Generic deed
 

Community & Economic Development Law Clinic: Removing Racist Covenants From Deeds

This summer's laser focus on the Black Lives Matter movement has prompted some residents of our clients' communities to focus on their own homes. There has been renewed attention to racial and religious covenants, restrictions against Black homebuyers set down by developers and some individual homeowners in the 1920-s through the 1940's. Though these vestiges of private sector segregation are no longer enforceable, they persist in land records, and may be revealed at loan closings. Some homeowners have equated these covenants to Confederate monuments, as hurtful reminders of racial violence.

Community and Economic Development Law Clinic students Bijan Afkhami ('21) and Marcel Apple ('21) are assisting a community group in Silver Spring, Maryland, to remove these covenants from land records under a recent state statute that streamlines the process. The group is wrestling with issues such as whether the erasure of the covenants would amount to whitewashing a history that should be exposed; and how to educate other residents about the discrimination literally embedded in their backyards. The Washington Post recently referred to our students' involvement, and described the opinions of residents on how best to address their neighborhoods' racist histories.