Preface
Book-in-progress last updated on 17 Feb 2024
+Book-in-progress last updated on 29 Feb 2024
On The Line, an open-access digital book, makes visible the hidden history of schooling and housing boundaries that divided metropolitan Hartford, Connecticut, and tells the stories of everyday families and civil rights activists who seek to cross over, redraw, or erase these lines.
Feedback and corrections on this book-in-progress are welcome by email to the lead author, or GitHub users can submit a pull request to our repository.
This text of this book is copyrighted by the authors and freely distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. You may re-use and modify our text for non-commercial purposes, with a source credit to: OnTheLine.trincoll.edu by Jack Dougherty and contributors. Similarly, our interactive charts and maps in this book are copyrighted by Jack Dougherty and contributors, and freely shared under an MIT license, with the open source code available at our GitHub repository. You may re-use and modify our charts, maps, and code, with an acknowledgement to: OnTheLine.trincoll.edu by Jack Dougherty and contributors. Learn how to work with GitHub and create your own charts and maps in Hands-On Data Visualization by Jack Dougherty and Ilya Ilyankou.
diff --git a/docs/install.html b/docs/install.html index 36c144c..82f31b7 100644 --- a/docs/install.html +++ b/docs/install.html @@ -24,7 +24,7 @@ - + diff --git a/docs/introduction.html b/docs/introduction.html index d5ba316..8560afb 100644 --- a/docs/introduction.html +++ b/docs/introduction.html @@ -24,7 +24,7 @@ - + diff --git a/docs/investigating.html b/docs/investigating.html index f59ff71..e096ddf 100644 --- a/docs/investigating.html +++ b/docs/investigating.html @@ -24,7 +24,7 @@ - + diff --git a/docs/jumping.html b/docs/jumping.html index 568f01c..0b35756 100644 --- a/docs/jumping.html +++ b/docs/jumping.html @@ -24,7 +24,7 @@ - + diff --git a/docs/lending.html b/docs/lending.html index 18b1aa8..933c56e 100644 --- a/docs/lending.html +++ b/docs/lending.html @@ -24,7 +24,7 @@ - + diff --git a/docs/mapping-publishing.html b/docs/mapping-publishing.html index 109aa10..446971f 100644 --- a/docs/mapping-publishing.html +++ b/docs/mapping-publishing.html @@ -24,7 +24,7 @@ - + diff --git a/docs/mobilizing.html b/docs/mobilizing.html index c05d02b..e47240c 100644 --- a/docs/mobilizing.html +++ b/docs/mobilizing.html @@ -24,7 +24,7 @@ - + diff --git a/docs/oral-history-consent.html b/docs/oral-history-consent.html index 02acde8..590a9ba 100644 --- a/docs/oral-history-consent.html +++ b/docs/oral-history-consent.html @@ -24,7 +24,7 @@ - + diff --git a/docs/origins-zoning.html b/docs/origins-zoning.html index d74db17..9c80f40 100644 --- a/docs/origins-zoning.html +++ b/docs/origins-zoning.html @@ -24,7 +24,7 @@ - + diff --git a/docs/outline.html b/docs/outline.html index f7dca79..1cc2aa9 100644 --- a/docs/outline.html +++ b/docs/outline.html @@ -24,7 +24,7 @@ - + diff --git a/docs/public-housing.html b/docs/public-housing.html index a4d7dcd..9b70c77 100644 --- a/docs/public-housing.html +++ b/docs/public-housing.html @@ -24,7 +24,7 @@ - + diff --git a/docs/restricting.html b/docs/restricting.html index a75b485..3c7ff0d 100644 --- a/docs/restricting.html +++ b/docs/restricting.html @@ -24,7 +24,7 @@ - + @@ -261,10 +261,10 @@The Rise of Racial Covenants2.17. In some suburban towns, given the large number of homes built during this period, the percentage with racial covenants can be relatively small. In Manchester, only 248 out of approximately 7,100 (3.5 percent) residential building lots approved by town officials between 1910-1950 included racial covenants. In West Hartford, only 190 homes out of approximately 3020 (6 percent) buildings constructed during the 1940s had racial covenants. Overall, despite the shocking existence of White-only covenants, many Connecticut suburbs relied more on other types of government-sponsored discrimination – such as federal lending policies, public housing barriers, and exclusionary zoning ordinances – to restrict non-White and low-income residents.53
-
-Figure 2.17: View the table and calculations, by Jack Dougherty, June Gold, and David Ware.
+Figure 2.17: View the table and calculations, by Jack Dougherty, June Gold, and David Ware.
-Figure 2.17: View the table and calculations, by Jack Dougherty, June Gold, and David Ware. +Figure 2.17: View the table and calculations, by Jack Dougherty, June Gold, and David Ware.
Compared to Connecticut, restrictive covenants were more common in other US cities, with some estimates of properties with racial restrictions ranging as high as 80 percent. Public history project teams have uncovered evidence and sparked action, according to the National Covenants Research Coalition, including those shown in Figure 2.18. One of the earliest to launch online was the Segregated Seattle project in 2005, where researchers have found White-only and anti-Jewish clauses in over 30,000 property deeds in King County to date, plus 20,000 more in other counties in Washington state. Their work pushed state legislators to approve a 2006 law to encourage homeowners to strike out racist covenants in the public record, and a 2023 law to provide compensation for victims. In the Minneapolis-St. Paul region, the Mapping Prejudice project began to document restrictive covenants in 2016 and has found over 30,000 restrictive property deeds to date. Researchers showed that current prices of Minnesota homes with racial covenants are 4 to 15 percent higher than identical homes without covenants. The Chicago Covenants project has already found over 100,000 properties with restrictive covenants, after searching about 20 percent of the city’s land records, and expects to find more as estimates of White-only property restrictions in that city range from 50 to 80 percent. In St. Louis, Missouri, the Dividing The City project found racial restrictions in about 80 percent of homes built in St. Louis county by 1950.54
diff --git a/docs/richest.html b/docs/richest.html index a9e5cd4..deb1e46 100644 --- a/docs/richest.html +++ b/docs/richest.html @@ -24,7 +24,7 @@ - + diff --git a/docs/search_index.json b/docs/search_index.json index 52fcaf9..cd4274a 100644 --- a/docs/search_index.json +++ b/docs/search_index.json @@ -1 +1 @@ -[["index.html", "On The Line: How Schooling, Housing, and Civil Rights Shaped Hartford and its Suburbs Preface", " On The Line: How Schooling, Housing, and Civil Rights Shaped Hartford and its Suburbs Jack Dougherty and contributors 2024-02-17 Preface Book-in-progress last updated on 17 Feb 2024 On The Line, an open-access digital book, makes visible the hidden history of schooling and housing boundaries that divided metropolitan Hartford, Connecticut, and tells the stories of everyday families and civil rights activists who seek to cross over, redraw, or erase these lines. Feedback and corrections on this book-in-progress are welcome by email to the lead author, or GitHub users can submit a pull request to our repository. This text of this book is copyrighted by the authors and freely distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. You may re-use and modify our text for non-commercial purposes, with a source credit to: OnTheLine.trincoll.edu by Jack Dougherty and contributors. Similarly, our interactive charts and maps in this book are copyrighted by Jack Dougherty and contributors, and freely shared under an MIT license, with the open source code available at our GitHub repository. You may re-use and modify our charts, maps, and code, with an acknowledgement to: OnTheLine.trincoll.edu by Jack Dougherty and contributors. Learn how to work with GitHub and create your own charts and maps in Hands-On Data Visualization by Jack Dougherty and Ilya Ilyankou. Other images and videos in this book include a caption stating if the original is copyrighted by its creator. "],["about-the-book.html", "About the Book", " About the Book On The Line tells the story of schooling and housing boundaries that shaped American metropolitan life over the past century, and also the civil rights struggles of families and activists to cross over, redraw, or erase these powerful lines. Set in the city of Hartford, Connecticut, and its emerging suburbs, the book explains how this metropolitan area became one of the most racially and economically polarized regions in the northeastern United States. The story highlights how government, business, and white middle-class families drew lines to distance themselves from others, and the evolving coalitions that have sought to reform the relationship between private housing and public education. This digital-first book was designed for the open web. The narrative is wrapped around digital evidence—including interactive maps, videos, and documents—to make hidden boundaries more visible, and to amplify the voices of people who challenged these lines. On The Line is best read in your web browser, where readers may fully explore the evidence, follow links to related sources, and connect with the author and other readers through comments. In addition to the web edition, the same text (with static images and links) also appears in the downloadable e-book versions, and an inexpensive print edition to come. In an open-access book, history becomes more widely available to the public, without barriers of price or permissions. As educators, we believe that knowledge becomes more valuable when it is easily discoverable and accessible, not hidden behind password-protected paywalls. Moreover, the liberating power of history—and civil rights history in particular—should be freely available, especially for the communities of people who lived these stories. Anyone may freely read this book online or download it from the web, and after it is completed, purchase or borrow a low-cost paperback edition. Written for the liberal arts, the book blends interdisciplinary scholarship with highly-engaged student learning. It draws on the fields of history, social sciences, and policy analysis in urban America, and more than a decade of collaborative research with undergraduate students, faculty, staff, and community partners at Trinity College. Rather than simply report our results, we describe our discovery process, so that others may expand upon, or even challenge our findings, in future works. We also strived to explain new concepts and make the text accessible for younger students and residents of the Hartford region. In sum, On The Line blends the best aspects of conventional publishing and web innovation. The main narrative still looks and feels like a scholarly book, divided into chapters and backed up by endnotes. But the web platform allows us to embed digital evidence on the page, and to link directly to external resources located elsewhere. As a result, this book delivers a more comprehensive, coherent, and connected work of scholarship than what was previously possible in print-only publications, or scattered online journal articles and blog posts, at no cost to the reader. Flip the page—in whatever format you prefer—and find out for yourself. "],["how-to-read-and-cite.html", "How to Read and Cite", " How to Read and Cite This open-access book-in-progress is freely available on the web at http://ontheline.trincoll.edu. The web edition allows readers to fully experience the interactive maps, video clips, and clickable source links. Any modern web browser will display the book, but readers may prefer larger screens (desktop, laptop, tablet) over smaller screens (such as smartphones). In your web browser, try these toolbar features near the top of the page: Menu Search Font to adjust text size and display View source code on GitHub Download PDF Shortcuts (arrow keys to navigate; s to toggle sidebar; f to toggle search) Social Media Share How to Cite For general citations of the book-in-progress, see these samples of common academic styles: Chicago-style footnote or endnote: Jack Dougherty and contributors, On the Line: How Schooling, Housing, and Civil Rights Shaped Hartford and Its Suburbs (Trinity College, book-in-progress, 2021), http://ontheline.trincoll.edu. Chicago-style bibliography entry: Dougherty, Jack, and contributors. On the Line: How Schooling, Housing, and Civil Rights Shaped Hartford and Its Suburbs. Trinity College, book-in-progress, 2021. http://ontheline.trincoll.edu. MLA bibliography entry (with web address): Dougherty, Jack, and contributors. On the Line: How Schooling, Housing, and Civil Rights Shaped Hartford and Its Suburbs. Trinity College, book-in-progress, 2021. Web. http://ontheline.trincoll.edu/. APA reference entry: Dougherty, J., & contributors. (2021). On the Line: How