Racial segregation in housing is as pernicious as it is pervasive. Throughout much of the 20th century, at the federal, state, and municipal levels, specific laws, policies, and programs created segregated communities across the country. In the process, many African American families were denied the opportunity to purchase an affordable home that, for white Americans, became the foundation of inter-generational wealth.

Locked out of federal assistance programs, and prevented from buying in the new suburbs, African American families were forced to remain renters, or were steered into contract home agreements with impossible terms that prevented them from building equity. This foundational American injustice is the direct cause of today’s profound wealth gap between African American and white families, and is at the root of the continuing racial inequities that persist across country today, including disparities in health outcomes between white and Black Americans, and it is a critical factor in the dynamics of policing and the killing of unarmed African Americans at the hands of police. Housing segregation has played a central role in the failure of public schools for so many African American children, and segregation has been the key driver of unequal impacts from climate change. Finally, housing segregation, in its essence, keeps white and Black families apart, creating fear, stereotypes, division, and a profound lack of community across racial lines.

In 2017, Richard Rothstein’s book The Color of Law documented the factual history of 20th-century segregation. In response to the book, a group of national civil rights leaders, convened by Ted Shaw, former Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and Director of the Center for Civil Rights at the University of North Carolina, decided to create an organization to take on redressing racial segregation. The Redress Movement was formed, and in early 2022, the Movement was launched.

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The Redress Movement: Fair Housing & Segregation

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