The Legacy of Racial Covenants in Buffalo: A Call for Justice and Restoration

Where we live matters. In the City of Good Neighbors, our history is riddled with harmful efforts to separate neighbors by race. We are two aspiring lawyers and a fair housing researcher, embarking on a journey to learn our community’s past and use the law to repair the damage. One virulent device is a racially restrictive covenant.

Racial covenants are legally binding restrictions in a homeowner’s deed that deny ownership or occupation based on a person’s race. We found several examples in the Buffalo History Museum’s Pearce & Pearce archives. For example, in 1947, the Town of Tonawanda’s Lincoln Park Village deed stated:

“No person of any race other than the Caucasian race shall use or occupy any building on any lot except that this covenant shall not prevent occupancy by domestic servants of a different race domiciled with an owner or tenant.”  

In 1917, the Supreme Court banned racial zoning by the government. Despite that, private individuals, realtors and developers achieved the same effect by inserting racial covenants into deeds.

Decades later, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in Shelley v. Kraemer (1948), that homeowners could not enforce these private racial covenants in the courts, discrimination simply continued through other means. In some cases, developers continued to include these covenants.

Excluded groups had few housing options and were pushed into lower quality housing. At the same time, Caucasian families received federal incentives to move to new suburban neighborhoods, contributing to a phenomenon known as “white flight” from cities.

Locally, these covenants still exist, and their adverse impacts are felt today. Segregation limits access to affordable housing, homeownership, and building wealth, especially for certain minority groups. Where you live impacts your standard of living. It impacts your credit, insurance costs, access to capital and other opportunities.

Initiatives like Justice InDeed have inspired our research and goals—bringing awareness to these relics of segregation, eliminating them, and adopting restorative policies to remedy the harm caused by these covenants and other discriminatory housing practices.

The following are existing efforts to redress the harms of racial covenants:

• Government Action: Local governments are funding programs to address housing injustices, including financial aid, homeownership opportunities, and support for affected communities. Examples include the HUD Section 8 Voucher program, Belmont Housing Resources, and the Buffalo Urban League’s Housing Counseling services. A NY Attorney General’s report highlights racial disparities in homeownership. In 2021, New York State issued this report on modern-day redlining by Buffalo-area banks.
• Public Awareness: Organizations like The Redress Movement use workshops and outreach campaigns to highlight housing discrimination and advocate for specific reparations.
• Advocacy: Civil rights organizations like the National Fair Housing Alliance and local Housing Opportunities Made Equal document discrimination trends and file impact lawsuits to challenge discriminatory practices.
• Legal Reforms: Some states legislatures are considering laws that would nullify racial covenants. For example, Michigan’s Discharge of Prohibited Restrictive Covenants Act (2022) prevents recording race covenants and provides replacement deed language that denounces the racial covenants. New York’s proposed bill (S1728/A4428) would remove discriminatory clauses at the recording of a new sale. 
• Documenting Injustice: Academic institutions and authors have documented the prevalence of racially restrictive covenants and housing segregation nationally. In Buffalo, Dr. Henry-Louis Taylor, Jr, has examined how past housing discrimination influenced conditions in Buffalo from 1990 to today. Artists and activists have used a variety of forums to connect the history of residential segregation to the racially motivated 5/14 Tops shooting.

These initiatives reflect a growing recognition of the importance of addressing racism’s legacy. Ongoing collective action is necessary for meaningful, lasting change.

Repairing this legacy is not easy. But it’s a worthy goal—one that requires all of us. What better way for The City of Good Neighbors to prove its commitment to good neighborhoods than take a stand against these historic practices?

We must continue learning and organizing. For instance, you can read more about a bill before the New York Legislature (S1728/A4428). You can check your deeds and encourage your neighbors and friends to check theirs too.

Are you a homeowner? Please check your deed and tell us if it has a racial covenant. Please complete this form to add your deed to our database. You can also contact us at law-crtc@buffalo.edu.

* Khalia Muir and Chris Fynn are student attorneys at the University at Buffalo School of Law. James Coughlin is a fair housing researcher and author of City of Distant Neighbors: The Proliferation & Entrenchment of Residential Segregation in Buffalo, NY (1934 to 1961).