Schooling, Housing, and Civil Rights Shaped Hartford and Its Suburbs. Trinity College, book-in-progress. Retrieved from http://ontheline.trincoll.edu To cite a specific passage, insert the author/title/web address of the relevant chapter as a “book section” in your preferred citation style. Since the web edition does not include page numbers, include the chapter-level web address to point readers to the specific page. Sample Chicago-style note for a specific chapter: Elaina Rollins, Clarissa Ceglio, and Jack Dougherty, “Writing Greater Hartford’s Civil Rights Past with ConnecticutHistory.org,” in On The Line: How Schooling, Housing, and Civil Rights Shaped Hartford and its Suburbs (Trinity College, book-in-progress, 2021), https://ontheline.trincoll.edu/writing. What if web links break? All past and present editions of On The Line include the stable web address (http://OnTheLine.trincoll.edu), which redirects readers to the current version of the book. The web edition of the book also includes internal links to different pages within the book (e.g. selected chapters, bibliography, etc.) If any internal links break, this platform has been set up to automatically redirect readers to the book’s home page. The book also contains external links (such as endnotes that refer to other articles, books, or websites). Whenever possible, external links point to open-access sources. When only paywall-protected sources are available, external links may include a web address specific to readers on the Trinity College network. If any external links break, each endnote contains a full citation and external web address, which readers may search in the “Way Back Machine” at (http://archive.org) to see the most recent version of this site. Donate to the Internet Archive, the non-profit organization that maintains this valuable collection of our digital history as a free public service. "],["authors.html", "Authors and Contributors", " Authors and Contributors While teaching and researching this book at Trinity College, over 25 undergraduate students have co-authored publications or co-presented conference papers with the lead author. Several also were invited to co-author chapters or make other significant contributions to this publication, and are listed below. Lead Author Jack Dougherty, the lead author of On The Line, is Professor of Educational Studies at Trinity College. He collaborates with students, colleagues, and community partners by using digital history and data visualization to explore cities, suburbs, schools, and housing in metropolitan Hartford, Connecticut. Contact him on his faculty profile page or his personal site https://jackdougherty.org. Co-Authors Jasmin Agosto (Trinity College Class of 2010 with bachelor’s degree in American Studies and Educational Studies) co-authored Mobilizing Against Racial Steering and Redlining, and also researched 18th-19th century school documents, and decades of school residency cases. Photo by Seth Markle. Clarissa Ceglio co-authored Writing Greater Hartford’s Civil Rights Past with ConnecticutHistory.org Ilya Ilyankou (Trinity College Class of 2018 with bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and Studio Arts) developed several interactive maps in this book. His open-source code and map links are available at our GitHub public repository: http://github.com/OnTheLine/. Vianna Iorio (Trinity College Class of 2019 with double major in Educational Studies and English) co-authored Restricting with Property Covenants, Mobilizing Against Racial Steering and Redlining, Jumping the School District Line, and more chapters to come. Katie Campbell Levasseur (Trinity College Class of 2011 with bachelor’s degree in Educational Studies and Mathematics) conducted restrictive covenant property records research and co-authored How We Found Restrictive Covenants. June Gold co-authored Restricting with Property Covenants and How We Found Restrictive Covenants. JiYun (Lisa) Lee (Trinity College Class of 2017 with bachelor’s degree in Educational Studies and Psychology) co-authored Jumping the School District Line. Shaun McGann (Trinity College Class of 2014 with bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Urban Studies) co-authored Federal Lending and Redlining. Emily Meehan (Trinity College Class of 2016 with bachelor’s degree in Educational Studies) co-authored Racial Barriers to Public Housing Elaina Rollins (Trinity College Class of 2016 with bachelor’s degree in Educational Studies) co-authored Writing Greater Hartford’s Civil Rights Past with ConnecticutHistory.org Candace Simpson (Trinity College Class of 2012 with bachelor’s degree in Educational Studies) co-authored Who Owns Oral History? A Creative Commons Solution and conducted oral history interviews on restrictive property covenants and Sheff v. O’Neill. David K. Ware co-authored Restricting with Property Covenants and How We Found Restrictive Covenants. Tracey M. Wilson (Trinity College Class of 1976) co-authored Restricting with Property Covenants. See related chapters in her 2018 open-access book, Life in West Hartford,(http://lifeinwesthartford.org). More co-authors to come… Additional contributors Staff and students at MAGIC, the Map and Geographic Information Center at the University of Connecticut Libraries, co-created the first edition of interactive maps for this book, with support from a National Endowment for the Humanities grant in 2010-11. Michael Howser, Project Director and Map Interface Development Curtis Denton, Project Management and Interface Design Cary Lynch, Map Interface Development and Interface Design Bill Miller, Aerial Photography Digitization Project Manager Tom Bachant, Map Interface Development George Bentley, Shapefile and KML Development Jonathan Pollak, Shapefile and KML Development Benjamin Spaulding, Dual Map Interface WMS Code Development Josh Strunk, Aerial Photography Mosaic and Digitization Other books by Jack Dougherty Hands-On Data Visualization: Interactive Storytelling from Spreadsheets to Code, with Ilya Ilyankou. O’Reilly Media, 2021. This open-access publication is freely available online and for sale in print at http://HandsOnDataViz.org. Learn how to tell your story with data and use many of the tools we used to create interactive charts and maps for the On The Line, such as Chart.js and Leaflet map code templates on GitHub. Web Writing: Why and How for Liberal Arts Teaching and Learning, co-edited with Tennyson O’Donnell. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2015. This open-access publication is freely available online at http://WebWriting.trincoll.edu and for sale in print at https://www.press.umich.edu/8291956/web_writing.See also more than 1,000 comments by 70 readers and 4 expert reviewers commissioned by the publisher during the open peer review phase on the draft manuscript at https://webwriting2013.trincoll.edu/. Writing History in the Digital Age, co-edited with Kristen Nawrotzki. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2013. This open-access publication is freely available online and for sale in print at https://www.press.umich.edu/4766562/writing_history_in_the_digital_age.See also more than 940 comments by 65 readers and 4 expert reviewers commissioned by the publisher during the open peer review phase on the draft manuscript at http://WritingHistory.trincoll.edu. More Than One Struggle: The Evolution of Black School Reform in Milwaukee. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004, https://www.uncpress.org/book/9780807855249/more-than-one-struggle/. See also more than 60 oral history interviews donated to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Archives, and several that were included in the UWM Libraries March on Milwaukee digital history project. "],["acknowledgements.html", "Acknowledgements", " Acknowledgements TODO "],["introduction.html", "My Introduction to the Lines", " My Introduction to the Lines “Are you looking to buy a home?” came a voice from behind me. I turned around and faced a white man wearing a big smile. Somehow, he knew exactly what I was doing. “Just looking,” I replied. “Got a job interview tomorrow and I’m just looking around.” It was a warm Sunday afternoon in May 1999, on my first visit to the City of Hartford. I was standing on the sidewalk in front of a three-story house with a for-sale sign, on a street somewhere near the West End neighborhood, based on my limited knowledge of the city at that time. There was no open house, nor did I have an appointment to meet a real estate agent. I simply wanted to get out of my rental car and walk around to get a feel for this neighborhood. My hands held the real estate section of the Sunday newspaper and a city street map, which I had purchased at a nearby gas station about fifteen minutes earlier. “Hold on a second. My wife’s a Realtor. She’s right next door and I’ll bring her over.” The man walked back across the street, and returned a minute later with a woman. She introduced herself, mentioned that she happened to be visiting a client on this block, and asked what brought me to Hartford. I explained that I had a job interview the next day at Trinity College, located about two miles from where we stood, but was just looking around. What I also knew—but didn’t tell her—was that the search committee seemed interested in my application, it was very late in the academic hiring season, and if all went well and they offered me a job, they would expect a speedy reply. Time and money were tight for my partner Beth and me. She worked full-time, we had two young children, and I didn’t have a steady job. Leaving home to do another multi-day job interview was a major strain on our family life. That Sunday afternoon probably would be my only opportunity to scope out local housing opportunities in case we needed to make a quick decision about moving to Hartford. The real estate agent rattled off names of people we might know in common. But none of them were familiar to me, since I had not yet met anyone at the college or the city. She turned the conversation to ask what kind of home I was looking to buy. All of this was premature, I explained. The interview was not until Monday, and I didn’t know whether or not they would offer me the job. “Do you have children?” she asked. “Yes,” I replied. “Two kids, ages five and two.” “You might want to look on the other side of Farmington Avenue,” she suggested, pointing to a major street a couple of blocks north. The agent handed me her card, we exchanged goodbyes, and she departed in a car with her husband. I stood there on the sidewalk, dumbfounded, trying to make sense of what had just happened during my first half-hour in Hartford. This agent had gently steered my housing search based on what she had quickly learned about me as a white middle-class professional, and more importantly, as a parent of two school-age children. Somewhere down the street there was a line—not yet visible to me—but one that clearly stood out in this agent’s mind, and most likely in the minds of families living on opposite sides of it. Memories of that sidewalk encounter rolled around in my head over the next few days, weeks, and years. The job interview at Trinity was successful, but that opportunity forced my spouse and me to face several difficult decisions about moving our family to the Hartford region, a theme that we will return to later. While living and learning about the city and its suburbs, my eyes now sharply focused on the lines that differentiate where families reside and send their children to school. Boundaries that were once invisible to me now vibrantly stand out in my mind, while crossing over them on foot, bike, or car. At work I teach my students about the lines, and together we map them on computer screens, measure their influence, record their meaning in people’s lives, and write about what we learn to share with the public. Three types of questions—on the history, pedagogy, and policy of these lines—have captured my attention over the past fifteen years: Why did schooling and housing boundary lines become so influential in shaping US metropolitan life over the past century? How can we make these hidden lines more visible, and amplify the voices of people who challenged them, to educate future generations? What does the evolution of these boundaries, and different activists’ strategies to challenge them, tell us about our present-day policies? This book seeks to answer these questions in a format designed to invite readers like you into the story, to explore the evidence, pose your own questions, and perhaps share comments about the influence of these lines on each of our lives. "],["bridging.html", "Bridging the History Gap", " Bridging