The Protest Against Housing Segregation

Abstract

Racial residential segregation is rapidly inundat ing the heart of the American city and converting it into a Negro city. The foundations of our Black Belts were laid by a half-century of governmental sanction and support of private segregatory devices: chiefly, judicial enforcement of racial restrictive covenants and the policies and practices of federal housing agencies. Such support and sanction has now been withdrawn, but the growth of the ghetto cannot be halted or the ghetto disestablished by mere abstention from support of dis crimination on the part of government, state or federal. What is needed is affirmative action by the state through fair-housing statutes and by the federal government through broadened executive decrees and effective rules and regulations by federal housing agencies. The Black Belt spawns segregated public facilities and breeds frustration and despair on the part of Negro residents while it foments ill-will and discord between whites and Negroes. The federal government must take leader ship if these evils are to be minimized and ultimately eliminated.