History

Congress passed the Fair Housing Act of 1968 the day after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.. Without the law, African Americans were regularly denied available housing or loans to buy homes.

Congress passed the Fair Housing Act of 1968 the day after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.. Without the law, African Americans were regularly denied available housing or loans to buy homes. A widespread policy known as redlining purposefully segregated neighborhoods. This policy pushed lower class citizens, immigrants, and African Americans into the “red zones” of a neighborhood. Many banks considered it hazardous to lend money to anyone located in a red zone. Not only were neighborhoods purposefully segregated, many white communities had a physical barrier from red zones like a freeway or a wall (like the 8-mile wall in Detroit). The long-term effect of this policy prevented many families from building wealth through owning property and creating other issues like food deserts, lack of services, and unequal education opportunities for children in red zones. But, these problems and the Fair Housing Act are not all the stuff of a history lesson. Today, most communities are more racially segregated then they were in 1968 and the disparities of segregation are even more pronounced.