Separate Is Not Equal - Brown v. Board of Education

Smithsonian National Museum of American History Behring Center



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Segregated America
  • Promise of Freedom
  • White Only
  • Separate but Equal
  • The Supreme Court
The Battleground
Legal Campaign
Five Communities Change a Nation
The Decision
Legacy
Restricted real-estate covenant

Restricted real-estate covenant

In communities across the country, property owners signed agreements called restrictive covenants. These contracts barred African Americans and sometimes other groups—including Jews, Asians, and Latinos—from many neighborhoods. In this covenant from Arlington County, Virginia, in the 1940s, the purchasers agreed never to sell their house to “persons of any race other than the white Caucasian Race.”

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