Race and Real Estate in Mid-Century DC
Race and Real Estate in Mid-Century DC
Race and Real Estate in Mid-Century DC:
The Neighbors, Inc. Records
This series of images illustrates how real estate practices combined with other discriminatory policies to facilitate DC's racial transformation in the 1950s and ‘60s. Most are documents from the records of Neighbors, Inc., which advocated for a legal ban on racist real estate and banking practices. The group compiled them for submission to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights for the 1962 report, "Civil Rights U.S.A./Housing in Washington, D.C."
The documents speak to the outsized role of Realtors and the federal government in promoting white outmigration to the suburbs and black settlement in DC neighborhoods east of Rock Creek Park. Blatantly racist tactics and policies scared white homeowners into believing that the arrival of African Americans would reduce property values. Landlords used race as a basis for evicting white tenants, and charged higher rents to new black residents.
Neighbors, Inc.’s dogged documentation of the race-based strategies used to stimulate the real estate market and resegregate the city, along with the work of other advocates, eventually led to a local fair housing law. DC’s ban on racial discrimination in the sale or rental of housing, which took effect in January 1964, set the stage for the federal Fair Housing Act of 1968.