreme Court in the Fujii v. California (1952) case.
Rules, both written and implied, were enacted to prevent these communities access to property and home ownership. The rights to own property and housing were seen as a tool to benefit poor and working class whites. These same rules also acted as a cudgel to prevent minorities in urban settings to achieve the benefit of homeownership. These acts of discrimination would force those communities into racial and ethnic ghettos in American cities.
The Great Depression forced the federal government to address matters involving home ownership and to encourage building of new homes. The policies would change the very shape of the nation itself, but also widen the generational wealth gap between white and black working and middle classes.
The Federal Housing Administration
During the First World War, the federal government initiated programs to build subsidized housing. The United States Housing Corporation’s (USHC) sole purpose was to provide housing for war production workers near arsenals and shipyards. The USHC essentially created the idea of neighborhood planning, serving as a template for what came next.
At its height, the Great Depression placed nearly a quarter of the workers in the country out of work. An increasing number of the unemployed moved around the country to find work. Farming families were foreclosed from their farms at historic rates. The Depression also crippled the private sector’s ability to build housing. These events created an acute housing shortage across the country.
In 1934, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration and the Congress began to address this problem with the creation of the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). The FHA would help insure mortgages and back builders in order to increase the nation’s housing stock. However, it was designed to benefit only white homeowners.
The FHA created regulations which refused insuring mortgages in or near African-American neighborhoods. This overt discrimination was justified by the claim that if African-Americans moved into white-only neighborhoods, property values would decrease and place the government-backed loans “in jeopardy.” The idea was unfounded as no government agency actually studied the matter. When it was studied years later, it turned out that African-Americans moving into predominantly white-neighborhoods actually increased property values.
The regulations were demonstrated in the form of Residential Security Maps. They were originally produced by the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC), then the FHA, and later used by the Veterans Administration (VA). They color-coded primarily African-American neighborhoods in red as “undesirable” for the backing of loans for mortgages or for building new homes. The discriminatory term known today as “redlining” originated from these maps.
“Map of Greater Atlanta” from the series Residential Security Maps, 1933 - 1939, in Record Group 195: Records of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, 1933 - 1989. An example of the “redlining” maps created to determine which neighborhoods federal investment was allowed.
National Archives Identification Number (NAID): 85713707
When the Second World War came to an end, FHA-backed loans sparked the post-war suburban housing boom. But they benefited only white homeowners. FHA regulations inhibited the building of new suburban homes for African-Americans. It enforced homeowner covenants that required current home owners to be white. When the house was later placed up for sale, it could only be sold to other white people.
The policy also served to encourage what would be called “white flight”, especially from public housing to the suburbs. What were mixed-class and mixed-race public housing developments during the 1930s and 40s turned into mostly African-American or Latinx housing and apartment blocks consisting mostly of lower class and working poor families.
These policies reinforced neighborhood segregation that continues in many municipalities to this day. By the time the Civil Rights Act of 1968’s Title VIII on housing rights was signed into law, much of the benefits of home ownership, especially that of home equity, was lost to the African-American community. The regulations pushed by FHA and the VA into the 1960s helped poor and working class whites join the middle class through home ownership while denying the same to peoples of color.
Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968
The passing of Civil and Voting Rights legislation during the 1960s was just a beginning and many other inequities still needed to be addressed. One of those was housing discrimination against minorities and other protected classes across the country. Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968 - also known as the Fair Housing Act - was crafted to address this discrimination.
On April 11, 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1968. Title VIII of the Act, known as the Fair Housing Act, protected “people from discrimination when they are renting or buying a home, getting a mortgage, seeking housing assistance, or engaging in other housing-related activities.” The Act protected against discrimination due to race, religion, color, national origin, and later sex (after 1974), familial status, and disability (both after 1988).
“Pres. L.B. Johnson signs the 1968 Civil Rights Bill” from Digital ID: ppmsca 03196. Reproduction Number: LC-DIG-ppmsca-03196. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. Warren K. Leffler, photographer.
Library of Congress Call Number: LC-U9- 18985-18A [P&P].
Critics would later argue that while the Act made housing discrimination illegal by federal law, it lacked the ability to quickly and thoroughly go after those who committed discrimination. Often investigations by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) (Record Group 207), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) (Record Group 65), and The Department of Justice (DOJ) (Record Group 60) could take years. Sometimes the discrimination was hard to prove and easily hidden by the perpetrators. The Fair Housing Act also failed to address the lost opportunities for African-Americans in home equity and generational wealth building due to previous discrimination.