the History Gap On The Line is written for students and residents of the Hartford region, as well as for scholars of metropolitan history. On the local level, this work of public history weaves together two vitally important stories: the rise of increasingly rigid schooling and housing boundaries that shaped metropolitan Hartford over the past century, and the civil rights struggles of families and activists to cross over, redraw, or erase these powerful lines. To learn how the city of Hartford and its surrounding suburbs became one of the most racially and economically divided regions in the northeastern United States, the book traces how government, business, and white upper-class families drew boundary lines to distance themselves from others who they perceived as a threat to their position. Moreover, to make us wiser about future prospects for change, it explores how civil rights coalitions crafted different strategies over the decades to challenge and reshape boundary lines, with mixed success, in both the education and housing sectors. More people need to learn these stories about the partitioning of the Hartford region into different towns, school districts, attendance areas, and housing zones, which created disparate social worlds with dramatic differently odds for life outcomes. Whether people grew up or went to school on one side or the other, these divisive boundaries are part of our shared history. Living and learning on the lines have profoundly shaped all of us. For scholars, On The Line argues that we cannot understand the broader narrative of twentieth-century US history without the explanatory power of housing and schooling. Indeed, suburbanization was caused by multiple factors: job migration, interstate highways, tax policies, urban rebellions, and white flight. But this book argues that the dynamic relationship between housing and schooling played a central role in shaping places like Connecticut, which we have not fully understood because a prior generation of historians split these topics into separate bodies of literature, and essentially drew boundaries around these disciplinary subfields. On one side of this scholarly divide, urban and suburban historians (such as Arnold Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto, and Ken Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier) described how housing policies and racial discrimination fueled the post-World War II decline of cities and expansion of outlying suburbs, but schools did not play a meaningful role in their equation. On one side, educational historians who followed the lead of David Tyack (The One Best System) focused on the rise and fall of big-city school districts, yet paid little attention to their relationship with suburbs. Whereas most educational historians halted at the city line, urban and suburban historians generally stopped at the schoolhouse door.1 Arnold R Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago, 1940-1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983); Kenneth T Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985); David Tyack, The One Best System: A History of American Urban Education (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974). For an extended version of this historiographical argument, see Jack Dougherty, “Bridging the Gap Between Urban, Suburban, and Educational History,” in Rethinking the History of American Education, ed. William Reese and John Rury (New York: Palgrave MacMillan Press, 2007), 245–59, http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/5/.↩︎ "],["outline.html", "Outline of the Book", " Outline of the Book On The Line seeks to bridge this disciplinary divide by showing how the dynamic relationship between schooling and housing reshaped our cities and suburbs. During the immediate post-war years of mass suburban housing, public schools in many of these formerly rural towns were seen as inferior to the big-city districts, and a deterrent to outward migration. But in the late 1950s and ‘60s, a convergence of three groups—real estate industry, pro-suburban government, and white middle-class homebuyers—invested in suburban public schools, marketed them to private homes, and defended their attendance boundary lines. This schooling-housing convergence became more powerful in US families’ lives in the human capital market of the 1960s to today, when education credentials have become the most reliable means to transfer middle-class privilege to one’s children. Americans seeking upward mobility began to embrace what we recognize today as a familiar formula: buy a home in the right neighborhood, in order to send your children to a good school, to increase their odds of being accepted into a top-ranked college, to help them to land the perfect job. Moreover, wealth-based schooling and housing boundaries became a more legitimate way for upper-class white families to defend and pass on their privileges, without resorting to overtly racist boundaries of the past, while still distancing their children from other students perceived to be less desirable peers. America’s story of urban decline and suburban ascent, and civil rights struggles to challenge these inequalities, cannot be told without the interaction between two key ingredients— housing and schooling—and the boundary lines that bind them together. This book concentrates on the metropolitan Hartford story, and is divided into multiple chapters of narrative and evidence, organized thematically and chronologically to advance key elements of the broader historical argument. Chapter 1: Defining City and Suburban Lines begins by challenging us to reconsider the familiar poor cities and rich suburbs narrative that is so ingrained in our present-day thinking. But a century ago, these roles were reversed. Connecticut’s capital city was the center of financial wealth, adorned by its crown jewel of public education, Hartford Public High School. Urban schools earned such a strong reputation through the early 1900s that they attracted families from outlying towns to send their children into the city’s borders. By contrast, public schools in areas that we consider today to be elite suburbs, were relatively weak rural districts at this time. This part of the book begins to explain the reversal of fortunes between Hartford’s city and its suburbs over time. Larger colonial-era tracts of land were carved up into smaller town boundaries, state laws formed more rigid school district lines, and suburban voters blocked urban annexation. Today’s Connecticut is highly fragmented into 169 municipal governments, and most manage their own public school districts and land-use decisions, with weak regional governance. Even the phrase “metropolitan Hartford,” which appears in this book, has no official nor consistent definition. As a result, self-interested suburban policies with state governmental support have generated some of the nation’s highest levels of inequality between the central city and its suburbs, and also across suburbs of different socioeconomic standings. Chapter 2: Segregating Along Color Lines explains how the boundaries of White privilege and racism have shifted over time, from explicit racial barriers to more sophisticated hurdles, across both schooling and housing. The Connecticut legislature banned schooling for out-of-state Black students during the 1830s, and Hartford leaders voted to officially segregate public schools for a brief period in 1868, and proposed it again in 1917. After civil rights activists overturned these policies, Hartford officials quietly continued to separate many Black and White students through its decisions on locating new schools and redrawing attendance lines well into the 1970s. In the housing sector, local and federal governments and lenders strengthened the color line through discriminatory ‘redlining’ in mortgage lending, enforcing White-only property deeds, and creating White-only public housing. Even after civil rights activists overturned several of these governmental barriers, Connecticut’s real estate industry reframed the color line through racial steering and other tactics that were harder to detect, even after the federal Fair Housing Act of 1968 outlawed these and related practices. Chapter 3: Excluding Through Zoning Lines makes this hidden history more visible, and explains how decisions made by local and state governmental leaders shaped the suburban landscape in metropolitan Hartford. In general, zoning refers to rules over how land can be used, and some zoning policies have progressive goals, such as separating industrial factories from residential neighborhoods. But in present-day debates, exclusionary zoning refers to policies that favor expensive single-family home construction that requires large amounts of property, rather than more affordable multi-family homes that use less land per resident. In Connecticut, the origins of exclusionary zoning can be traced back one suburban town’s attempt to block an urban Jewish grocery from building a store in a residential neighborhood in the early 1920s. When the town’s effort failed, it sparked a political movement to create stronger legal tools to control future real estate development and exclude types of property (and people) deemed as undesirable neighbors. Exclusionary zoning laws intentionally made it more expensive to build homes in suburban neighborhoods, which effectively limited lower-income people from living there. Unlike other discriminatory barriers of this era—such as mortgage redlining or restrictive covenants or segregated public housing—exclusionary zoning did not directly refer to race, religion, or nationality. Instead, exclusionary zoning cleverly carved up suburban neighborhoods using minimum-land rules that segregated residents by their wealth. In this way, exclusionary zoning became a more sophisticated tool of housing discrimination that largely resisted fair-housing legislation of the 1960s-70s civil rights era, and continues to divide Connecticut into the present day. Chapter 4: Selling and Shopping the Lines explores the pivotal relationship between public schooling and private housing, which fundamentally reshaped metropolitan life and upward mobility strategies in Connecticut in the latter half of the twentieth century. By contrast, in the early 1900s, when a smaller proportion of youth pursued secondary education and beyond, most families did not choose their homes based on the boundary lines of desirable public schools. Prior to the 1950s, schools were relatively weak in attracting middle-class families to the suburbs, but in post-war human capital markets, education became a powerful magnet. Pro-suburban government, real estate interests and prospective homebuyers converged to create the practice commonly known today as “shopping for schools.” Agents began to advertise private homes by their location in higher status public school areas. Local school leaders competed for upper-class families by offering curricular extras. State legislators invested in suburban schools, and legitimized school-by-school rankings by publishing standardized test results. Upwardly mobile families with children sought more desirable school attendance areas, and paid higher prices for private homes that included access to this public good. Overall, the rise of shopping for schools unites the twin narratives of credentialism and consumerism in American metropolitan history. Chapter 5: Challenging the Power Lines tells the stories of everyday families and civil rights activists who sought to cross over, redraw, or erase schooling and housing boundaries in metropolitan Hartford, focusing primarily on the past five decades. When comparing these stories, we learn that the tools of privilege do not stand still, but evolve when confronted by civil rights challenges. In turn, this requires newer generations of activists to continually rethink and revise strategies to address the limited successes of prior years. After Connecticut civil rights advocates won legislative bans against overt racial discrimination in public housing in the late 1940s, and most private housing in the 1960s, they needed to create more sophisticated strategies to combat racial steering and redlining practices, since these were more difficult to prove without direct testing and quantitative studies. Similarly, although activists won a 1965 state constitutional amendment for equal public schools, initial efforts to implement this law were equally challenged in moving students or dollars across city-suburban district lines. This portion concludes with the 1996 courtroom victory of the Sheff v O’Neill school integration plaintiffs, where Connecticut’s