Shelley v. Kraemer - Chicago's Restrictive Real Estate Covenants

The term "restrictive real estate covenants" might seem dry, but the term signifies a highly dramatic aspect in the history of segregation. Wendy Plotkin studied covenants designed to keep African Americans out of suburban Chicago neighborhoods, and noted that a number of respected institutions, including local YMCAs and the University of Chicago, upheld the practice.

One of the first significant challenges to the covenants came from a local African American Republican leader, NAACP member, and real-estate developer Carl Hansberry, who in 1937 bought a home in all-white Washington Park. Hansberry's daughter Lorraine, two-years-old at the time, would later grow up and write Raisin in the Sun (1959), a memoir which recorded the challenges her family faced as it integrated Washington Park.

Raisin in the Sun, which became a film starring Sidney Poitier, was not the only important work inspired by the efforts to integrate Chicago's neighborhoods. Noted African American poet Langston Hughes wrote a poem entitled "Restrictive Covenants," and the subject of Chicago's restrictive covenants figured heavily in An American Dilemma by Gunnar Myrdal, a significant work of sociology.