Russel Sage Foundation

Racially restrictive covenants, which prevented sale and rental of housing to several racial and ethnic minorities, were a common phenomenon in the first half of the 20th century in many northern cities in the U.S. In Minneapolis and suburbs. They were first used in 1911 and gained significant popularity after 1920s until 1948, when the U.S. Supreme Court made them unenforceable. This project will analyze what Minneapolis and suburbs would have looked like in 1940 if racial and ethnic covenants were not put into place. In particular, the researchers will address how those covenants contributed to sorting, segregation, and inequality between whites and Blacks and to what extent racial covenants originally contributed to the temporal persistence in the geography of economic outcomes across demographic groups.