Discriminatory laws result in exclusionary practices. They prevent some people from exercising their constitutional rights and freedoms based on race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or creed.

These laws help enforce the mindset of tropes, stereotypes, false ideology, and prejudice which lead to bad behavior or criminal acts.

Redlining still exists today and contributes to the wealth gap between Blacks and Whites

The history of redlining

In the 1930s, the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) instituted redlining, which denied investment in neighborhoods deemed high-risk. The risk was generally based on race or ethnicity. Members of minority groups were unable to secure housing loans outside of specially designated neighborhoods, whereas wealthier, white residents moved elsewhere.

Although racial discrimination in housing was banned in 1968, the impacts of these practices remain. The correlation between redlined neighborhoods and COVID-19 risk factors is merely one example of how these policies fueled pervasive inequities.

The city is still deeply divided between majority-Black and majority-white neighborhoods. To this day, Baltimore neighborhoods that were redlined have lower rates of homeownership, worse health outcomes, and higher rates of poverty. Morgan State University Assistant Professor Lawrence Brown coined the terms the “White L” and the “Black Butterfly” to describe how white neighborhoods in Baltimore, which form the shape of an “L,” have structural advantages over Black ones, which form the wings of a butterfly.

Just north of campus, there are clear disparities between the east and west sides of the corner of York Road and Cold Spring Lane, including life expectancy and median household income. Last July, community activists, and Hopkins students marched along York Road to protest these inequities.

Unfair Housing

HOLC was created as part of the New Deal in 1933 and was a division of the government that issued bonds to purchase mortgage loans. The corporation is best known today for its maps of over 200 U.S. cities that indicated to mortgage lenders which neighborhoods were “safest” for investment. A blue neighborhood received an “A” grade, a red neighborhood a “D.” The term redlining was born from the red grades, which indicated “hazardous” status — a code for predominantly minority neighborhoods. While this often referred to high numbers of Jewish, Italian, or immigrant populations, it almost always referred to high numbers of Black residents.

HOLC’s practices were the first official efforts to racially segregate housing nationwide. Yet Baltimore was familiar with the practice long before the 1930s, according to Alexander Lothstein, Museum Learning Manager at the Maryland Center for History & Culture.

“The idea of race-based housing segregation began in Baltimore, and a lot of other cities picked it up,” he said in an interview with The News-Letter.

In 1911, the mayor signed an ordinance that prohibited Black people from moving into certain “white” blocks. The reason for the policy was that a Black civil rights attorney had moved into a predominantly white neighborhood earlier that summer.

Though the first of its kind in the nation, the ordinance affirmed ideas that had already been blatantly present on both a national and local level, such as the “separate but equal” doctrine of the landmark Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson and the 1899 Baltimore mayoral campaign slogan, “This is a white man’s city.”

The Supreme Court declared race-based housing segregation unconstitutional in Buchanan v. Warley in 1917.

“It struck down civil government instituted racial segregation,” Lothstein said, “but it didn’t strike down private racial segregation.”

A new tactic emerged instead: blockbusting. Developers and real estate agents urged white residents to move out of their homes, operating on fear of Black individuals moving in next door. They then turned around and sold the properties at higher rates to Black residents.

Rick Sadler, a former Bloomberg Fellow at the School of Public Health and a current assistant professor of public health at Michigan State University, noted that after World War II there was an even clearer distinction between white and Black neighborhoods in cities.

“The general pattern was that Black neighborhoods would be by factories, near polluted rivers, polluted ground. In older parts of cities, the housing would be in poor shape,” he said. “Linking the whole patterns of racial discrimination in employment and education, part of that was a self-fulfilling kind of outcome, where Black families welled up in these denser, poor neighborhoods.”

Race-based housing discrimination was finally outlawed on all fronts with the Fair Housing Act of 1968. But the effects today are undeniable.

“There’s that generational wealth gap now where white families could start building wealth in new homes in the suburbs, starting in the ‘50s, or ‘40s even,” Sadler said. “That was basically completely locked out to African Americans until the late ‘60s, early ‘70s.”