highest court outlawed the segregation of Hartford minority students, but left the specifics of the remedy to be determined by a suburban-dominated political process. Chapter 6: Choosing to Cross the Lines describes the present-day political compromises that have emerged from battles over schooling and housing boundaries. When civil rights activists finally pressured Connecticut leaders to deliver on the promise of integration with the Sheff remedies, beginning in 2003, the agreement hinged on voluntary public school choice that did not require participation by any individual, or initially, any suburban district. Instead, state leaders agreed to expand interdistrict magnet schools, with highly-desirable curricular offerings in the arts, sciences, and other specialties to attract white suburban families to voluntarily enroll their children in the same school as urban students of color. The Sheff remedy signals a tangible civil rights victory. As of 2015, state funding for 48 interdistrict magnet schools and the Open Choice city-suburban transfer program enrolls about 12,000 Hartford minority students (or 45 percent of the total) in racially integrated settings. But compromises come at a cost. Interdistrict schools merely blur the boundary lines, rather than erase the root causes of inequality. Furthermore, this voluntary integration plan protects suburban white privilege, and our data analysis shows how it favors more privileged Hartford families. The Sheff remedy has attracted critics from all sides, but the suburban-dominated state government has resisted change and threatened to unilaterally drop all support, despite the judge’s order. At present, the Sheff schooling compromise—and related housing voucher policies that promise greater choice—are caught in a standoff, with suburban interests holding the upper hand. Conclusion: Where Do We Draw the Line? offers historical reflections on present-day policy decisions to come. Two additional chapters offer readers a behind-the-scenes look into the process of creating this book: Teaching and Researching On The Line describes how the book emerged through working with liberal arts undergraduates and Hartford-area community partners in the Cities Suburbs and Schools seminar at Trinity College. For educators, this chapter offers lesson ideas to help students of all ages explore key questions about past and present topics raised in the book. For historical researchers, this chapter describes some of the methods and source materials consulted in creating this book, and some questions that remain unresolved. By making our work process more transparent, we hope to inspire people to educate others and engage in further research on topics in this book. Mapping and Publishing On The Line details our design process and web technologies we used to create this open-access digital book. Our interactive web maps, built with open-source Leaflet code, help broader audiences to visualize spatial and historical change over time. The chapter also describes our publishing workflow, based on the open-source Bookdown package for RStudio, which produces both HTML web pages and PDF print pages. We share our knowledge about these tools so that others may innovate and build more digital books to tell their own stories. "],["defining.html", "Chapter 1 Defining City and Suburban Lines", " Chapter 1 Defining City and Suburban Lines This chapter begins by challenging us to reconsider the familiar poor cities and rich suburbs narrative that is so ingrained in our present-day thinking. But a century ago, these roles were reversed. Connecticut’s capital city was the center of financial wealth, adorned by its crown jewel of public education, Hartford Public High School. Urban schools earned such a strong reputation through the early 1900s that they attracted families from outlying towns to send their children into the city’s borders. By contrast, public schools in areas that we consider today to be elite suburbs, were relatively weak rural districts at this time. This part of the book begins to explain the reversal of fortunes between Hartford’s city and its suburbs over time. Larger colonial-era tracts of land were carved up into smaller town boundaries, state laws formed more rigid school district lines, and suburban voters blocked urban annexation. Today’s Connecticut is highly fragmented into 169 municipal governments, and most manage their own public school districts and land-use decisions, with weak regional governance. Even the phrase “metropolitan Hartford,” which appears in this book, has no official nor consistent definition. As a result, self-interested suburban policies with state governmental support have generated some of the nation’s highest levels of inequality between the central city and its suburbs, and also across suburbs of different socioeconomic standings. "],["richest.html", "The Richest City in the Nation", " The Richest City in the Nation Over a century ago, the press declared Hartford as “the richest city in the United States” per capita, a label from the past that seems strange to anyone familiar with its extreme poverty in the present day. That tagline came from journalist Charles Clark, who wrote a cover story on Connecticut’s capital city in 1876 for Scribner’s Monthly, one of the most popular illustrated literary magazines of its time. While Clark may not have invented this slogan, he certainly popularized it, based on some loose arithmetic of the city’s accumulated wealth, relative to the size of its population, approximately 40,000 people. His essay opened by surveying the value of vast financial and industrial corporations based in the downtown area. The city’s well-known insurance companies, including The Hartford and Aetna, held more than $113 million in assets, which rebuilt Chicago after its disastrous 1871 fire. Added together, the city’s numerous banks amassed over $50 million in deposits and capital. Five railroad lines fed Hartford’s extensive factories, including Colt’s Arms Manufacturing Company, “perhaps the most famous in the country” for its rifles and revolvers during the Civil War. Summed together, these businesses pushed the city’s taxable property value to more than $200 million. In addition to its financial assets, Clark also praised Hartford’s abundant cultural riches. The nation’s best-known authors, Samuel Clemens (more commonly known as Mark Twain) and Harriet Beecher Stowe (whose best-seller, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, influenced the Civil War), both took up residence in the city, alongside many of their literary companions, editors, and publishers. In addition to serving as the state capital, Hartford prized its extensive libraries, museum, and hospital. “The Hartford school buildings are said to the finest in the State,” Clark added, and called special attention to his alma mater, Hartford Public High School, the second oldest in the nation, which also enjoyed “a reputation with all the leading colleges as one of the best of all the preparatory schools,” as shown in Figure 1.1.2 In fact, the education that young people received in the city’s public school system far surpassed what was available in the outlying rural towns, known today as the suburbs. Figure 1.1: Scroll the full-screen document from Scribner’s Monthly in 1876, which declared Hartford as “the richest city in the United States,” relative to its population. Digitized by Google Books. Today we recognize Clark’s “richest city” slogan as boosterism. The twenty-eight-year-old son of a local congressman was a rising reporter at the Hartford Courant, the nation’s oldest continuously published newspaper, and would later become its editor and owner. Clark “had an investment in the city,” observes historian Steven Courtney, and later served on the boards of corporations and philanthropies his essay praised.3 He did not offer a definitive statement on Hartford’s total wealth per capita, nor any direct comparison to financial statistics for other cities, to the extent they were available. Today, the idea of measuring a city by the wealth of its total corporate wealth, rather than the assets actually owned by individual residents, makes little sense. In 1903, nearly four decades after Clark’s essay, skeptics questioned some of its claims. One critic was Alexander Merriam, a Hartford Theological Seminary professor in the brand-new field of sociology. Although Hartford was still “computed as one of the richest cities of its size in the country,” he observed, “local wealth is not so large and available as the statistical aggregate might seem to indicate.” Residents included both “wealthier citizens… scattered in different parts of the city” and also “a slum of almost the first magnitude” of the poorest citizens along the banks of the Connecticut River. While Hartford still had significant pockets of wealth, they were not uniformly distributed. In fact, while Samuel Clemens lived in Hartford, he and his co-author satirically named this era the Gilded Age, referring to a thin gold layer that symbolizes wealth, but masks underlying social problems.4 But none of this skepticism mattered, as long as Hartford’s slogan as the “nation’s richest city” stuck in the public mind. It contained an element of truth that ordinary people could see with their own eyes, whenever they caught sight of a wealthy resident or passed by one of their prestigious homes in the city’s neighborhoods. In fact, the “richest city” label predated Clark’s 1876 article. Five years earlier, advocates for an art museum announced their fundraising appeal by declaring that “Hartford is the richest city of its size in the United States, we believe,” but must construct an institution “if she is to keep her pre-eminence, or is to be a city worthy of her wealth and acknowledged culture.” A similar 1878 appeal argued that while “Hartford is said to be the richest city in the country… so far, however, it fails to sustain adequately a public library.” 5 Variations on the “richest” theme appeared in Hartford church sermons, commencement addresses, and local news and feature stories, sometimes accompanied by tax or bank records, into the early 1920s. Whether or not this claim was based in fact, enough people believed it to publicly repeat it.6 By the end of the twentieth century, the “richest city” slogan had turned upside down. Census 2000 ranked Hartford as one of the poorest major cities, with a population over 100,000, in the United States. When measured by the percentage of families living in poverty, Hartford was the second poorest, with 28 percent of its residents earning less than $17,600 for a family of four. Only the border city of Brownsville, Texas had a higher family poverty rate. When measured by median household income, Hartford was the fourth poorest city with a typical household earning only $24,820, just behind Miami, Brownsville, and Buffalo. Connecticut’s capital city first appeared among the ten most impoverished major cities in the 1980 Census. As of this writing in 2015, the city has not risen out of this dismal category. Although Hartford has inched upward from the near-bottom of the list in recent years, the token change in its rating has been caused by the sharper decline of cities such as Detroit and Flint, Michigan, rather than substantive improvements on its own.7 After the 2000 Census became public, the New York Times ran a front-page story on the depths of Hartford’s poverty. Reminding readers of the city’s former wealthy status, the article pointed to the powerless mayor, internal racial divisions, and public schools that were “among the worst performing in the nation” as markers of urban decline. “The NY Times piece was a teeth-kicker,” recalled Stan Simpson, a Hartford Courant columnist. “It rehashed the well-documented problems in the capital city—poverty, education, crime, race relations—and gave scant attention to any progress.” It was a riches-to-rags story, with no hope of redemption. Tom Condon, another Courant columnist, complained that the New York Times story “described Hartford as a decaying hulk of a once-grand city” and “left the impression that we’re all on skid row.” In response, the Courant published its editorial, “In Defense of Hartford,” which did not question the facts, but criticized the pessimistic portrayal of their city. “It hurts when outsiders point out the ailments that afflict Connecticut’s capital,” the editorial began, describing how this intensely negative national news coverage “felt like an insult.” The spin on Hartford had made a full circle back to the city’s oldest newspaper, where Charles Clark originally crafted the slogan of wealth more than a century ago.8 Where