Blockbusting spread in Northern and Midwestern cities from the 1950s into the 1960s. Agents would help a Black family buy on a white block, then send flyers and make calls warning of falling values. They bought homes cheaply as white owners fled to the suburbs.
Black buyers paid the price. Shut out of regular mortgages by redlining, many could buy only through contract sales, in which the seller kept the deed until the last payment. One missed payment could mean eviction and the loss of everything paid in. In Chicago, the Contract Buyers League, formed in 1968, organized Black families on the West and South Sides to fight these deals.
Section 804(e) of the Fair Housing Act banned inducing sales by citing the entry of people of a particular race. Blockbusting matters because it shows how private actors turned government-backed segregation into profit, moving wealth from both white sellers and Black buyers into the hands of speculators.