John Hopkins’s role in redlining

The Baltimore City Council officially passed Ordinance 610 in 1911, establishing a strict, city-wide housing segregation law. The bill included a report titled “Housing Conditions in Baltimore,” by Janet Kemp, which suggested that certain residencies, particularly Black-owned properties, be condemned.

Kemp’s report was initiated by the Charity Organization Society, a group that intended to solve social problems in Baltimore, and was founded by former University President Daniel Coit Gilman.

In her analysis, Kemp distinguishes between white “tenement districts” and Black “alley districts,” referring to the latter as “slums.” Racism underpinned her analysis and ultimately the ordinance that became law.

Ordinance 610 was a precursor to nationwide redlining in the 1930s. Hopkins Hospital is located in what was once deemed a “D” neighborhood by HOLC. All of the surrounding neighborhoods — with the exception of the ungraded Greenmount Cemetery, Patterson Park, and harbor docks — were graded either C or D.

HOLC listed a “proximity to employment, industrial and commercial” as an aspect of the area’s “Favorable Influences” and a “heavy concentration of foreigners” under “Detrimental Influences.” The area description detailed that foreigners included Italians and an “Infiltration of Negro,” each group comprising a quarter of the community.

The Hospital itself, however, is not subject to a D grade. Like the greenery surrounding the neighborhood, which escapes a rating, the Hospital is bright white square in a sea of red.

Lothstein explained that this was HOLC’s attempt to mark the Hospital as a separate institution. He stated that because the plot wasn’t a home that could be considered for rent, it was left out and marked as a decent employment opportunity.

Under Clarifying Remarks, surrounding properties are described as “better than average” and having “considerable desirability.” This characterization reinforces the ongoing perception that Hopkins is an institution that thrives at the expense of its neighbors, that Hopkins sits in Baltimore but isn’t a part of it.

Credit cards Redlining

Credit card redlining is a spatially discriminatory practice among credit card issuers, of providing different amounts of credit to different areas, based on their ethnic-minority composition, rather than on economic criteria, such as the potential profitability of operating in those areas.

An empirical study from Ethan Cohen-Cole, an economist at the Boston Federal Reserve indicates that there is redlining in the credit card industry. Residents of black neighborhoods are less likely to receive consumer credit than residents of white neighborhoods, all things being equal.

In spite of the fact that both have been assessed to have similar risks of nonpayment, as determined by the credit score, the person living in the Black area has less ability to access credit. For instance, there are certain cards that are specifically marketed at particular minority communities, e.g., the Freedom Card (not to be confused with the Chase Freedom Card), which is marketed to poor blacks in Philadelphia.

The Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) was passed to counteract redlining in the credit card industry, but no guardrails are put in place to regulate violations.

The legacy of redlining

Studies have also highlighted the health impacts of redlining. Baltimore is one of many cities that experience urban heat islands, where redlined districts are, on average, one to seven degrees hotter than predominantly white neighborhoods.

Redlining has also severely hindered property ownership, a key component of the wealth-building strategy. Throughout history, residents in redlined areas have been denied loans from banks, instead of being targeted by predatory loan services with high-interest rates. As recently as 2012, Wells Fargo entered into a $184.3 million settlement after the U.S. Department of Justice found 34,000 instances of the bank issuing higher-cost loans to Black and Latino people.

Additionally, speculators continue to purchase homes in redlined areas, only to turn around and rent them to residents at inflated rates. This has led, in part, to a lack of development initiatives in many neighborhoods in Baltimore; Inner Harbor, which was redlined in the 1930s, is a rare exception.

The stagnancy in development is disheartening, but Baltimore has made efforts to address the underlying inequities that cause this lull.

The Baltimore City Office for Equity and Civil Rights began hosting an annual Fair Housing Festival in 2020. The event, which features performances, student artwork displays, and in-person and virtual historic galleries, celebrates the 1968 passage of the Fair Housing Act.

Lauren Jackson, an investigator with the Community Relations Commission within the Office for Equity and Civil Rights, hopes that the event will educate Baltimoreans and encourage them to speak up about their own neighborhoods. Most fair housing complaints, she said, come from people with disabilities and people of color.

