Though Charlotte never had racial zoning ordinances, the use of restrictive covenants there resulted in the de facto segregation of the city. I feel like it [covenants] should be in a museum, maybe, or in schoolbooks, but not still a legal thing attached to this land.". Michael Dew points out the racial covenant on his home. I look forward to it. Illinois is one of at least a dozen states to enact a law removing or amending the racially restrictive language from property records. Deed restrictions dictate that property in Myers Park will be used for single-family (or residential), multi-family, or commercial purposes. Reese, who is Black, said her heart sank at those words, especially because buying her home in the JeffVanderLou neighborhood in north St. Louis 16 years ago is something of which she is proud. //dump($i); A waiver document eliminates some of your legal rights. But a newly funded project titled Churches That THRIVE for Racial Justice will seek to address these issues. She used her finger to skim past the restrictions barring any "slaughterhouse, junk shop or rag picking establishment" on her street, stopping when she found what she had come to see: a city "Real Estate Exchange Restriction Agreement" that didn't allow homeowners to "sell, convey, lease or rent to a negro or negroes." Learn how your comment data is processed. Here youll find my books and an assortment of my essays and lectures. An individual homeowner can't change a deed, either. Indeed the neighborhood is comprised of primarily single-family homes but also includes numbers apartments, condominiums, and duplexes as well as commercial properties. Mecklenburg County. Restrictive Covenants in Myers Park (Horrack Talley) 1920s-1948: Racially Restrictive Covenants It made my stomach turn to see it there in black-and-white.". Suddenly, a planned year-long series of monthly talks and podcasts titled Reawakening to Racial Justice seemed insufficient to create long-lasting change. ", Dew's house is just a few blocks away from his paternal grandfather's house in Oak Park, the "Big House," where he often visited as a child. Change), You are commenting using your Facebook account. Curtis and her family were among the first Black families to move to Myers Park. Congregations will actively confront structures of racism to remove a crucial obstacle to thriving, one that spiritually and materially affects all peoplewhite, Black, LatinX, Asian Pacific Islanders, Indigenous peoples and people of color. The Myers Park Homeowners Association is making reparations to the North Carolina NAACP for its use of a racist language in an old neighborhood deed. It's an established home. In North Carolina, the effects of restrictive covenants were far-reaching, particularly in Charlotte. Did our beach developments and waterfront resorts open up to African Americans and other people of color after the U.S. Supreme Courts ruling in 1948 and the civil rights legislation of the 1960s? The bad risk was any neighborhoods that had Black people in them, Hatchett said. Former NPR investigative intern Emine Ycel contributed to this story. If I got something wrong, I hope you will also let me know. Twenty years later, any doubt that racially restrictive covenants were illegal was dispelled by the Fair Housing Act of 1968. As they collect and analyze data each year, the audit will serve as a baseline against which to measure progress and assess interventions. It is a topic she has covered extensively in her 30-year career. In Missouri, there's no straightforward path to amending a racial covenant. And by doing so, we will heal as our systems change and as we develop identities and practices that are inclusive of multi-cultural ways of doing ministry in todays world.. It might be a few days were dealing with the hurricane big-time here but my email is david.s.cecelski@gmail.com. 2023, Charter Communications, all rights reserved. "So, restrictive covenants have had a long shadow." hide caption. Maryland passed a law in 2020 that allows property owners to go to court and have the covenants removed for free. I hope they will help you understand better my little corner of the Atlantic seacoast. California was at the forefront of the strategy to use restrictive covenants to keep neighborhoods white. This project is part of NPR's collaborative investigative initiative with member stations. When I ask about his 75-year old house, he offers to show me the original deed. Lilly Endowment launched the Thriving Congregations Initiative in 2019 as part of its commitment to support efforts that enhance the vitality of Christian congregations. And that wasn't just true in the South. In the deed to her house, Reese found a covenant prohibiting the owner from selling or renting to Blacks. But the covenants remained on the books. Church