"Race, Rights, and Housing" : A Study of Individual Rights in Residential Segregation, 1917 - 1948

This project builds upon a substantial body of work relating to the precedence of ending racial discrimination in housing. Through these works this paper seeks to offer a new perspective from which to view this literature. Specifically, the focus of this paper on the absence of racially specific language in the decisions that characterized residential housing between 1917 and1948 offers a frequently untold perspective of the changing housing policies of this period. Moreover, the attention to the challenges posed by Supreme Court Justices whose decisions ignored race but instead focused primarily on the idea of individual rights adds to the scholarship that describes the profoundly obdurate institutionalization of racially prejudicial housing policies and practices in American society. Indeed, this study hopes to take this well documented period of history to illustrate the salient importance of including specific anti-discriminatory language in the application of legislation based on the idea of individual rights and race. As such, the history of housing in the United States during the twentieth century demonstrates that the country's legal and cultural reverence for the protection of individual rights could only be realized when race itself was recognized as a necessary component in applying the promise of protected individual rights equally to all American citizens.

Author

• Flores, Barlow L.

Language

• en

Keyword

• Supreme Court
• Segregation
• Housing
• Discrimination

Date created

• 2010

Type of Work

• Master's Thesis

License

• All rights reserved

Rights statement

• In Copyright

GW Unit

• Sociology

Degree

• M.A.

Advisor

• Chambliss, William J

Committee Member(s)

• Squires, Gregory

Persistent URL

•  https://scholarspace.library.gwu.edu/etd/79407x25x