Unjust deeds : the restrictive covenant cases and the making of the civil rights movement

In 1945, six African American families from St. Louis, Detroit, and Washington, D.C., began a desperate fight to keep their homes. Each of them had purchased a property that prohibited the occupancy of African Americans and other minority groups through the use of legal instruments called racial restrictive covenants--one of the most pervasive tools of residential segregation in the aftermath of World War II. Over the next three years, local activists and lawyers at the NAACP fought through the nation's courts to end the enforcement of these discriminatory contracts. Unjust Deeds explores the origins and complex legacies of their dramatic campaign, culminating in a landmark Supreme Court victory in Shelley v. Kraemer (1948). Restoring this story to its proper place in the history of the black freedom struggle, Jeffrey D. Gonda's groundbreaking study provides a critical vantage point to the simultaneously personal, local, and national dimensions of legal activism in the twentieth century and offers a new understanding of the evolving legal fight against Jim Crow in neighborhoods and courtrooms across America. 'Unjust Deeds' explores the history of an often overlooked civil rights milestone: the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in Shelley v. Kraemer (1948). In a group of cases from St. Louis, Detroit, and Washington, D.C., six African American families challenged the hardening boundaries of the nation's racial ghettos as they fought desperately to hold onto their homes. Aided by the NAACP and local civil rights attorneys, they attacked the legal legitimacy of racial restrictive covenants, one of the most pervasive instruments of residential segregation in the 1940s. Their campaign culminated in a unanimous Supreme Court victory that left the struggle for justice under the law forever transformed. 'Unjust Deeds' explores the origins and complex legacies of the covenant cases and reveals how the campaign against housing discrimination helped to reshape the post-war nation In 1945, six African American families from St. Louis, Detroit, and Washington, D.C., began a desperate fight to keep their homes. Each of them had purchased a property that prohibited the occupancy of African Americans and other minority groups through the use of legal instruments called racial restrictive covenants--one of the most pervasive tools of residential segregation in the aftermath of World War II. Over the next three years, local activists and lawyers at the NAACP fought through the nation's courts to end the enforcement of these discriminatory contracts. __Unjust Deeds____Shelley v. Kraemer__