When Gussie Klorer and her husband, John Bell, moved to their house on Somerset they couldn’t help but be intrigued by the guardhouse that adjoined their yard on the corner of Somerset and Clayton Road. Long since abandoned, it was clear the structure needed repair. Gussie, an artist and art therapist, was in need of a studio so the couple worked a deal with the City of Clayton to repair and rent the structure.

Having been locked up and undisturbed for decades, Gussie and John had no idea what to expect when they first opened the door. Among the debris, they found the 1945 tax return of the last caretaker sitting on the desk as if he had just stepped away for a minute, expecting to be back. In the rafters, there were boxes of crumbling papers which Gussie respectfully went through. It was there she came upon a letter dated October 1, 1947, from the Board of Agents of the Moorlands Addition. In it was a report from an investigator that had been hired by the neighborhood association to surveil “colored people occupying living quarters as janitors, in basements of Moorlands apartment buildings.” As the letter notes, the report speaks for itself.

The 1948 Supreme Court decision, Shelley vs. Kraemer, held "that the [racially] restrictive agreements, standing alone, cannot be regarded as violative of any rights guaranteed to petitioners by the Fourteenth Amendment."  Private parties might abide by the terms of such a restrictive covenant, but they might not seek judicial enforcement of such a covenant, as that would be a state action. Because such state action would be discriminatory, the enforcement of a racially based restrictive covenant in a state court would therefore violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.” In other words, it’s okay if private parties work out a way to restrict people from living in a neighborhood, they just can’t seek legal assistance to help them. Thus began the period of neighborhood surveillance and racial steering by realtors.

Although the 1968 Fair Housing Act explicitly made racially restrictive covenants illegal, racial steering and other practices that discriminated against Black home buyers continued. Lending scoring, appraisal biases and lack of access to bank loans and mortgages resulted in widening the racial wealth gap. According to the Federal Reserve, in the United States the average Black and Hispanic or Latino households earn about half as much as the average White household and own only about 15 to 20 percent as much net wealth.*

We cannot change our history, but we can learn from it. And do better as we write the next chapter.

*https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/wealth-inequality-and-the-racial-wealth-gap-20211022.html