“Our hope is that after they see these stories… that they’ll come forward and tell us their stories about housing discrimination because that’s the ultimate goal,” she said. “We just know that folks either don’t realize it’s happening, because of the way that housing discrimination has changed, or they don’t know who to turn to.”

The federal government has also taken several steps to rectify the past through efforts like the Choice Neighborhoods program. Communities across the country, such as Baltimore’s Perkins Somerset Oldtown, receive grants from Housing and Urban Development to improve housing, schools, and vacant properties.

Rick Sadler from Michigan State pointed out that the program seeks to improve the current situation of neighborhoods without making the same errors of former public housing projects. He explained that by improving housing within a city, there is a net positive effect on both families and the city.

“Kids perform better. Kids have fewer behavioral issues. Parents have more employment options,” he said.

The University has also attempted to address this issue through its urban research center 21st Century Cities Initiative (21CC). Mac McComas, a program manager at the 21CC, mentioned how in 2015, the University created HopkinsLocal, which aims to connect local Baltimore residents with economic opportunities and invest in local and minority-owned businesses.

Furr-Holden praised the University’s efforts to address the city’s continued racial divide through elevating partnerships with communities, noting her appreciation for the institution’s acknowledgment of its role in perpetuating inequity. While she is optimistic, Furr-Holden explained that Baltimore residents are the only ones who can say when Hopkins has done enough to rectify its past.

“Is it enough? I don’t know,“ she said. “I think to answer that question, we have to ask the community.”

Nneka Nnamdi stressed the importance of centering the Baltimore community going forward.

“We know that people with the lived experience of a particular problem will have the most sustainable and equitable solution to it,” she said.

DISDAINED ATTITUDE

The G.I. Bill

Originally, GI stood for “Galvanized Iron”, the primary material used to make military items, i.e. buckets. However, as the military grew and evolved over time, GI took on multiple meanings, including “Government Issue”, “General Issue”, and even “Ground Infantry”.

Roosevelt on June 22, 1944, this act, also known as the G.I. Bill, provided World War II veterans with funds for college education, unemployment insurance, and housing. It put higher education within the reach of millions of veterans of WWII and later military conflicts.

While World War II was still being fought, the Department of Labor estimated that, after the war, 15 million men and women who had been serving in the armed services would be unemployed. To reduce the possibility of postwar depression brought on by widespread unemployment, the National Resources Planning Board, a White House agency, studied postwar manpower needs as early as 1942 and in June 1943 recommended a series of programs for education and training.

The American Legion designed the main features of what became the Serviceman’s Readjustment Act and pushed it through Congress. The bill unanimously passed both chambers of Congress in the spring of 1944. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed it into law on June 22, 1944, just days after the D-day invasion of Normandy.

“The GI Bill of Rights,” as it was called, offered Federal aid to help veterans adjust to civilian life in the areas of hospitalization, purchase of homes and businesses, and especially, education. This act provided tuition, subsistence, books and supplies, equipment, and counseling services for veterans to continue their education in school or college.

Unfortunately, not all veterans were able to take advantage of the benefits of the G.I. Bill. Black vets were often unable to get bank loans for mortgages in Black neighborhoods, and they faced prejudice and discrimination that overwhelmingly excluded them from buying homes in “white” suburban neighborhoods. This practice helped produce the wealth gap between white and black Americans. The program expired in 1956.

How the GI Bill’s Promise Was Denied to a Million Black WWII Veterans

When Eugene Burnett saw the neat tract houses of Levittown, New York, he knew he wanted to buy one. It was 1949, and he was ready to settle down in a larger home with his family. The newly established Long Island suburb seemed like the perfect place to begin their postwar life—one that, he hoped, would be improved with the help of the GI Bill, a piece of sweeping legislation aimed at helping World War II veterans like Burnett prosper after the war.

But when he spoke with a salesman about buying the house using a GI Bill-guaranteed mortgage, the door to suburban life in Levittown slammed firmly in his face. The suburb wasn’t open to Black residents.