did the money go? What became of the wealth that once made Hartford “the richest city” in the nation into the early 1900s? During the twentieth century, the fortunes of the central city and its suburbs were reversed. According to Census 2000, when Hartford was rated as the second-poorest city by family poverty, its metropolitan statistical area (the city and suburbs combined) rose to the sixth-richest in the nation, as measured by median household income. Consider the size of this gap. Inside Hartford’s city boundaries, the median family earned $24,820 in 2000, but the median family in the metropolitan area earned $52,188, more than twice that amount. If we could exclude the city data from the surrounding metropolitan area, that gap would increase even further. The Gilded Age did not magically disappear from Hartford; most of it moved to selected suburbs.9 One way to visualize the spatial redistribution of wealth from the City of Hartford to its suburbs is to track home values by town during the twentieth century. For each decade in the map below, the average dwelling or single-family home value is indexed to the region to correct for historical price inflation, with higher values represented by darker shades of green. While not a precise measure, the rough differences over time are striking. In 1910, the region’s highest home values were located in the City of Hartford and its neighboring suburb of West Hartford. In second place were inner-ring suburbs with manufacturing jobs (such as East Hartford, Manchester, Windsor, and New Britain), followed by outlying farming towns to the west and southeast. In 1910, the average home value in Hartford was nearly $5,000, four times more than the average $1,200 home value in the agricultural community of Avon. A century later, that relationship had reversed, as home values in the city fell to nearly the lowest in the region, while some outlying farm towns—known today as elite suburbs—climbed to the top. In 2010, the average sales price for a single-family home in Avon climbed to $536,000, more than three times the average $178,000 sales price in Hartford. In some eyes, the once-powerful city-based economic powerhouse had become a doughnut—a fiscally depressed center surrounded by an affluent suburban ring—though with wide variation in the middle, as shown in Figure 1.2.10 Figure 1.2: Explore this full-screen interactive map of home values in Hartford County, 1910-2010. The most valuable single-family homes (in dark green) shifted from the capital city to selected suburbs over time. Home values have been indexed (where county average = 1.0) to adjust for rising prices over time. Missing values appear in gray. Sources: 1910-1980 from Connecticut Tax Commissioner, author’s calculation of average dwelling value from equalized assessments; 1990 from Capital Region Council of Governments, median single-family home sales price; 2000-10 from State of Connecticut, Office of Policy and Management, average single-family home sales price (2000-2010). Learn more in “Calculating Wealth and Poverty in Past and Present” chapter, TODO in this book. View open-source code and historical sources for the map, developed by Ilya Ilyankou and Jack Dougherty, with MAGIC UConn Libraries. How do we explain this reversal of fortunes between Hartford’s city and its suburbs? Histories of twentieth-century suburbanization point to multiple factors, including white flight, urban rebellions, interstate highways, and job migration. But this book argues that the pivotal relationship between private housing and public schooling reshaped central Connecticut. During the first half of the twentieth century, the city’s public school system—and its crown jewel, Hartford Public High School—earned the highest reputation in the region, while most small-town and rural school districts were viewed as woefully behind. When the first generations of city dwellers moved to outlying suburbs, they were attracted by housing opportunities, not substandard schools. Yet this relationship quickly changed during the latter half of the century, when rising suburbs actively competed for upper-class white families and created elite public schools that acted as powerful magnets, while state policies kept most low-income black students at a distance. As the most privileged families fled Hartford, the concentration of poverty and limited resources led the city’s most prized high school to nearly lose its accreditation in the 1990s, while elite suburban public schools rose to the top of new ranking systems. To tell this story about the changing relationship between housing and schooling, this book begins by retracing the lines that were drawn to separate the city and suburban towns, and later its school districts. During the 1800s, town boundaries were still a work-in-progress, and public school districts were relatively porous until the early twentieth century. Connecticut legislators sharpened these divisions under a 1909 school consolidation law, with deep consequences for a school desegregation lawsuit that arose eight decades later. Yet while mass suburbanization prompted more metropolitan governance for water, sewer, and transit between towns in the region, public schooling became more restricted to only families that resided inside local district boundaries. In today’s politically fragmented Connecticut, most policies about housing and education are made either at the State Capitol or in 169 individual town halls and school boards. Even the phrase “metropolitan Hartford” has no officially consistent meaning here. As a result, local self-interested policy decisions have generated some of the nation’s highest levels of inequality between the city and its suburbs, and also between suburbs of different social standing. This chapter visually describes what happened in the Hartford region, as a prelude to later chapters that explain in more detail why it happened, and how civil rights activists have challenged the status quo in different ways. Charles H. Clark, “The Charter Oak City,” Scribner’s Monthly 13, no. 1 (November 1876): 1–21, https://books.google.com/books?id=2q_PAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA1#v=onepage&q&f=false.↩︎ Steve Courtney, “Commentary: Was Hartford ’The Richest City In The United States’?” Hartford Courant, October 10, 2014, http://www.courant.com/opinion/op-ed/hc-op-courtney-was-hartford-richest-city-in-americ-20141010-story.html. On Clark, see Norris Galpin Osborn, “Charles Hopkins Clark,” in Men of Mark in Connecticut: Ideals of American Life Told in Biographies and Autobiographies of Eminent Living Americans (W.R. Goodspeed, 1906), 230–34, https://books.google.com/books?id=ARFh_Sbpg84C&pg=PA230; Joseph F. Nunes, “The Lasting Legacy of Charles Hopkins Clark,” Hartford Courant, October 18, 2014, http://www.courant.com/courant-250/your-moments/hc-courant-clark-profile-20141018-story.html; Joseph F. Nunes, “Chapter Four: ’Fighting Joe’ And Mark Twain,” Hartford Courant, October 18, 2014, http://www.courant.com/courant-250/your-moments/hc-courant-chapter-four-20141018-story.html.↩︎ Alexander R. Merriam, The Social Significance of the Smaller City (Hartford, Conn.: Hartford Seminary Press, 1903), http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/64385345, reprinted as Alexander R. Merriam, “The Social Conditions of the Smaller City,” The Hartford Courant, July 21, 1903, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/555173471?accountid=14405. See also skepticism about the corporate assets underlying the “richest city” claim in “The Richest City,” The Hartford Courant (1887-1922), October 23, 1903, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/555173471?accountid=14405. On satirical name, see Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner, The Gilded Age: A Tale of To-Day (Hartford: American Publishing Company, 1873), http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000664544.↩︎ Although the Wadsworth Atheneum opened in Hartford in 1844 and currently is described as one of the oldest art museums in the nation, the original buildings included an art gallery, the Connecticut Historical Society, and the Young Men’s Institute (which later became the Hartford Public Library). Advocates sought funding for a separate dedicated art museum and public library. See “An Art Museum,” Hartford Daily Courant, April 29, 1871, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/553680505?accountid=14405; “A Suggestive Contrast,” Hartford Daily Courant, October 15, 1878, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/554105478?accountid=14405; Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, “History,” accessed July 28, 2015, https://thewadsworth.org/about/history/.↩︎ For a selection of “richest city” claims, see Conn.) First Church of Christ (Hartford, “Address of Edward Everett Hale,” in Commemorative Exercises of the First Church of Christ in Hartford, at Its Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary, October 11 and 12, 1883 (Press of the Case, Lockwood & Brainard Company, 1883), https://books.google.com/books?id=1ncsAAAAYAAJ; “Girl Graduates: Closing Exercises of Mt. St. Joseph Seminary Cluster of Historical Essays on Hartford,” Hartford Courant, June 19, 1903, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/555144638?accountid=14405; “Hartford as the \"Richest City\": A Great Financial Center,” Hartford Courant: Financial Section, October 6, 1908, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/555586930?accountid=14405; Otis Skinner, “Save Twain Home, Urges Otis Skinner: Should Be Easy for Richest City Per Capita in This Country,” Hartford Courant, April 23, 1920, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/556799530?accountid=14405; “Hartford Holds Lead as Wealthiest City: Over 21,000 Local People Pay Federal Income Tax –Stamford Second and New Haven Third 10 Per Cent. In State Assessed,” Hartford Courant, November 26, 1921, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/556971490?accountid=14405; “Wealth of Hartford Clearly Shown by Bank Statements: Per Capita Wealth, $600, Equalled by No Other City in U. S.–1921 Bank Dis-Counts Total $455,975,029 Insurance in Lead as Chief Industry City Known for Its Manu-Facturing for Over 150 Years–Center for Traders and Buyers for Radius of 50 Miles,” Hartford Courant, September 3, 1922, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/557107212?accountid=14405.↩︎ See census data sources in “Calculating Wealth and Poverty in Past and Present” chapter, TO COME in this book.↩︎ Paul Zielbauer, “Poverty in a Land of Plenty: Can Hartford Ever Recover?” The New York Times: N.Y. / Region, August 26, 2002, https://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/26/nyregion/poverty-in-a-land-of-plenty-can-hartford-ever-recover.html. Contrast the NY Times portrayal with a later story by the LA Times, which Simpson noted had a more positive spin: David Lamb, “Once-Gilded City Buffing Itself Up,” Los Angeles Times, June 15, 2003, http://articles.latimes.com/2003/jun/15/nation/na-hartford15. See reactions by Stan Simpson, “Capital Progress: Read All About It,” Hartford Courant, June 28, 2003, http://articles.courant.com/2003-06-28/news/0306281788; Tom Condon, “‘Troubled City’ a Victim of Geography,” Hartford Courant, September 12, 2002, http://articles.courant.com/2002-09-12/news/0209120303; “Editorial: In Defense of Hartford,” Hartford Courant, August 27, 2002, http://articles.courant.com/2002-08-27/news/0208270795.↩︎ See census data sources in “Calculating Wealth and Poverty in Past and Present” chapter, TO COME in this book.↩︎ Ilya Ilyankou and Jack Dougherty, “Map: Home Value Index in Hartford County CT from 1910-2010” (On The Line, 2017), https://github.com/OnTheLine/otl-home-value; See home value data sources in “Calculating Wealth and Poverty in Past and Present” chapter, TO COME in this book.