QUESTION: Racially Restrictive Covenants and Deeds on Long Island

question / pregunta: 

Hi,

I am finishing a documentary on housing policy in NYC and there is a section about redlining and "white flight" from the city to Long Island and South Brooklyn suburbs. I am desperately looking for visual evidence of the fact that blacks in particular were excluded from some suburban communities (levittown, for example). does anybody know where i can, on short notice, get an example of either a restrictive deed from this area, and/or some promotional material from a developer advertising the fact that a community was restricted?

i am finishing up next week for the Brooklyn Film Festival. I hate a great image i was using but realized it was from LA, not NY!

thanks for any help you can give me. this documentary is independent, muckraking and challenges bloomberg development policy. i have made other films on progressive/radical issues, like Every Mother's Son (police brutality) and Out At Work (LGBT discrimination in the workplace).

thank you!!!

kelly anderson

pbs The PBS RACE - The Power

pbs
The PBS RACE - The Power of an Illusion, Episode 3: "The House We Live In," covers this topic and their website states this
" the government also set up a national neighborhood appraisal system that explicitly tied mortgage eligibility to race. Integrated and minority communities were ipso facto deemed a financial risk and made ineligible for low-cost home loans, a policy known today as "redlining." Between 1934 and 1962, the federal government backed $120 billion of home loans. More than 98% went to white homebuyers. "
Here you can Read Housing Act of 1949
Restrictive Covenants are still on deeds here is an article in the NYT from 2005

There is a sample of

There is a sample of restrictive deed language on several sites here and here here but nothing specifically for NY. A search on the NYS archives resulted in deeds from the 18th & 19th century but not with the restictive covenants. Contact information for the NYS archives is here

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