“It was as though it wasn’t real,” Burnett’s wife, Bernice, recalled. “Look at this house! Can you imagine having this? And then for them to tell me because of the color of my skin that I can’t be part of i

The Burnetts weren’t the only Black Americans for whom the promise of the GI Bill turned out to be an illusion. Though the bill helped white Americans prosper and accumulate wealth in the postwar years, it didn’t deliver on that promise for veterans of color. In fact, the wide disparity in the bill’s implementation ended up helping drive growing gaps in wealth, education, and civil rights between white and Black Americans.

While the GI Bill’s language did not specifically exclude African-American veterans from its benefits, it was structured in a way that ultimately shut doors for the 1.2 million Black veterans who had bravely served their country during World War II, in segregated ranks.

Fear of Black Advancement

Since southern states were home to 79% of returning black veterans, some Southern Democrats feared that returning Black veterans would use public sympathy for veterans to advocate against Jim Crow laws. To make sure the GI Bill largely benefited white people, the southern Democrats drew on tactics they had previously used to ensure that the New Deal helped as few Black people as possible.

During the drafting of the law, the chair of the House Veterans Committee, Mississippi Congressman John Rankin, played hardball and insisted that the program be administered by individual states instead of the federal government. He got his way. Rankin was known for his virulent racism: He defended segregation, opposed interracial marriage, and even proposed legislation to confine, then deport, every person with Japanese heritage during World War II.

When the bill came to a committee vote, he stonewalled in an attempt to gut another provision that entitled all veterans to $20 a week of unemployment compensation for a year. Rankin knew this would represent a significant gain for Black Southerners, so he refused to cast a critical proxy vote in protest. The American Legion ended up tracking down the Congressman who had left his proxy vote with Rankin and flew him to Washington to break the deadlock.

The GI Bill’s Effect on Black Veterans

From the start, Black veterans had trouble securing the GI Bill’s benefits. Some could not access benefits because they had not been given an honorable discharge—and a much larger number of Black veterans were discharged dishonorably than their white counterparts.

Veterans who did qualify could not find facilities that were delivered on the bill’s promise. Black veterans in a vocational training program at a segregated high school in Indianapolis were unable to participate in activities related to plumbing, electricity, and printing because adequate equipment was only available to white students.

Simple intimidation kept others from enjoying GI Bill benefits. In 1947, for example, a crowd hurled rocks at Black veterans as they moved into a Chicago housing development. Thousands of Black veterans were attacked in the years following World War II and some were singled out and lynched.

Though Rankin had lost the battle to exclude Black men from VA unemployment insurance, it was doled out inequitably. Men who applied for unemployment benefits were kicked out of the program if any other work was available to them, even work that provided less than subsistence wages. Southern postmasters were even accused of refusing to deliver the forms Black veterans needed to fill out to receive their unemployment benefits.

Black veterans and civil rights groups protested their treatment, calling for protections like Black involvement in the VA and non-discriminatory loans, but the racial disparities in the implementation of the GI Bill had already been set into motion. As the years went on, white veterans flowed into newly created suburbs, where they began amassing wealth in skilled positions. But Black veterans lacked those options. The majority of skilled jobs were given to white workers.

A White Post-War Housing Boom—And Redlining in Black Neighborhoods

The postwar housing boom almost entirely excluded Black Americans, most of whom remained in cities that received less and less investment from businesses and banks.

Though the GI Bill guaranteed low-interest mortgages and other loans, they were not administered by the VA itself. Thus, the VA could cosign, but not actually guarantee the loans. This gave white-run financial institutions free rein to refuse mortgages and loans to Black people.

Redlining—a decades-old practice of marking maps by race to characterize the risks of lending money and providing insurance—made purchasing a home even more difficult for Black veterans. Lenders froze out poorer neighborhoods, ensuring that loan assistance and insurance would be denied. And new white suburbs often came with overtly racist covenants that denied entry to Black people.

In 1947, only 2 of the more than 3,200 VA-guaranteed home loans in 13 Mississippi cities went to Black borrowers. “These impediments were not confined to the South,” notes historian Ira Katznelson. “In New York and the northern New Jersey suburbs, fewer than 100 of the 67,000 mortgages insured by the GI bill supported home purchases by non-whites.”

