Hansberry vs. Lee and Similar Cases
Hansberry v. Lee
1937
Restrictive Covenants were clauses included in deeds across the country to prevent neighborhood racial integration.
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Homeowners used racially restrictive covenants to maintain segregated neighborhoods and, until the mid-20th century, they were enforceable in court.
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In 1937, Lorraine Hansberry’s father, Carl Hansberry, purchased a home in Woodlawn, a white neighborhood in Chicago. The Hansberrys’ new home was in a neighborhood where approximately five hundred property owners had entered into an agreement “that for a specified period no part of the land should be ‘sold, leased to or permitted to be occupied by any person of the colored race.’”
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In Hansberry v. Lee, Anna M. Lee and other neighbors sued to stop the Hansberry family from moving into the neighborhood based on the neighborhood’s discriminatory covenant. The Circuit Court of Cook County and the Illinois Supreme Court held that Mr. Hansberry was bound by the decision in an earlier class action suit, Burke v. Kleiman, 277 Ill. App. 519 (Ill. App. Ct. 1934).
In that case, Burke sued to enforce the discriminatory covenant against a neighbor who violated the agreement by leasing a neighboring property to a Black tenant. The parties in Burke agreed that the restrictive covenant was valid. The Illinois courts ruled that the issue of the restrictive covenant’s validity could not be litigated again, because of the legal principle of res judicata, which prohibits parties from relitigating matters that have already been decided in court.
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Represented by an NAACP litigation team, the Hansberrys appealed the state court’s decision to the U.S. Supreme Court. The appeal was successful, but not because the court ruled that discriminatory covenants were unconstitutional or illegal. Instead, the Supreme Court reversed the state court ruling because the interests of the parties in Hansberry were not adequately represented in Burke, so the stipulation that the agreement was valid in the earlier case did not bind the Hansberry parties. The Hansberrys successfully argued that the agreement was invalid and defended their right to keep their Woodlawn home, but the fight to outlaw all discriminatory covenants carried on. The Supreme Court would not declare court enforcement of discriminatory restrictive covenants unconstitutional for another eight years.
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Shelley v. Kramer
1948
In 1948, the Supreme Court ruled in Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1 (1948), that court enforcement of discriminatory restrictive covenants violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. However, private individuals could continue to include racially restrictive language in their deeds and carry out these discriminatory agreements themselves.
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Davis et. all. vs. St. Louis Housing Authority
1953
A landmark class-action lawsuit filed in 1952 in Saint Louis, Missouri to challenge explicit racial discrimination in public housing. The decision prohibited the Saint Louis Housing Authority from refusing to rent certain units to qualified African Americans. The case was heard in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri.
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In the Davis case, Federal Judge Moore found the St. Louis Housing Authority's policy of racial segregation unconstitutional. Judge Moore's order permanently prohibited ("forever enjoined") the Authority from discriminating against qualified housing applicants based on their race. Further, the Authority was prohibited from maintaining policies of racial segregation in their housing units.
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FUN FACT: The Lead counsel on this case, Frankie Muse Freeman would become the first woman to be appointed to the United States Commission on Civil Rights in 1964
Fair Housing Act- Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968
By the time the play debuted in 1959 and the movie premiered in 1961, the Supreme Court had already ruled that court enforcement of a discriminatory restrictive covenant like the one in Hansberry v. Lee was unconstitutional. However, the story remained relevant because little had changed; private parties were still free to discriminate against homebuyers based on their race. Racially restrictive covenants remained legal until the Fair Housing Act, Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968, prohibited discrimination in the sale or rental of housing based on race, color, religion, or national origin.