Who We Are

Chicago Covenants Project

This metropolitan-wide research project draws on volunteers to search the analog land records of Cook County, IL (home of Chicago), and Will, Lake, and other counties across the metropolitan region. Led by one of the creators of Mapping Inequality: Redlining in New Deal America, this effort connects covenants, redlining, and programs such as urban renewal in a multi-generation, multi-program system of selective disinvestment and redevelopment throughout the Chicago region.

Site: Chicago Covenants Project

Director: LaDale Winling

Justice InDeed

This is a collaborative project dedicated to exposing and responding to the existence of racial covenants throughout Washtenaw County, MI (home of Ann Arbor).

Site: Justice InDeed

Contact: Justin Schell

Mapping Segregation in Washington, DC

This project documents how racially restrictive covenants and other tools of segregation and Black displacement shaped the nation's capital. The ongoing, lot-by-lot documentation of racial covenants is set in the context of DC's demographic transformation over the course of the 20th century, showing their impact on the city to this day.

Site: Mapping Segregation DC

Directors: Mara Cherkasky and Sarah Jane Shoenfeld

Segregated Seattle

This effort to document racial covenants in King County, WA, is part of the University of Washington’s Seattle Civil Rights & Labor History Project and is now part of a state-supported effort, along with Eastern Washington University, in documenting covenants throughout Washington.

Site: Segregated Seattle

Director: James Gregory

Dividing the City

University of Iowa researchers have tracked down restrictive covenants in St. Louis, MO, and the surrounding county, illustrating a pattern of metropolitan real estate segregation based on race. St. Louis was the origin of the Shelley v. Kraemer case that made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1948, where covenants were ruled unenforceable.

Site: Dividing the City (data-rich, public facing)

Director: Colin Gordon

Mapping Cville

A project that researches and maps inequities in Charlottesville from the past to the present. Through maps comes the hope that we can begin to see the bigger, more complicated, structures and decisions that have gotten us to where we are today — so that we may better think about where we want to go tomorrow

Site: Mapping Cville

Director: Jordy Yager

Documenting Exclusion

This project looks at the dynamics of exclusion among communities that generate both segregation as well as resilience in Northern Virginia. The project identifies and geo-locates racially restrictive covenants on properties in Northern Virginia from 1900 through the 1960s. This area includes Arlington and Fairfax Counties and the cities of Alexandria, Fairfax, and Falls Church.

Site: Documenting Exclusion\

Directors: Krystyn Moon, Kristin Neun & Janine DeWitt

Eastern Washington Racial Covenants Research Project

In 2022, Washington State passed SHB 1335, Concerning review and property owner notification of recorded documents with unlawful racial restrictions, which assigned Eastern Washington University and the University of Washington with the task of finding all of the racially restrictive property covenants in the state and informing owners about how to remove them. EWU is proud to be involved in correcting this historic wrong.

Site: Racial Covenants Research Project

Director: Tara Kelly

Mapping Racism and Resistance

A team of researchers in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is working to comprehensively document and map all racial covenants in Milwaukee County. Their goal is to not only analyze and visualize the historical geographies of racial covenants, but also to uncover Black resistance to such discrimination and its impact in shaping racial justice movements today.

Co-directors: Anne Bonds and Derek Handley