Investigations into violations of the Fair Housing Act are found within the case files of HUD. The FBI investigated housing discrimination under its Classification 177 (Discrimination in Housing). The DOJ maintained housing discrimination records under its Classification 130 (Federal Housing Act). Unfortunately, the nature of these case files requires that many are fully restricted to the public. Due to these restrictions, researchers must make a request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to view the records.
Both HUD and the DOJ maintain some publicly available information on its investigations into Fair Housing violations. HUD’s website lists some of the cases concerning violations of the Fair Housing Act since about 1990. The DOJ likewise maintains a Housing Cases Summary Page dating back into the 1990s.
As well intended as the 1968 Act was, it failed to break the barriers of racial segregation in many cities. Predatory methods against both white and minority homeowners continued. When minorities moved into new neighborhoods, some real estate agents still illegally engaged in “blockbusting,” which instilled fears of their arrival into the white community. This fear caused white homeowners to sell their homes inexpensively to those real estate agents. These agents would then sell the same homes to minority families at higher prices, guaranteeing significant profits for themselves. This created rapid turn-overs of races within neighborhoods and prevented long-term neighborhood integration. The segregated neighborhoods did not end. Their boundaries only changed.
George W. Romney, Secretary of HUD and the “Open Communities” Plan
George W. Romney, former Governor of Michigan, was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as the Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development on January 20, 1969. Secretary Romney, chastened by his experience as Governor of Michigan during the 1967 Detroit Rebellion/Riot and inspired with a moral zeal to improve the lives of African-Americans, promoted the idea of "Open Communities" as a way to improve the lives of minorities. “Open Communities” was designed to encourage African-American families to move into the suburbs using the powers of the 1968 Act.
Much of the development of the plan can be found in the Subject Files of Richard C. Van Dusen, 1969 - 1972 (National Archives Identification Number (NAID): 20761469). Van Dusen served as an Under Secretary of HUD under Secretary Romney and helped in the development of the “Open Communities” plan.
Once made public, the idea of "Open Communities" was met with open hostility. White suburban communities refused to participate in the program. Minority organizations were left out of the political loop on its development and remained skeptical of the program. Conservatives refused to consider it. President Richard M. Nixon worried about how the program would compromise his “Southern strategy” to woo white voters. Given this and his own attitudes towards race, President Nixon refused to support the program. Eventually, the entire plan was scuttled after the U.S. Attorney General John Mitchell refused to legally back its enforcement.
“Richard Nixon stands with George Romney in Detroit, October 1, 1968” from the series Photographic Materials, ca. 1926 - ca. 1994, in the Richard Nixon Foundation Collection of Audiovisual Materials, ca. 1926 - ca. 1994.
National Archives Identification Number (NAID): 16916188
The Fair Housing Act of 1968, even with all its weaknesses, remains law and serves as a deterrent for some of the worst excesses of housing discrimination. It is still actively enforced by both the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Department of Justice.
Secretary Romney’s efforts are documented within the records of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Records regarding the Nixon administration and HUD can be found at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda, CA. Secretary Romney also donated a collection of his personal papers there.
USHC, HOLC, FHA, VA, HUD, FBI, and DOJ records are located at the National Archives at College Park, MD. Most HUD case files are located at National Archives field locations. Bounty Land records and records of the U.S. Supreme Court (Record Group 267) are located at the National Archives building in Washington, DC.
Records pertaining to all manner of federal involvement with land are located at multiple NARA locations. The best place to start such research is here. Homestead Act documents are in multiple agencies located at the National Archives at College Park, MD and the National Archives at Kansas City, MO.
The records of the U.S. Senate (Record Group 46) and U.S. House of Representatives (Record Group 233) provide a source of documents and correspondence on the drafting of the Civil Rights Act of 1968. The Center for Legislative Archives holds the historically valuable records of the U.S. Congress, including official committee records. To research congressional records and legislative history regarding housing rights, start with the Center’s online search catalog or contact them directly at legislative.archives@nara.gov. The Center for Legislative Archives is also located at the National Archives building in Washington, DC.
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