August 9, 2023
Project identifies thousands of racially discriminatory housing covenants
The University of Washington’s Racial Restrictive Covenants Project, led by James Gregory, a professor of history, an uncovered more than 40,000 property deeds in Western Washington containing racially discriminatory language. A team of UW students and nearly 800 volunteers identified these deeds through are investigation of racial covenants in King, Pierce, Snohomish, Whatcom and Thurston counties via research, data management and community outreach.
The Washington state legislature authorized and funded this project in 2021 to find and map neighborhoods where property deeds contained racial covenants. Racial covenants at the time prevented people who were not white from buying or occupying land. These covenants are no longer enforced, but created racially segregated cities that reserved more “desirable” areas for white people, the impacts of which are still felt today.