Saving the Neighborhood : Racially Restrictive Covenants, Law, and Social Norms / Richard R. W. Brooks.
Brooks, Richard R. W., author.
2013
KF662 .B76 2013
Available Online

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Title Saving the Neighborhood : Racially Restrictive Covenants, Law, and Social Norms / Richard R. W. Brooks.
Author Brooks, Richard R. W., author.
ISBN 9780674073685
DOI https://doi.org/10.4159/harvard.9780674073685
Published Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, [2013]
Copyright ©2013
Language English
Language Note In English.
Description 1 online resource (304 p.)
Other Standard Identifiers 10.4159/harvard.9780674073685 doi
Call Number KF662 .B76 2013
Dewey Decimal Classification 346.7304/36
Summary Saving the Neighborhood tells the charged, still controversial story of the rise and fall of racially restrictive covenants in America, and offers rare insight into the ways legal and social norms reinforce one another, acting with pernicious efficacy to codify and perpetuate intolerance. The early 1900s saw an unprecedented migration of African Americans leaving the rural South in search of better work and equal citizenship. In reaction, many white communities instituted property agreements-covenants-designed to limit ownership and residency according to race. Restrictive covenants quickly became a powerful legal guarantor of segregation, their authority facing serious challenge only in 1948, when the Supreme Court declared them legally unenforceable in Shelley v. Kraemer. Although the ruling was a shock to courts that had upheld covenants for decades, it failed to end their influence. In this incisive study, Richard Brooks and Carol Rose unpack why. At root, covenants were social signals. Their greatest use lay in reassuring the white residents that they shared the same goal, while sending a warning to would-be minority entrants: keep out. The authors uncover how loosely knit urban and suburban communities, fearing ethnic mixing or even "tipping," were fair game to a new class of entrepreneurs who catered to their fears while exacerbating the message encoded in covenants: that black residents threatened white property values. Legal racial covenants expressed and bestowed an aura of legitimacy upon the wish of many white neighborhoods to exclude minorities. Sadly for American race relations, their legacy still lingers.
Access Note Access limited to authorized users.
System Details Note Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
Digital File Characteristics text file PDF
Source of Description Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 30. Aug 2021)
In DG and UP eBook Package 2000-2015
E-BOOK GESAMTPAKET / COMPLETE PACKAGE 2013
E-BOOK PACKAGE LAW 2013
E-BOOK PAKET RECHTSWISSENSCHAFTEN 2013
HUP eBook-Package Backlist 2000-2013 (Canada)
Harvard University Press eBook Package Backlist 2000-2013
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Frontmatter
Contents
1 Introduction
2 Before Covenants
3 The Big Guns Silenced
4 Pushing Down the Ghosts
5 The Calculus of Covenants
6 The Emergence of the Norm Breakers
7 The Great Dilemma for Legal Norms
8 After Shelley
9 Changing Games in the Twilight of Covenants
10 Conclusion
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index

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