Racist covenants can still be found in areas of Madison

By Dave Link and Katie Pulvermacher, Eastside News

Although racially restrictive covenants were declared illegal in 1968, evidence shows these covenants still have a lingering legacy in property records in Madison and Dane County.

Racial covenants were a common way of preventing property sales to Black, Jewish, Asian, Italian and other nonwhite people and their families mainly in the early 20th century.

A Dane County project, Prejudice in Places, started in 2022 with a goal to help identify and confirm restrictive language in real estate records by using mapping. After scanning over 2,500 documents, the project has identified 1,095 as discriminatory, affecting about 4,000 properties as of May 1, 2025. Since Dec. 30, 2025, 64 denouncement documents — legal documents that declare the termination of an agreement — have been recorded.

The Dane County Historical Society, in collaboration with the county’s Planning and Development Department, produced a traveling exhibit on the history of racial covenants in the U.S. titled “UNJUST DEEDS: A History of Racial Covenants in Dane County and Beyond.” The exhibit has been on display at various libraries in Dane County since February 2025.

Dane County Historical Society Executive Director Rick Bernstein approached Dane County Planning and Development with the collaborative idea of the exhibit, and after various grants and other financial support was secured, the project began.

“I contend that the community at large is unaware of racial covenants, once amazingly popular, because we don’t teach ‘that’ history in our schools,” Bernstein said. “The history of this and other forms of racial segregation is suppressed, making it quite the surprise when one of these covenants rises to the surface like a ‘stone in a plowed field.’ When I heard about Dane County’s Mapping Prejudice project (now Prejudice in Places), I wanted to provide the historical context often missing from the discussion.”

A look at the county’s interactive map shows a large concentration of properties in the Eastmorland neighborhood and Monona having racist language connected to deeds. Also, the Eken Park neighborhood has a pocket and some properties in the village of Maple Bluff and Madison north of Warner Park show deeds with racist language.

The Unjust Deeds exhibit will be at Pinney Library April 4. It will provide homeowners the opportunity to fill out the paperwork needed to denounce racist language on their deed and listen to a presentation by the Dane County Historical Society. The traveling exhibit will be on display at Pinney throughout April.

A vile past

According to the magazine Urban Land, Baltimore was the first city to pass a racial zoning ordinance in 1910. The 1997 publication “Urban Planning and the African American Community: In the Shadows” wrote how Baltimore’s ordinance forbade selling property to a Black person if the block was all white and vice versa.

Excerpts from Baltimore’s first racial-zoning ordinance, summarized in the Dec. 20, 1910, Baltimore Sun, state: “That a violator of the law is punishable by a fine of not more than $100 or imprisonment of from 30 days to 1 years, or both … That no section of the city is exempted from the conditions of the ordinance. It applies to every house.”

Other cities adopted similar laws, including Richmond, Virginia (1911); Winston-Salem, North Carolina (1912); Atlanta (1913); and Louisville, Kentucky (1914).

In 1917, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously found racial zoning unconstitutional in Louisville, Kentucky, and this form of segregation came to an end. According to The Fair Housing Center of Greater Boston, the decision focused on protecting property rights over equal protection. It applied to legal statutes and not private agreements. This meant white Americans could sell their property to whoever, including Black people, and the government could not interfere. Ultimately, this court decision had little effect on racial segregation.

Even though racial zoning had been declared unconstitutional, racial covenants became a common practice. Neighborhood organizations were used to recruit people to take up bylaws preventing nonwhites from acquiring or renting property in well-off and white neighborhoods of many cities.

“(Racial covenants) were often among the many clauses (or stipulations) in a deed that forbade specific land uses, or, in this case, occupancy,” Bernstein said. “Before zoning, these private agreements between sellers and buyers provided the ‘protections’ buyers sought to prevent neighbors from operating an outdoor still or a slaughtering house.”

Baltimore’s John Charles Olmsted was particularly interested with the use of racial covenants, according to a Johns Hopkins Magazine article, and developed neighborhood organizations that were used to recruit people to take up bylaws preventing nonwhites from acquiring or renting property in well-off and white neighborhoods of many cities.

According to the Library of Congress, Olmsted was a professor at the Harvard School of Design and was the first president of the American Society of Landscape Architects. Through his professional involvement, he spread the word about racial covenants, which expanded beyond Baltimore.

In the 1926 U.S. Supreme Court case Corrigan v. Buckley, the court ruled that racial covenants were legal. This cleared the path for the use of racial covenants from that point on until later court cases. Bernstein said two other accelerators of racial covenants included the Northern Migration from 1916-1970, when millions of people moved from south to northern, Midwestern and western states seeking new opportunities, and various race riots from 1917-1923.

“Most of the discussion about racial discrimination and segregation often focuses on the South, but the North had its own forms of both,” Bernstein said. “Racial covenants were primarily a northern response to the six million Black people who migrated to the North starting with the advent of World War I and the expansion of industrial jobs, which was often termed an ‘invasion.’ Recognizing this history is crucial for the community to understand racial desegregation is very much an issue here in Dane County as it is nationwide.”

Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, had a welcome sign at the city limits stating, “Entering Wauwatosa City of Homes Restrictive Zoning.” Bernstein said the use of the word “restricted” was also used in magazine and real estate advertisements in Madison and Dane County, referring to racial covenants.

“(The sign) mentioned restrictive zoning, and that was a selling feature that these neighborhoods were protected with racial covenants, so you could be sure of your investment,” Bernstein said.

Fran Remeika, a Realtor in Madison, was fined $500 and lost her license for three months after selling a property to a Black individual, defying the Madison Board of Realtors’ racial restrictions in 1946. Disagreeing with these practices, she chose to leave the real estate business, illustrating the board’s role in maintaining racial segregation.

Finally, due to the 1948 U.S. Supreme Court case Shelley v. Kraemer, the use of racist covenants started to be reined in. The Shelleys, an African American family, purchased a home in a St. Louis neighborhood that had a racially restrictive covenant designed to prevent African Americans and Asian Americans from living in the area.

Louis Kraemer, a neighboring resident, sued to prevent the Shelleys from obtaining possession of their property. The judges ruled that the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause barred the enforcement of racially restrictive housing covenants. Although private parties could choose to follow these covenants, a court’s enforcement qualifies as state action and is therefore prohibited.

“It was probably this decision in 1948 where you can kind of see racial covenants are no longer being used as much as they were before,” Bernstein said. “Still, there were individuals and federal agencies throughout the United States government who did not want to follow the court’s ruling.”

The Eastmorland neighborhood was one of these areas where the covenants existed after 1948. It was developed as an affordable suburb of modest homes on Madison’s east side in the post-WWII building boom.

‘Gross history’

Carrie Bruenig and her family live in Eastmorland. They learned their deed had an old racially restrictive covenant from a mailing from the county.

“It doesn’t feel that surprising,” Bruening said. “Redlining was a historic reality but it still makes you feel sick. It’s gross history.”

Holly Cho, president of the Eastmorland Community Association, was surprised to learn her property has a racially restrictive deed after viewing the county’s online interactive map. But also said she wasn’t that surprised.

“I was aware this was something that was quite common,” she said. “It is always really discomforting when you’re confronted with historical legacies like these.

“I’m Korean American and my husband is white. I think how it wasn’t really that long ago that our marriage would not have been legal in some states, and me owning (this) home that we live in and raise our child in, I wouldn’t legally have been able to live here or purchase our home. We think of our neighborhood as a place that’s safe, welcoming and inclusive — and that’s been our experience — but it’s in living memory when it wasn’t.

Racial covenants, public or private, weren’t declared illegal until the Fair Housing Act in 1968. The bill was difficult to get passed, with Southern Democrats opposing it — but it was ultimately signed.

“Even though racial covenants were outlawed entirely in the Fair Housing Act of 1968, the tangible impacts of racial covenants and other forms of racial segregation are still with us today,” Bernstein said. “Racial segregation is still a very real and ongoing issue across America, as evidenced by the racial disparity in rates of homeownership in Dane County and across the country.”

Breunig echoes Bernstein’s conclusion by hoping the Unjust Deeds exhibit will create more support for the housing project at Eastmorland Community Center and in the neighborhood and is a reminder that housing in Madison has become unobtainable for many who cannot tap into generational wealth.

Bernstein said he encourages the community to see if their property has a racial covenant on it by checking the interactive map on the Prejudice in Places website, and if someone has one, to file a release to denounce and nullify it.

“I’m really gratified that this is something the county is paying attention to and that they are prioritizing,” Cho said. “I think it’s a wonderful initiative. Its symbolic because these are no longer enforceable, but it sends a message about what kind of community we want to be.”

Next steps for nullifying include setting up an online appointment or attending Dane County Planning Department “fill and file” events like the one at Pinney Library to help property owners denounce covenants.

“If we could get every single home in our neighborhood to fix this, it would be amazing,” Cho said.

Bernstein said his Monona property in Winnequah Terrace had a racial covenant. The plat was recorded in 1950. His home was constructed a year later, similar to many other houses in development. This covenant was established a couple of years after the 1948 Supreme Court ruling in Shelley v. Kraemer.

“(My property) was one of 106 homes, all built by the same developer and all covered by a single sentence included in the plat,” Bernstein said. “This is an ongoing research project for me to better understand how covenants were still being used despite the 1948 Supreme Court decision.”

The Dane County Board of Supervisors adopted Resolution 305 “Repudiating Racial and Discriminatory Covenants in Dane County Property Records” Feb. 20, 2025, a notable step the county has taken to condemn ongoing housing discrimination in the U.S.

“Understanding racial covenants will help those interested in why these issues persist today and hopefully what can be done going forward,” Bernstein said.