↩︎ "],["carving.html", "Carving Up Town Boundaries", " Carving Up Town Boundaries Text to come on the continual redrawing of town boundaries in Hartford region thru 1880s, as shown in Figure 1.3.11 Figure 1.3: Scroll down (or click the narrative and use keyboard down arrow) in the full-size interactive map of town borders in Hartford County, Connecticut. From the early 1600s to the late 1880s, local and state government divided the region into 29 separate towns as the European settler population grew. Boundaries shown here are not exact, but approximated from the best available digital sources: UConn Libraries MAGIC historical maps, Atlas of Historical County Boundaries at Newberry Library, and the Connecticut State Register and Manual. View open-source code and historical sources for the map, developed by Ilya Ilyankou and Jack Dougherty. TODO: Text to come on CT 1909 school district consolidation, which redrew school district boundaries to match town boundaries TODO: Fix basemaps and narrative for https://ontheline.github.io/otl-redraw-lines-hartford/index-frame.html TODO: Text to come on rigidity of CT school district boundaries today, and their size relative to cities that annexed suburban land or county-wide school districts in many other states Figure 1.4: Compare any US elementary school district boundaries side-by-side, at the same scale, in this full-size interactive map. Hover over districts to view student population and poverty data. Click any district to freeze its data panel when moving between maps. In the Northeast, many school districts are narrowly drawn along city and suburban boundaries, which concentrates student poverty, as shown in Hartford, Connecticut and its surrounding towns. By contrast, metropolitan and county-wide school districts are more common in Southern and Western states, as shown in Charlotte-Mecklenberg, North Carolina. Map data from EdBuild.org Dividing Lines, as described in their methodology. Map developed by Ilya Ilyankou and Jack Dougherty, with code on GitHub. Ilya Ilyankou and Jack Dougherty, “Map: Town Borders in Hartford County, CT from 1600s to Present” (On The Line, 2017), https://github.com/OnTheLine/otl-town-borders.↩︎ "],["golden.html", "A Golden Age for City Schools", " A Golden Age for City Schools TODO: TEXT TO COME "],["consolidating.html", "Consolidating Rural School Districts", " Consolidating Rural School Districts PREVIEW: In contrast to the golden age of urban schools, most rural and suburban schools faced deep challenges to educational quality during the early 1900s. Several had no high schools and relied on regional arrangements with neighboring towns–funded by state subsidies–to educate their teenage students. Decades ago, Connecticut students routinely and legally crossed school district boundaries to receive a public education, and the entire system was arguably more regionalized than it is today, with rigidly divided districts. According to a 1925 study by the Connecticut State Board of Education, about 137 out of 169 towns (81 percent) still operated a one-room school, for a total of 558. State officials praised a modest decrease in one-room schools from 1921, but noted that the rural school grants program served as a disincentive. “The town which receives a percentage of teachers’ salaries grants is not inclined to close a school, transport the pupils, and lose this grant when no compensating grant to help meet the costs of conveyance is provided,” stated the report authors. “The present scheme of grants is all too evidently hindering rather than aiding the small towns to improve their schools,” as shown in Figure 1.5.12 TODO - expand chapter Figure 1.5: This map illustrated the gradual decline of one-room schools across Connecticut from 1921 to 1925, according to the State Board of Education. In 1901, the Connecticut State Board of Education attempted to shame towns by printing photos of low-quality one-room schools, without the name of the town, as shown in Figure 1.6.13 Figure 1.6: The Connecticut State Board of Education shamed towns by printing photos of low-quality one-room rural schools in its 1901 report. TODO: add index-caption Figure 1.7: Click thumbnail photos in this full-screen interactive map to view larger present-day photos from Instragram photographer Johnna Kaplan, shown here with her permission. Map developed by Ilya Ilyankou and Jack Dougherty, with research by Elizabeth Rose. View map data and code on GitHub. To come: CT legislation in 1909 to consolidate rural school districts and solidify boundaries for town-level school governance, role of Luther S. Flavel Connecticut State Board of Education, “One-Room Schools in Connecticut,” Connecticut Schools 7, no. 7 (March 1926): 6–7, http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/20683509.↩︎ Connecticut State Board of Education, “Annual Report of the Connecticut State Board of Education to the Governor,” Annual Report of the Connecticut State Board of Education to the Governor, 1901, http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/22548673.↩︎ "],["segregating.html", "Chapter 2 Segregating Along Color Lines", " Chapter 2 Segregating Along Color Lines This chapter explains how the boundaries of white middle-class privilege have shifted over time, from explicit racial barriers to more sophisticated hurdles, and from the schooling to the housing sector. The Connecticut legislature banned schooling for out-of-state black students during the 1830s, and Hartford leaders voted to officially segregate public schools for a brief period in 1868, and proposed it again in 1917. After civil rights activists overturned these policies, Hartford officials quietly continued to separate many black and white students into the 1970s, through its decisions on locating new schools and redrawing attendance lines. In the housing sector, the color line gained more governmental support in the 1930s and ’40s, with federal and local policies that openly prohibited home mortgages and public housing for blacks, and legally protected white-only property deeds. After activists overturned these governmental restrictions, the Connecticut real estate industry continued the color line through discriminatory steering and lending, even after the federal Fair Housing Act of 1968 outlawed these practices. Figure 2.1: Explore the full-screen interactive map of racial change in Hartford County, Connecticut, which displays the percentage of the “White” population in towns and census tracts from 1900 to 2018. Since categories of race and ethnicity are socially constructed, US Census labels vary over time. For example, “Native White” and “Foreign-born White” were combined and generally reported as “White” by the 1940s, and “Negro” was replaced by “Black” in 1980. While the Census classified “Mexican” as “Other races” in 1930, it moved this group back to “White” in 1940, and began to report “Puerto Rican or Spanish surname” data in 1960, followed by “Hispanic or Latino” in later decades, as an ethnic category regardless of race. Beginning in 2000, the Census allowed people to select more than one racial category. To create this century-long map that visualizes patterns across racial and ethnic categories that vary over time, we decided to show the percentage of the “White” or “White alone (non-Hispanic)” population with uniform shading for each area, along with data details for specific years in the hover box. View open-source code and historical sources for the map, developed by Ilya Ilyankou and Jack Dougherty, with Katie Campbell and MAGIC UConn Libraries. "],["lending.html", "Federal Lending and Redlining", " Federal Lending and Redlining by Shaun McGann and Jack Dougherty Racial and economic segregation in American housing was not simply caused by the prejudices of individual property owners. In addition, segregation was systematically institutionalized by governmental public policies that were designed to make it more affordable for White families to purchase newer homes away from central cities and in the suburbs. This chapter focuses on the 1930s Depression, when U.S. federal agencies collaborated with banks and other lenders to bolster the economy by expanding the availability of long-term loans to purchase homes, known as mortgages. Specifically, the chapter compares how two federal lending programs—the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) and the Federal Housing Administration (FHA)—carried out their respective missions, and their long-term consequences for metropolitan America. Both HOLC and FHA instituted ratings systems that downgraded neighborhoods based on the demographics of their residents—such as the presence of Black, immigrant, or impoverished families—rather than assessing value solely on the physical condition of the property. Both HOLC and FHA contributed to what we today call “redlining”: systematic discrimination in offering home mortgages or other financial services based on the social composition of the neighborhood, rather than the individual property or owner. While government involvement in the private lending market prevented millions of families from being forced out of their homes, and expanded homeownership to millions more, eligibility to participate in these programs was not neutral, and federal funds promoted racial and economic discrimination.14 Looking back at these 1930s programs reveals the thoughts and actions of public officials and private real estate interests, who together drew lines that intensified racial and economic segregation in metropolitan Hartford and other regions that continues today. America’s historical awareness of redlining has grown in recent years, thanks to widely-read authors who reconnected the past with present-day policy debates on public investment in urban areas, such as Ta-Nehisi Coates, Richard Rothstein, and contributors to Nikole Hannah-Jones’s The 1619 Project.15 Color-coded maps from the 1930s, probably seen by only a small number of people when they were originally drawn, have been rediscovered and shared widely with millions of people on the web by the Digital Scholarship Lab at the University of Richmond and many others.16 Even the 2020 Democratic presidential primary featured a “What is Redlining?” Twitter historical video when Elizabeth Warren challenged Michael Bloomberg’s stance on the issue.17 But as the history of redlining have become popularized, important distinctions about federal programs such as the HOLC and FHA have become blurred, and the latter portion of this chapter draws on scholarship by Amy Hillier, Todd Michney, and LaDale Winling to clear up common misunderstandings. One important lesson: although the HOLC color-coded maps provide the most visually striking portrayal of discrimination in government policy, the more powerful and enduring tools of segregation persisted in the plain white pages of the FHA’s bureaucratic Underwriting Manual. For this reason, this chapter presents direct evidence from both HOLC and FHA to help us understand key differences in how they divided metropolitan America. For readers who have not bought a home: You may not yet be familiar with key concepts in personal finance, such as how lower down payments with amortization of principal and interest have made home ownership a more affordable aspect of “The American Dream.” See the “Home and School Shopping Simulation” in the Teaching and Researching chapter in this book for a learning activity developed while teaching undergraduate students about housing, to better understand the present-day realities in order to compare with the past. How Federal Lending Changed Homeownership During the 1920s, purchasing a home was difficult for even middle-class Americans to afford because of the financial terms. Many banks typically offered home mortgage loans that placed the burden of risk on the borrower’s shoulders, and required them to pay it back very quickly. Typical mortgages during the 1920s included these terms: Large down payment: Typically 50 percent of the home value, because banks usually limited their mortgages to 50 percent (called a loan-to-value ratio of 50 percent). Short-term loans: Typically 5 years, designed to repay only the interest on mortgage loan. “Balloon payment” loans: Borrowers were required to repay the entire principal, or the amount borrowed, in one lump sum at the end of the loan period. Higher interest rates: Typically 6 to 8 percent during the 1920s. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the economic collapse devastated the housing market and threatened the interests of both lenders and borrowers. Homeowners who suddenly lost their jobs were now in danger of missing loan payments, defaulting on their mortgages, and losing their homes to bank foreclosures. But when banks foreclosed and attempted to sell off these homes, they typically were worth less than their original price prior to the Depression. In response to this economic crisis, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “New Deal” administration created federal agencies that increased access to the middle class by offering home mortgages on more favorable terms: Smaller down payment: Typically 10 or 20 percent of the home value, because lenders raised the loan-to-value ratio to 80 or 90 percent. Longer-term loans: Repayment extended to 15 or 20 years. Amortization of loans: This formula meant that borrowers repaid both the interest and principal on the loan in regular installments over time, rather than one lump sum at the end. Lower interest rates: Federal support lowered interest rates to around 5 percent during the 1930s. Picture how homeownership became more affordable for a buyer in the Hartford area, based on typical prices and mortgage terms during this period. Prior to the 1930s, if a home price was $10,000, a typical bank would only offer a $5,000 mortgage loan, limited to 50 percent of the home value, which forced the buyer to raise the remaining $5,000 in cash for the down payment at the time of purchase. If the buyer only had $2,000 on hand, they might need to make up the $3,000 difference by seeking a second mortgage from another lender, who would charge higher fees than the first mortgage lender due to the increased risk. During a five-year loan period, the homeowner would pay back interest to the bank on the first mortgage, but then need to raise funds for the $5,000 “balloon payment” at the end, which often required them to refinance a subsequent loan. But during the 1930s, New Deal federal agencies provided mortgage loans with better terms for middle-class homebuyers in the Hartford region. In 1934, the Hartford Courant observed that buying a $10,000 home required a 20 percent down payment of $2,000, because lenders raised the borrowing limit to 80 percent of the home value. The loan repayment period was extended from 5 years to 15-20 years. Buyers repaid the $8,000 principal plus interest through a series of stable monthly payments. According to an amortization schedule, the monthly repayments on an $8,000 mortgage at 5 percent interest for 20 years would be about $50 per month, very similar to monthly housing rental payments in Hartford at that time. No longer would “balloon payments” explode the homeowners’ finances at the end of a short-term loan. Amortization also enabled families to build up equity in their homes, meaning that they gradually owned a larger share of their home’s market value, minus the remaining mortgage they owed, while the lender legally held the property deed. For many Americans, as New Deal home loans programs improved these terms into the late 1930s, it became cheaper to buy than to rent.18 How HOLC Rated Mortgage Risk One of Roosevelt’s first steps to change mortgages was to sign legislation to create the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) in 1933. Historians Todd Michney and LaDale Winling describe how HOLC had two distinct phases. During its “rescue” phase (1933-35), HOLC purchased and refinanced loans for homeowners who were in danger of bank foreclosure due to their failure to keep up with existing mortgage payments or balloon payments. During its “consolidation” phase (1935-51), HOLC managed its mortgage holdings and sold them off to other investors. During this second phase, HOLC launched its City Survey Program and sent field agents to interview local banks and other lenders in 239 cities to assess mortgage investment risks. They conducted neighborhood-level appraisals and compiled data into confidential reports, which HOLC staff converted into color-coded maps, seen only by a small number of people at that time. While the federal government initially created HOLC to make home ownership more accessible to the middle class, these appraisals and maps also reflected the racism and elitism of the people who created them.19 Foster Milliken Jr., the HOLC field agent assigned to the Hartford area, was no stranger to the world of finance. Decades earlier, his father presided over Milliken Brothers, Inc., a multi-million dollar structural steel manufacturer in New York City that built the world’s tallest buildings at that time. Prior to the Depression, Foster Milliken Jr. worked as a stockbroker in Manhattan and was familiar with its social circles. When HOLC first sent him to Hartford in 1936, he consulted with real estate board members and banking executives, such as leaders of the Society for Savings, the state’s oldest mutual savings bank and the city’s leading mortgage lender. While Milliken described these men as “a fair and composite opinion of the best qualified local people, his confidential report labeled Hartford as a”typical New England city” with “ultra-conservative” lending policies. Hartford bankers “desire to solve their own problems without outside help or assistance,” he observed, and “it is not surprising that the FHA is generally frowned upon just as was the HOLC.”20 Despite bankers’ distrust towards FDR’s home lending programs, Milliken persuaded several executives to speak privately with him and offer their candid assessment of neighborhoods in the City of Hartford and two suburbs, West Hartford and East Hartford. Milliken’s report captured their collective views of the “trend of desirability” for each area, accompanied by the four-color HOLC “Residential Security Map” to visually illustrate their perceived levels of mortgage investment risk. Green signaled the safest areas for lenders to offer home loans, followed by blue and yellow, and then red to mark the most “hazardous” areas. Years later, these became more widely known as “redlining” maps, as shown in Figure 2.2.21 Figure 2.2: Explore the original 1937 Residential Security Map for Hartford and West Hartford, and the adjacent Map for East Hartford, scanned from the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation records at the National Archives. Green indicated the HOLC’s view of the safest neighborhoods for mortgage investment, followed by blue and yellow, and then red to signal the riskiest areas. Standing in downtown Hartford’s business district, Milliken observed that “the entire trend is to the west.” Green, the highest rating, was most prominent in the northern half of West Hartford, and the northwest corner of Hartford around Prospect Avenue and Scarborough Streets. These marked the best opportunities for mortgage investment, what Milliken described as “hot spots” of new and well-planned home construction where “lenders with available funds are willing to make their maximum loans” at up to 80 percent of the appraised property value (thereby requiring only a 20 percent down payment from homeowners). Blue, the second-grade rating, stood out along Farmington Avenue from West Hartford Center into Hartford’s West End, plus North End neighborhoods such as Blue Hills, and smaller pockets in the South End, as well as portions of East Hartford. Milliken stated that blue represented completely developed neighborhoods of good quality, but not the best, where lenders offered mortgages at no more than 70 percent of the home value (or a 30 percent down payment). Yellow, the third-grade ranking, dominated the southeast corner of West Hartford, most of the South End and large portions of the North End of Hartford, and the majority of East Hartford. Milliken indicated that yellow signified areas in “transition” where mortgage lenders were even more cautious than above. Finally, red marked the lowest-grade areas with the least desirable housing, generally located along the flood-prone banks of the Connecticut River, such as Hartford’s Italian and Black neighborhoods in tenement housing along Front Street and Windsor Street.22 A closer look at the HOLC map reveals striking patterns but also some variation across Hartford’s city-suburban lines. When comparing the HOLC ratings of the land area evaluated in each municipality, 84 percent of West Hartford received an A or B, compared to 29 percent of Hartford and 5 percent of East Hartford, as shown in Table 2.1. But the lowest ratings were not exclusive to the City of Hartford. In West Hartford, 16 percent of the rated land received a C, and the D rating was more prevalent in East Hartford (20 percent of all rated land) compared to Hartford (9 percent).23 Table 2.1: Percent of Land Area by HOLC Rating in Hartford Area 1937 Grade & Color West Hartford Hartford East Hartford All Areas A - Green 69% 7% 2% 33% B - Blue 15% 22% 3% 16% C - Yellow 16% 62% 75% 44% D - Red 0% 9% 20% 7% Total 100% 100% 100% 100% How did HOLC field agents rate neighborhoods? Although HOLC guidelines considered the physical condition and market price of the housing stock, field agents were instructed to evaluate the “social status of the population,” based on the dominant standards of racial superiority and economic privilege at the time. The one-page standardized HOLC appraisal forms asked Milliken to report the percentage of “Foreign-born” and “Negro” families in each neighborhood, as well as “Relief families” who received Depression-era federal income assistance. In the subsequent section asking about the “Infiltration” of outside groups, Milliken occasionally listed “Italians” or “Mixed foreign” residents for specific neighborhoods, as shown in Figure 2.3.24 Figure 2.3: Explore the HOLC area descriptions, based on forms that instructed field agents to report on the social composition of the neighborhood as a factor to measure mortgage risk. Source: Hartford area C-10, 1937, from the National Archives. HOLC invited field agents to write additional comments at the bottom of the form, and Milliken’s notes reflect his biases as well as those he likely heard from local bank and real estate leaders. In suburban West Hartford (map area Green A-2), one of the highest ratings was granted to a newer housing development that attracted “minor executives and businessmen.” Milliken approvingly added that “a stream separates this section from its less desirable neighbor,” referring to how Trout Brook served as a natural barrier to the adjacent southeastern area of West Hartford (Yellow C-2) which he described as having an “infiltration of mixed foreign” families in “workingmen’s homes.” In the North End of Hartford, Milliken favorably described the Blue Hills neighborhood (Blue B-5) but disapprovingly stated that it was “largely given over to the Hebrew race,” meaning Jews had moved in, “although the better class Italians are now also moving there.” In the South End of Hartford (Yellow C-9), Milliken observed that one nearly all-White neighborhood had a small percentage of “Negro families are confined to Roosevelt Street,” and he added that “lenders suggest caution in the selection of loans.” But all of these neighborhoods stood above HOLC’s lowest-rated red areas, which Milliken described as “broader than the so-called slum districts” due to an “undesirable population” with “unstable incomes.” Near downtown Hartford, Milliken labeled the Front Street and Windsor Street neighborhoods (Red D-1) as “the city’s oldest residential section, which has gradually drifted into a slum area” occupied primarily by Black and Italian residents. See all of the HOLC neighborhood appraisals by clicking on the interactive map shown in Figure 2.4. Through the process of rating and mapping the Hartford region, the invisible color and class lines in the minds of Hartford’s financial leaders were transformed into a visible color-coded map, endorsed by the federal government, yet hidden from public view.25 Figure 2.4: Click on color-coded areas in the full-screen interactive map to view one-page HOLC appraisals for each neighborhood in 1937, and the factors that field agents and local banks and lenders considered. They rated not only the physical condition of property, but also the “social status of the population,” and downgraded neighborhoods with Black, immigrant, and lower-income residents. Decades later, activists labeled these discriminatory lending practices as “redlining.” Map developed by Ilya Ilyankou and Jack Dougherty, based on an earlier version with UConn MAGIC and the Kirwin Institute. View historical sources and code on GitHub. How can we tell whether HOLC neighborhood ratings were driven primarily by physical housing characteristics, or by the discriminatory views of lenders and field agents about the people living there? Given that White elites segregated Black, immigrant, and lower-class residents into sub-standard housing, these two factors are tangled together. For example, one could argue that the neighborhood north of downtown Hartford received a Red D-1 rating not only because it had the greatest concentration of Black residents (66 percent), but also because it had the lowest-quality property (valued at only $4,000 - $6,000 per unit). Answering this question definitively is difficult because HOLC divided the Hartford area into only 27 neighborhoods, and only 3 of these included Black residents, so in statistical terms, this is a small sample size with limited variation. While not a definitive method, we can assess the relative weight of these factors by comparing two Hartford neighborhoods that shared relatively similar physical housing characteristics, but received different HOLC ratings. Table 2.2 compares HOLC