CSDE Seminar – Patchwork Apartheid: Private Restriction, Racial Segregation, and Urban Inequality
Posted: 4/26/2024 (CSDE Seminar Series)
Please join CSDE for a seminar with Colin Gordon on Friday, May 3rd from 12:30-1:30 in 360 PAR and on Zoom (register here). Colin Gordon is Professor and Chair of History at the University of Iowa, where he has taught since 1994. Gordon will be available for 1×1 meetings throughout the day. Sign up for a 1×1 meeting here.
After the seminar, Evans PhD student Isaiah Wright will facilitate a graduate student discussion with Dr.Gordon in 221 Raitt from 1:30-2:30. Students can discuss research collaborations, professional development, academic publishing, and interdisciplinary research, among other topics. Learn more in the event poster here. RSVP to Isaiah Wright (iwrig@uw.edu) to join the student discussion.
Abstract: Drawing on a unique record of property restrictions excavated from local property records in five Midwestern counties, this research documents the prevalence of private property restriction in the era before zoning and building codes were widely employed and before federal redlining sanctioned the segregation of American cities and suburbs. This record of private restriction—documented and mapped to the parcel level in Greater Minneapolis, Greater St. Louis, and two Iowa counties—reveals the racial segregation process both on the ground, in the strategic deployment of restrictions throughout transitional central city neighborhoods and suburbs, and in the broader social and legal construction of racial categories and racial boundaries. Enforcement of private racial restrictions was held unconstitutional in 1948, and such agreements were prohibited outright in 1968. But their premises and assumptions, and the segregation they had accomplished, were carried forward by an array of private practices and public policies—including local zoning and federal redlining. Private race restriction was thus a key element in the original segregation of American cities and a source of durable inequalities in housing wealth, housing opportunity, and economic mobility.
Date: 05/03/2024
Time: 12:30-1:30 PM
Location: 360 PAR and on Zoom (register here)