Racism shadows property covenants - USATODAY.com: Language that once prohibited property ownership based on race remains in hundreds — if not thousands — of homeowner covenants, even though such restrictions have been illegal since 1968, because of the difficult process to remove it, historians and other experts say.
Many homeowners don't even know that the language against selling property to African Americans and people of Jewish, Hispanic or Asian descent is in their covenants, says James Gregory, a history professor at the University of Washington in Seattle.
Gregory, who is the director of the university's Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project, says the project has identified racially discriminatory language in more than 400 properties alone in Seattle and its suburbs.
