Although the degree of black segregation has declined somewhat in the last decade, African Americans today are still far more segregated than any ethnic group has
ever been segregated in America, excluding Native Americans living on reservations.
The history of the American segregation of African Americans is complex, and it does not make for pleasant reading. Although this century's use of violence as a means of maintaining the color line crested in the 1920s, its use declined only gradually and the fear of violence is still, according to polls, a major deterrent keeping black people from moving into white neighborhoods. Earlier in this century violence against black people occurred regularly at the borders between white and black neighborhoods, keeping black areas from expanding. Although overt violence is less common, its
threat—especially the threat that one's children will be harassed or harmed—remains important.
Earlier in the century, groups of white neighbors sometimes organized themselves to keep their neighborhoods white. Forming as "Neighborhood Improvement Associations," these groups:
- lobbied for local zoning restrictions to close hotels and rooming houses that attracted African Americans,
- gave cash bonuses to black renters as incentives to leave the area,
- boycotted real estate agents who sold to blacks,
- boycotted white establishments that catered to blacks,
- lobbied for public investments in the area to keep property values up and thus create economic barriers to African Americans, and
- created funds to buy property back from black buyers or to buy vacant houses to prevent them from being sold to black homebuyers.
One of the most effective methods used by the improvement associations was the Restrictive Covenant, a legal agreement forbidding signers to sell their property to African Americans. Although Restrictive Covenants were declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1948, the Federal Housing Administration—claiming an interest in maintaining the economic viability of neighborhoods in which it was guaranteeing mortgages—continued to recommend their use until 1950. Restrictive covenants continued to be used covertly for decades until the Federal government began enforcing the law in the 1980s.
As more African Americans moved into northern ghettos, the fixed size of the areas in which they were allowed to live naturally increased property prices within them, leading to pressure for expansion. Since whites would ultimately move out of neighborhoods if enough (or any) black people moved in, unscrupulous realtors developed the practice of "block busting." As middle-class blacks began to move in, property values would fall as whites hurried to sell and leave. Often spreading rumors about the "invasion," "developers" bought up property, divided it up, and rented to poorer blacks from the ghettos at inflated rates. It was often true both that property values fell and that poverty developed when black people moved into an area, but these changes had to do with white flight and realty practices, not any inherent characteristic of African Americans.
