Racial covenants spread in the early 1900s after the Supreme Court struck down racial zoning laws in Buchanan v. Warley (1917). Developers and neighborhood associations wrote them into deeds instead. In Corrigan v. Buckley (1926), the Court let them stand as private agreements. The Federal Housing Administration's underwriting manual, issued in the 1930s, recommended them for new subdivisions.
In Shelley v. Kraemer (1948), the Court ruled that state courts could not enforce racial covenants because that would be state action under the 14th Amendment. But the covenants remained in deeds, and many owners and agents kept honoring them. The Fair Housing Act of 1968 finally made them illegal.
Thousands of these clauses remain in property records today. They are void but still shape neighborhoods, since the segregation they created set home values, school boundaries and family wealth for generations. Several states now let homeowners remove the language, and mapping projects in cities like Minneapolis and Seattle have documented where covenants were used.