Mapping Segregation DC, October 22, 2019: Restricted Housing and Racial Change Map
Mapping Segregation in Washington, D.C., reveals the profound impact of racially restricted housing on the nation’s capital. During the first half of the 20th century, restrictive deed covenants—which barred the conveyance of property to African Americans and sometimes others—largely controlled where D.C. residents lived. Real estate developers and White citizens associations used covenants to create and maintain racial barriers. Upheld by the courts, covenants assigned value to housing and to entire neighborhoods based on the race of their occupants, and made residential segregation the norm. Although eventually outlawed, covenants had a lasting imprint on the city. Their legacy was central to shaping D.C.’s mid-century racial transformation; led to decades of disinvestment in areas where African Americans lived; and influenced residential patterns that persist today.
The project’s maps unveil historical patterns that would otherwise remain invisible and largely unknown. The ongoing, lot-by-lot documentation of racial deed covenants is set in the context of D.C.’s demographic transformation over the course of several decades. Primary documents, archival news clippings, photographs and oral testimony also contribute to the stories these maps tell.
