Racially restrictive covenants were perfectly legal until the 1968 Fair Housing Act.

Evidence

In 1940 the California Real Estate Association (CREA) cited Glendale “as being worthy of singular praise in its utilization of measures to keep it a ‘100% Caucasian Race Community.’ ” CREA was able to keep black homebuyers out of Glendale by encouraging white homeowners to make the pledge: “I will not sell or rent to any person or groups other than the Caucasian Race.” Within a few years, the Glendale CREA chapter established a Race Restriction Committee in order “to establish perpetual race restrictions on all parcels of property in Glendale.” Racially restrictive covenants like this one operated across the country to prevent black Americans from becoming homeowners, and it was all perfectly legal, until the 1968 Fair Housing Act was passed in the wake of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination. — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 351

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies that covenants were state-sanctioned, legal instruments, not merely social custom — establishing the ‘state action’ that matters for a legal case.
• XREF: The ‘perfectly legal until 1968’ timing is the crux of the ‘legality doesn’t excuse harm’ argument — the law itself was the instrument of harm.