Failure to Receive GI Bill Education Benefits

Black veterans in search of the education they had been guaranteed fared no better. Many Black men returning home from the war didn’t even try to take advantage of the bill’s educational benefits—they could not afford to spend time in school instead of working. But those who did were at a considerable disadvantage compared to their white counterparts. Public education provided poor preparation for Black students, and many lacked much educational attainment at all due to poverty and social pressures.

As veteran applications flooded universities, Black students often found themselves left out. Northern universities dragged their feet when it came to admitting Black students, and Southern colleges barred Black students entirely. And the VA itself encouraged Black veterans to apply for vocational training instead of university admission and arbitrarily denied educational benefits to some students.

Those students who did try to attend college found doors closed at every turn. A full 95 percent of Black veterans were shunted off to Black colleges—institutions that were underfunded and overwhelmed by the influx of new students. Most were unaccredited, and with a massive influx of applicants, they had to turn away tens of thousands of veterans.

“Though Congress granted all soldiers the same benefits theoretically,” writes historian Hilary Herbold, “the segregationist principles of almost every institution of higher learning effectively disbarred a huge proportion of Black veterans from earning a college degree.”

The GI Bill and the Racial Wealth Gap

The original GI Bill ended in July 1956. By that time, nearly 8 million World War II veterans had received education or training, and 4.3 million home loans worth $33 billion had been handed out. But most Black veterans had been left behind. As employment, college attendance and wealth surged for whites, disparities with their Black counterparts not only continued but widened. There was, writes Katznelson, “no greater instrument for widening an already huge racial gap in postwar America than the GI Bill.”

Jim Crow Legislation

The roots of Jim Crow laws began as early as 1865, immediately following the ratification of the 13th Amendment , which abolished slavery in the United States.

Jim Crow laws were a collection of state and local statutes that legalized racial segregation. Named after a Black minstrel show character, the laws—which existed for about 100 years, from the post-Civil War era until 1968—were meant to marginalize African Americans by denying them the right to vote, hold jobs, get an education, or other opportunities. Those who attempted to defy Jim Crow laws often faced arrest, fines, jail sentences, violence, and death.

Black Laws

Black codes were strictly local and state laws that detailed when, where, and how formerly enslaved people could work, and for how much compensation. The codes appeared throughout the South as a legal way to put Black citizens into indentured servitude, to take voting rights away, to control where they lived and how they traveled, and to seize children for labor purposes.

The end of the Civil War marked the end of slavery for 4 million black Southerners. But the war also left them landless and with little money to support themselves. White Southerners, seeking to control the freedmen (former slaves), devised special state law codes. Many Northerners saw these codes as blatant attempts to restore slavery.

Five days after the Civil War ended, President Abraham Lincoln was shot. He died on April 15, 1865, and Vice President Andrew Johnson assumed the presidency. The task of reuniting the nation fell on his shoulders. A Southerner, Johnson favored readmitting the Southern states as quickly as possible into the Union. He appointed military governors who held complete power in the former Confederate states until new civilian governments could be organized.

White Southerners resented being ruled by Union military governors and Freedmen’s Bureau officials. They sought to restore self-rule. During the summer and fall of 1865, most of the old Confederate states held constitutional conventions. President Johnson’s reconstruction plan permitted only white persons to vote for convention delegates or to participate in the framing of the new state governments. Not surprisingly, none of the state conventions considered extending the right to vote to freedmen. South Carolina’s provisional governor declared at his state constitutional convention that “this is a white man’s government.”

The newly formed state legislatures quickly authorized many needed public projects and the taxes to pay for them. Among these projects was the creation, for the first time in the South, of free public education. But the public schools excluded black children.

The state legislatures also began to pass laws limiting the freedom of former slaves. These laws mirrored those of colonial times, which placed severe restrictions on both slaves and emancipated blacks. Neither of these groups could vote, serve on juries, travel freely, or work in occupations of their choice. Even their marriages were outside the law.

The legal system was stacked against Black citizens, with former Confederate soldiers working as police and judges, making it difficult for African Americans to win court cases and ensure they were subject to Black codes.

