D.C. Divided: Segregation in the Nation's Capital (2025)

Summary

By 1948, around half of Washington, D.C., was covered in racially restrictive covenants, private agreements that prohibited the sale or rental of land or property to non-white individuals, forcing Black residents into smaller and decrepit parts of the city. These clauses inserted into property deeds caused Black property holders to lose their property and reduced their access to safe housing.

Jocelind Julien's family, the Dorsey-Shorter family, owned property in what is now Chevy Chase, a neighborhood in northwest D.C. As the surrounding areas grew, the Chevy Chase Land Company wanted to build an all-white neighborhood at the turn of the 20th century, and by 1928, the original Black community was surrounded by a white neighborhood with racially restrictive land covenants.  In 1931, Jocelind's family were dispossessed of their land through eminent domain to make way for a park and school for the white residents.

The case of Hundley v. Gorewitz (1942) is a rare example of a Black couple successfully fighting against a restrictive covenant. After the Hundleys moved into their home, their white neighbors, the Gorewitzs, sued to evict them because of a racially restrictive covenant. The Hundley’s were represented special council for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and won on the change of neighborhood doctrine, which is the idea that the neighborhood had changed in character enough to remove the restrictive covenants. This doctrine only worked in cases where the neighborhood was already diversifying and maintaining a racially restrictive covenant was a risk to white landowners’ property values. Another case that attempted to use the change of neighborhood doctrine but failed was Mays v. Burgess (1945).

Hurd v. Hodge (1948) was decided by the Supreme Court alongside Shelley v. Kraemer (1948). These cases determined that racially restrictive covenants were in violation of the 1866 Civil Rights Act. While three justices recused themselves, the other six unanimously sided that restrictive covenants could no longer be enforced by the courts. This was the first time since Corrigan v. Buckley (1926) where the courts considered racially restrictive covenants.

The right to fair housing was just as significant to the NAACP as fighting segregation in schools, employment, and other public spaces. Racially restrictive covenants, while no longer enforceable, never disappeared. These restrictions now exist in the shape of neighborhoods and policies that prevent fair housing. Restrictive covenants also systematically denied Black families from building generational wealth through property ownership. In order to repair the harms caused by racially restrictive covenants, it is important to consider the long-lasting impacts of racial discrimination in creating policy with reparations in mind. 

The Fair Housing Act (1968) has been attacked in recent years for attempting to affirmatively further fair housing to make up for past discrimination and inequity. Programs that have been designed to counteract the legacy of racially restrictive covenants are being challenged as unconstitutional, while at the same time, in Noem v. Vazquez Perdomo (2025), the Supreme Court has deemed it acceptable to use race as one of the determining factors for law enforcement and Immigration and Customs Enforcement stops. The Court also said in Students for Fair Admission v. Harvard (2023) that colleges could not look at race during the admissions processes. In short, recent legal precedent says that race can be used to arrest people of color but not to remedy past discrimination.

Suggested Reading

Cherkasky, Mara, Sarah Jane Shoenfeld, Brian Kraft. Mapping Segregation in Washington, D.C. https://mappingsegregationdc.org/

DC History Center. Black Broad Branch Project. https://dchistory.org/black-broad-branch-project/

Jarwala, Alisha. "The More Things Change: Hundley v. Gorewitz and 'Change of Neighborhood' in the NAACP’s Restrictive Covenant Cases." Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Review, Vol. 55 (2020). https://ssrn.com/abstract=3707147