Pre-1968 black home purchases required white patrons and informal loans to obtain fair terms.

Evidence

The house on Morris Avenue was owned by Lorenzo May, a black real estate investor who owned many properties that Mr. Gelman did the plumbing for. (That was how my father first saw it.) Mr. May was ready to sell 1061 Morris Avenue because his wife didn’t like it, and so the three men struck a deal. Mr. Gelman would loan my parents 6,000 for their down payment and take back a second mortgage. My parents would take over Mr. May's mortgage with Edison Bank for the balance, which was fifteen years and a principal amount of roughly 21,000. Mommy tells me Mr. Gelman’s lawyer took care of all the paperwork. They stepped into Mr. May’s shoes and got the terms he received. My parents weren’t saddled with a 1950s version of a subprime mortgage. Their monthly mortgage payments were 180 to the bank and 100 to Mr. Gelman. — Dorothy A. Brown, The Whiteness of Wealth, 170

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Rothstein’s The Color of Law and the postwar mortgage exclusion discussed at 171-72.