leaders and dedicated members had lobbied to integrate Charlotte businesses and schools in past decades. Development by firms and individuals are generally for their benefitNOT yours!! From the bottom of my heart, I want to thank the following people: Stephanie Bell-Rose, Catherine Bishir, Amelia Dees-Killette, Jack Dudley, Jenny Edwards, Jean Frye, Regina Yvette Carter Garcia, Anthony James, Marvin T. Jones, Ernestine Keaton, David Killette, Ginger Littrell, Eddie McCoy, Lew Powell, Bunny Sanders, Crystal Sanders, Barbara Snowden, Odell Spain, Ben Speller, Beverly Tetterton, Tim Tyson, Michelle Underhill, Martha Waggoner and Joyce Williams. We therefore urge and encourage you to do the following: 1. Hatchett explains since Black families were denied home loans in the early 1900s they had missed out on generations of home equity. Rev. All rights reserved. represent and serve churches in a broad spectrum of Christian traditions, including Anabaptist, Baptist, Episcopal, evangelical, Lutheran, Methodist, Mennonite, Pentecostal, Presbyterian, Reformed, Restoration, Roman Catholic and Orthodox, as well as congregations that describe themselves as nondenominational. 3. Illinois is one of at least a dozen states to enact a law removing or amending the racially restrictive language from property records. It takes effect in January 2022. The Shelley House in St. Louis was at the center of a landmark 1948 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that declared that racial covenants were unenforceable. Fun Things To Do in Myers Park | Charlotte's Got a Lot Change). Russell Lee/Library of Congress Get the best experience and stay connected to your community with our Spectrum News app. In 1968 Congress outlawed them all together. Nicole Sullivan found a racial covenant in her land records in Mundelein, Ill., when she and her family moved back from Tucson, Ariz. The 2018 election through then Republican candidate Mark Harris' eyes. Katie Currid for NPR "They just sit there.". It's Not Over: A Historical and Contemporary Look at Racial Restrictive Racially restrictive covenants, in particular, are contractual agreements among property owners that prohibit the purchase, lease, or occupation of their premises by a particular group of people, usually African Americans . In 2018, Alliance leaders framed racial justice as a critical need in the current national context and issued a new denominational statement of commitment that begins: Systemic racism has been a part of the history of the United States of America and continues to exist. Homes in Myers Park Charlotte NC have retained their value over the years and shown . Ariana Drehsler for NPR You should evaluate any request for property waiver to see what effect the waiver could have on you. Lawsuit over Myers Park home could have citywide impact. It's impossible to know exactly how many racially restrictive covenants remain on the books throughout the U.S., though Winling and others who study the issue estimate there are millions. But it wasnt just real estate developers that made this aspect of Jim Crow possible. Blacks soon realized, though, that segregation and racism awaited them in places like Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles, particularly in housing. From segregationists point of view, the genius of racial covenants was that they not only prohibited the current owners from selling their homes to people of color, but they also made it illegal for any future owner to sell, lease or rent to people of color. The racial covenants in St. Louis eventually blanketed most of the homes surrounding the Ville, including the former home of rock 'n' roll pioneer Chuck Berry, which is currently abandoned. "We can't just say, 'Oh, that's horrible.' To you all: thank you, thank you, thank you. The JeffVanderLou neighborhood in north St. Louis. It also talks about the racial inequities that have happened in Charlottes housing history. Download it here. 2010). Myers Park is, like most places, more complicated than simple descriptions. The Color of Water, part 10- Racial Covenants | David Cecelski Its their 2040 comprehensive plan, which could impact housing density and what neighborhoods look like. During the first three decades of the twentieth century, North Carolina and U.S. courts repeatedly upheld racially restrictive covenants. 