Segregation's Legacy

Fifty years after the Fair Housing Act was signed, America is nearly as segregated as when President Lyndon Johnson signed the law.

By Joseph P. Williams Staff WriterApril 20, 2018, at 6:00 a.m.

IT WAS DESIGNED AS BOTH an antidote to rampant housing discrimination under Jim Crow and a path for African-Americans from the ghetto to the middle class.

It swept through Congress and landed on President Lyndon B. Johnson's desk just days after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King – and as urban neighborhoods, where days of rioting erupted on news of King's murder, still smoldered.

Before signing the Fair Housing Act of 1968 into law, Johnson called it "among the proudest [moments] of my presidency." Because of it, he predicted, "Negro families [will] no longer suffer the humiliation of being turned away because of their race."

Then, reality set in: Uneven enforcement, deep-seated, cultural bias and the bill's own flaws allowed bigoted mortgage bankers and unscrupulous landlords to preserve – and profit from – the status quo.

Now, a half century after the Fair Housing Act became a civil-rights landmark, multiple studies show housing in America is nearly as segregated as it was when LBJ enacted a law designed to eliminate it. Study after study shows African-Americans still lag far behind whites in home ownership, a key asset in building middle-class wealth.

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https://www.usnews.com/news/the-report/articles/2018-04-20/us-is-still-segregated-even-after-fair-housing-act