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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - VII. Social Inequality - 29. Patterns of Social Segregation and Discrimination - 4. Sanctions for Residential Segregation
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624 An American Dilemma
had moved into what had previously been an all-white block. Many South-
ern and Border cities followed suit,^® after state courts upheld zoning
ordinances. Even after the Louisville ordinance was declared unconstitu-
tional by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1917,^® certain cities
put into effect other segregative laws designed to get around the decision.
A more comprehensive and severe denunciation of segregation by law was
made in the 1927 decision of the Supreme Court in the New Orleans
case, but even as recently as 1940 the North Carolina State Supreme Court
had to invalidate a residential segregation ordinance passed in Winston-
Salem.
When the courts’ opposition to segregation laws passed by public bodies
became manifest, and there was more migration of Negroes to cities,
organized activities on the part of the interested whites became more
widespread. The restrictive covenant—an agreement by property owners
in a neighborhood not to sell or rent their property to colored people for
a definite period—has been popular, especially in the North. The exact
extent of the use of the restrictive covenant has not been ascertained, but:
“In Chicago, it has been estimated that 80 per cent of the city is covered
by such agreements . . This technique has come up several times for
court review, but, because of technicalities, the Supreme Court has as yet
avoided the principal issue of the general legal status of the covenants.®^
If the Court should follow up its action of declaring all local laws to segre-
gate Negroes unconstitutional by declaring illegal also the private restrictive
covenants, segregation in the North would be nearly doomed, and segre-
gation in the South would be set back slightly.
In addition to restrictive covenants, neighborhood associations have served
as organized extra-legal agencies to keep Negro and white residences sepa-
rated. The devices employed by them range all the way from persuasion
to bombing. The Washington Park Court Improvement Association in
Chicago shifted its function from planting shrubbery and cleaning the
streets to preventing Negroes from getting into the neighborhood, when
the Black Belt began to expand in the direction of this community.®-
But in spite of the white vigilance on the frontiers of the Negro districts,
the line never gets absolutely fixed in all directions. Now and then a small
break occurs, and the Negro community gains a little more space. Here and
there some upper class Negroes succeed in moving out to a white neighbor-
hood without causing a wholesale removal of the whites In the area or in
building houses on vacant land at the outskirts of cities. If such cities
expand, it is possible that these few Negroes will find themselves part of a
large white neighborhood—at least In the North. Meanwhile more South-
ern Negroes move in and the pressure accumulates I^hind the main front
line. The crowded lower class Negro ghetto remains alongside industry,
vice and crime centers.®® Because recent immigrants from Europe, especiallv
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