These codes worked in conjunction with labor camps for the incarcerated, where prisoners were treated as enslaved people. Black offenders typically received longer sentences than their white equals, and because of the grueling work, often did not live out their entire sentence.

Education: Separate but Equal:

Plessy v. Ferguson was a landmark 1896 decision that upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation under the “separate but equal” doctrine. … As a result, restrictive Jim Crow legislation and separate public accommodations based on race became commonplace.

This decision was overturned because it violated the 14th amendment as proven in the case Brown vs Board of Education; however, the practice of separation remained for 100 years.

Black Code applied only to “persons of color,” defined as including anyone with more than one-eighth Negro blood.

Its major features included the following:

1. Civil Rights

The Southern Black Codes defined the rights of freedmen. They mainly restricted their rights. But the codes did grant black persons a few more civil rights than they possessed before the Civil War. South Carolina’s code declared that “persons of color” now had the right “to acquire, own and dispose of property; to make contracts; to enjoy the fruits of their labor; to sue and be sued, and to receive protection under the law in their persons and property.” Also, for the first time, the law recognized the marriages of black persons and the legitimacy of their children. But the law went on to state that, “Marriage between a white person and a person of color shall be illegal and void.”

2. Labor Contracts

The South Carolina code included a contract form for black “servants” who agreed to work for white “masters.” The form required that the wages and the term of service be in writing. The contract had to be witnessed and then approved by a judge. Other provisions of the code listed the rights and obligations of the servant and master. Black servants had to reside on the employer’s property, remain quiet and orderly, work from sunup to sunset except on Sundays, and not leave the premises or receive visitors without the master’s permission. Masters could “moderately” whip servants under 18 to discipline them. Whipping older servants required a judge’s order. Time lost due to illness would be deducted from the servant’s wages. Servants who quit before the end date of their labor contract forfeited their wages and could be arrested and returned to their masters by a judge’s order. On the other hand, the law protected black servants from being forced to do “unreasonable” tasks.

3. Vagrancy

All Southern Black Codes relied on vagrancy laws to pressure freedmen to sign labor contracts. South Carolina’s code did not limit these laws to unemployed persons but included others such as peddlers and gamblers. The code provided that vagrants could be arrested and imprisoned at hard labor. But the county sheriff could “hire out” black vagrants to a white employer to work off their punishment. The courts customarily waived such punishment for white vagrants, allowing them to take an oath of poverty instead.

4. Apprenticeship

Southern Black Codes provided another source of labor for white employers—black orphans and the children of vagrants or other destitute parents. The South Carolina code authorized courts to apprentice such black children, even against their will, to an employer until age 21 for males and 18 for females. Masters had the right to inflict moderate punishment on their apprentices and to recapture runaways. But the code also required masters to provide food and clothing to their apprentices, teach them a trade, and send them to school.

5. Courts, Crimes, and Punishments

South Carolina’s Black Code established a racially separate court system for all civil and criminal cases that involved a black plaintiff or defendant. It allowed black witnesses to testify in court, but only in cases affecting “the person or property of a person of color.” Crimes that whites believed freedmen might commit, such as rebellion, arson, burglary, and assaulting a white woman, carried harsh penalties. Most of these crimes carried the death penalty for blacks, but not for whites. Punishments for minor offenses committed by blacks could result in “hiring out” or whipping, penalties rarely imposed on white lawbreakers.

6. Other Restrictions

South Carolina’s code reflected the white obsession with controlling the former slaves. It banned black people from possessing most firearms, making or selling liquor, and coming into the state without first posting a bond for “good behavior.” The code made it illegal for them to sell any farm products without written permission from their white employer, supposedly to guard against stealing. Also, blacks could not practice any occupation, except farmer or servant under contract, without getting an annual license from a judge.

The legal system must be reformed by stopping police brutality, ending ‘qualified enmity,’ selecting trial jurors that reflect peers of the plaintiff, holding accountable those responsible for the death and violation of civil rights against black people. STOPOVER SENTENCING AND MANDATE that INNOCENT INMATES RECEIVE MONETARY reward for false imprisonate.

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Discriminatory laws and practices