2016 John Locke Foundation | 200 West Morgan St., Raleigh, NC 27601, Voice: (919) 828-3876, //$i = get_field('photogallery2',get_the_ID()); That is often the case in other cities if officials there believe that it's wrong to erase a covenant from the public record. I have a number of anecdotes that may help you in better understanding what has become of the Hargraves family during and after uncle Henrys death and the lost of the beach and other property in Elizabeth City, NC. Homes in Myers Park . According to J.D. "Those things should not be there.". On that note, I am closing The Color of Water for now. If he had been on the wrong side of the racial hierarchy I am not sure if I would own my own home.. Sebastian Hidalgo for NPR Race is one of many issues the church is working on, people say, but race is so deeply embedded in what it means to be a Christian in America, Boswell says. Use of these covenants in property deeds remains widespread. And in September, California Gov. It pulls from Myers Park and from Grier Heights, a historically Black neighborhood. According to UNC Charlotte Urban Institute 's most recent data on demographics in 2017, her neighborhood was less than 1% black. Thurston County | Auditor | recording-rrc Maybe I could call you sometime? As we engage in the thriving congregations project, the leadership of the Alliance of Baptists hopes our congregational partners will actively embrace our already stated commitment to expose and address embedded systemic racism, says Clayton Dempsey. Ought to be a book there. The project will pilot a protocol with 15-25 churches in the United States and Canada to examine white-dominant congregational life and vitality through the lens of the Alliances commitment to racial justice, specifically working to dislodge white-biased structures of injustice and enacting racially aware practices in their liturgies and their ministry programs. The Hansberry house on Chicago's South Side. Those are so divisive they'd probably kill the effort. Did the historic districts in our coastal towns? "If you saw that, it could in fact create what we call freezing," says William Barber, president of the North Carolina NAACP. Neighborhood's 'whites only' deed sparks controversy in Charlotte - WBTV There's no way to determine the exact number of properties that had these restrictions, but no part of the county was exempt. "My mother always felt that homeownership is the No. And yet I sometimes wonder. (LogOut/ A lawmaker in California has tried twice, but failed because of the magnitude: It would require an army of staff with bottles of white-out going through tens of thousands of deeds at the courthouse. and Ethel Lee Shelley, an African American couple, purchased a home for their family in a white St. Louis, Missouri neighborhood . Myers Park is on the National Register of Historic Places and is recognized nationally as a premier example of good land use planning. PDF roots, race, - eScholarship "It bothers me that this is attached to my house, that someone could look it up," said Mary Boller, a white resident who lives in the Princeton Heights neighborhood in south St. Louis. Property rights, such as deed restrictions are passed on to you when you invest in your home site. The NAACP would like the homeowners association to have the racist clause removed from its deeds. The high school here is one of the largest in the state, with nearly 3,000 students. The gently curving roads and stately trees persist, as does the cachet: Homes there today sell for millions of dollars. Congregations will actively confront structures of racism to remove a crucial obstacle to thriving, one that spiritually and materially affects all people. A historic neighborhood in Charlotte is struggling with a racial legacy that plagues many communities across the country. Illinois becomes the latest state to enact a law to remove or amend racially restrictive covenants from property records. In 1917, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that local governments could not explicitly create racial zones like those in apartheid South Africa, for example. L. Richardson King Professor of Sociology, Paula Clayton Dempsey, director of partnership relations for. An entire neighborhood might be able to if it took a vote, but that would open all the other deed restrictions to debate - like fence heights and setbacks. Moreover, the team hopes to foster an experience of comradery and expansive sense of mission among the congregants engaged in the work of anti-racism. Time has relegated the document to microfilm available only on the department's machine. Michael B. Thomas for NPR Plaintiffs, who own a neighboring lot to Defendants, first became aware of Defendants' construction in December 2007, confirmed that it was a violation of the restrictive covenants in January 2008, and filed suit in mid-February 2008. The lawmaker found an ally in Democratic state Sen. Adriane Johnson. Judge Jesse B. Caldwell held that the suit was barred by laches. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. This area also has the lowest household income, at around $32,000, the lowest percentage of homeownership at about 30%, and the lowest number of people who have gotten a Bachelors degree, which is about 12%.