"Friday is the 70th anniversary of the Montgomery bus boycott, which began because Rosa Parks refused to relinquish her seat to a white person, as required by law. While her brave act brought national attention to the civil rights movement and triggered student sit-ins to end segregation across the south, it also subjected her and her husband, Raymond, to constant death threats."
"Nonetheless, the city was permeated by a quieter but no less pernicious type of racism: racist policies, which are any written or unwritten laws and processes that produce or sustain racial inequity. In my book Plundered: How Racist Policies Undermine Black Homeownership in America, I demonstrate how racial covenants, redlining, urban renewal, blockbusting, predatory mortgage lending and racialized property tax administration have stymied the Black community."
Rosa Parks's refusal to give up her seat sparked the Montgomery bus boycott and led to death threats that prompted her and her husband to move to Detroit in 1957. Black Detroit residents did not face segregated seating but faced entrenched racist policies that produced racial inequity. Racial covenants confined Black people to ghettos and blocked access to suburbs with better schools and housing. Beginning in the 1930s, the Federal Housing Administration redlined neighborhoods with covenants, denying mortgages and home repair loans. Urban renewal, blockbusting, predatory mortgage lending, and racially biased property tax administration further stymied Black homeownership and wealth accumulation.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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