appraisal report data for two areas: the Blue Hills neighborhood in Hartford’s North End (Blue B-5) versus the South End neighborhood (Yellow C-9). Both consisted primarily of two-family wooden frame homes, built within the previous two decades, which sold and rented at comparable prices in 1937. Why did HOLC grade one as a B and the other as a C? Demographic differences between the two neighborhoods are highlighted in bold type. The South End C-9 neighborhood contained more blue-collar factory workers, more foreign-born families, a very small but noticeable percentages of Black families, and “quite a few” more lower-income families who received government assistance. Once again, this side-by-side comparison of only 2 out of 27 HOLC ratings is not statistically definitive, but it certainly suggests that in the eyes of HOLC appraisers, the social composition of the neighborhood mattered more than the physical composition of the housing or its market value.26 Table 2.2: Compare HOLC Appraisals in Areas B5 vs. C9, Hartford 1937 Area B5 (Blue Hills) C9 (South End) Security Grade Second Third Location Hartford Hartford Trend Next Decade Stable Stable Occupation Shopkeepers & white collar Factory workers & clerks Estimated Family Income $1,800 $1,500 Foreign-born families 5% 20% Predominant foreign group Italians Italians Negro Y/N No Yes Negroes 0% 1% Relief Families None Quite a few Primary Building: Type 2-Family 2-Family Construction Frame Frame Average Age (yrs) 15 20 Repair Good Fair Occupancy 98% 97% Home ownership rate 85% 85% Price Range (1937) $7,500 to 12,000 $7,500 to 11,000 Sales Activity Poor Almost None Rental Range (1937) $40 to 50/month $32.5 to 55/month Rental Activity Good Good Mortgage Availability Ample Limited The Hartford region was only one of 239 areas across the U.S. where field agents rated neighborhoods during the 1930s. Historians Robert K. Nelson and colleagues have compiled the most comprehensive digital collection of HOLC maps and appraisal reports at Mapping Inequality: Redlining in New Deal America, as shown in Figure 2.5. Looking across HOLC reports, federal field agents frequently warned about “infiltration” of higher-status neighborhoods by “undesirable” or “inharmonious” populations, using pejorative labels of the 1930s such as “Colored” or “Italian” or “Jewish” or “Orientals.”27 Clearly, the HOLC maps and appraisals reflected the racist and elitist views of the people who created these documents. But their direct impact on mortgage lending is another matter, to be addressed further below. Figure 2.5: Zoom in and click on HOLC maps and appraisals for cities across the US in the full-screen interactive version of Mapping Inequality: Redlining in New Deal America by Robert K. Nelson and collaborators. Their collection includes digitized HOLC maps and area descriptions from the National Archives for at least 18 of Connecticut’s 169 municipalities: the capital city of Hartford and its suburbs East Hartford and West Hartford; Bridgeport, Fairfield and Stratford; New Britain; New Haven and portions of its suburbs East Haven, North Haven, West Haven, Hamden, and Woodbridge; Stamford and its suburbs Darien and New Canaan; Waterbury and its suburb of Watertown. Although New London appeared in a prior list of HOLC cities, the Mapping Inequality team has not yet been able to locate and digitize it. How FHA Restricted Lending by Location Shortly after Roosevelt’s New Deal launched the HOLC, he signed the National Housing Act in 1934, which created a second agency that also reshaped home mortgage financing, called the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). While the HOLC directly provided mortgages to existing homeowners to rescue them from bank foreclosures, the FHA dealt directly with banks and other lenders, and offered a form of insurance—called underwriting—to guarantee that homebuyers would repay their loans. FHA signaled a major step by the federal government into the marketplace by using public tax dollars to subsidize the cost of mortgages by absorbing risks that would normally fall to privately-owned banks and other financial institutions, and was part of the New Deal administration’s overall plan to rebuild the shattered housing market. The FHA’s definition of risks in the housing market reflected the racial views of Frederick M. Babcock, the FHA Director of Underwriting, and other White leaders at this federal agency. Scholars point to Babcock as the first to codify how the real estate industry should factor race into its formal assessments of property values. Originally from Chicago, he graduated from Northwestern University, worked in his father’s real estate firm, then wrote his first book, The Appraisal of Real Estate, in 1924. Babcock observed that “Residential values are affected by racial and religious factors… A home utility seeks location near people, but always near persons of the same social standing, same races…” He delved further into this theme of socially homogenous neighborhoods when writing his influential textbook, The Valuation of Real Estate in 1932. In a section titled “The Influence of Social and Racial Factors,” Babcock asserted that while most population changes only lead to gradual differences in property value, “there is one difference in people, namely race, which can result in a very rapid decline.” Rapid declines in property values “can be partially avoided by segregation,” Babcock claimed, and suggested that Southern methods for separating Whites and Blacks also might be appropriate in Northern states.28 Figure 2.6: Frederick M. Babcock, shown here as Director of the Underwriting Division of the Federal Housing Administration in 1937, codified how the presence of “inharmonious” racial groups should be negatively factored into FHA mortgage applications. Photo digitized by Library of Congress. Under Babcock’s influence, the FHA published its first Underwriting Manual in 1935 to determine which homebuyers qualified for FHA-insured loans. This detailed 200+ page manual, which grew longer with subsequent editions, established guidelines for FHA staff to rate mortgage applications. Instructions specified exactly how FHA evaluators should inspect the property, evaluate its location, and judge the applicant’s credit worthiness, before FHA examiners approved government funds to underwrite the loan and guarantee repayment. The Manual featured sample scoring charts, which summarized various factors that FHA evaluators should consider, such as the ratio of the loan to the value of the home, and the likelihood that the building still would have economic value beyond the life of the mortgage. But the most important factor on the form was “Location.” Even if the application received high marks in other categories, an unfavorable location rating required FHA staff to reject it, as shown in Figure 2.7.29 Figure 2.7: This sample scoring chart from the 1936 Federal Housing Administration Underwriting Manual showed how an unfavorable location rating required FHA staff to reject a mortgage application. Hosted by HathiTrust. Exactly how did the FHA Underwriting Manual define a good location? The most heavily-weighted factor was “Protection from Adverse Influences,” which referred to different ways to defend homogenous White middle-class suburban neighborhoods from people they deemed undesirable. FHA sent appraisers to inspect not only the physical building, but the social demographics of its surroundings and future threats to its stability. The Manual instructed appraisers to “investigate areas surrounding the location to determine whether or not incompatible racial and social groups are present,” such as Black, immigrant, or lower-income residents, as any intrusions would provoke “instability and a reduction in values,” as shown in Figure 2.8. Neighborhoods received higher scores if they were protected by “natural or artificially established barriers,” such as hills, parks, highways, or college campuses that prevented “infiltration” by “lower-class occupancy and inharmonious racial groups.” The Manual also favored legal tools that racially and economically segregated neighborhoods— such as racially restrictive covenants and exclusionary zoning ordinances—as described in later chapters of this book. FHA guidelines also shaped local educational policy by cautioning that neighborhood schools “should not be attended in large numbers by inharmonious racial groups,” thereby using federal funds to block any attempts to integrate schools. Finally, the Manual warned appraisers to carefully consider potential changes in future decades, because if the “character of a neighborhood” declines, “it is usually impossible to induce a higher social class than those already in the neighborhood to purchase and occupy properties.” Overall, tax-supported FHA mortgages funded new home construction in all-White suburbs, and divested federal money from existing homes in racially and economically diverse urban neighborhoods.30 Figure 2.8: Explore excerpts on “adverse influences” in the 1936 FHA Underwriting Manual or view the full document, hosted by Hathitrust. The FHA required evaluators to reduce scores for mortgage applications located near racially or socioeconomically diverse neighborhoods, and to raise scores for those in homogenous all-White middle-class areas. When the FHA expanded its Underwriting Manual in 1938, it added a four-level ranking for the neighborhood location, on a scale from A to D, based largely on the HOLC City Security Map ratings. Updated FHA evaluation forms also included specific codes to designate the predominant racial composition of the neighborhood: White, Mixed, Foreign, and Negro, as shown in Figure 2.9.31 Figure 2.9: The FHA introduced codes to indicate the predominant racial composition of neighborhoods in its 1938 Underwriting Manual. Digitized by HathiTrust. Opponents of racist federal lending policies spoke out. In June 1938, Roy Wilkins at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) wrote to Robert Weaver, a Black official in the FDR administration, to relay that a White FHA employee had tipped them off about about race restrictive covenants in the mortgage guidelines. The NAACP magazine The Crisis reported in 1939 that a local branch in Queens, New York had investigated complaints from Black homebuyers whose FHA applications were rejected. When pressed by NAACP attorney Thurgood Marshall, local FHA officials admitted that “no mortgages were guaranteed for colored people in any neighborhood which was less than 50% Negro.” NAACP head William White wrote directly to President Roosevelt to demand the removal of the segregationist clause about “incompatible racial and social groups” from the Underwriting Manual, but FDR delayed and deflected in his response. Black newspapers investigated these issues, turning more of their attention from the HOLC to the FHA, while the White press largely ignored it. FHA leaders kept explicitly racist and classist language in the Underwriting Manual until pressured to remove it in 1952. Charles Abrahams, a Polish-born fair housing expert in New York City, wrote in 1955 that “FHA adopted a racial policy that could well have been culled from the Nuremberg laws” by setting itself up as “the protector of the all white neighborhood.”32 Comparing the Impact of HOLC and FHA Although both of these New Deal mortgage programs—the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation and the Federal Housing Administration—clearly illustrate the segregationist intent of the public officials who administered them, their impact on people’s lives was not identical. While the HOLC “redlining” maps visually capture our attention as stark evidence of government-sponsored discrimination, many readers are surprised to learn that HOLC did, in fact, offer mortgage loans to Black homeowners in “hazardous” neighborhoods, and in several cases at higher proportions than to White homeowners. By contrast, the discriminatory power of FHA-insured mortgage policy has been buried inside lengthy bureaucratic government documents such as the Underwriting Manual, whose textual details have not yet attracted similar levels of public attention. The remainder of this chapter seeks to clearly lay out some of the key differences between the relative impact of HOLC versus FHA. When Kenneth Jackson effectively launched the field of US suburban history with the publication of Crabgrass Frontier in 1985, he renewed scholarly attention on the discriminatory practices of both the HOLC and the FHA mortgage programs. Jackson rediscovered the HOLC Residential Security Maps buried deep within the National Archives, reframed them as “redlining” maps by pointing out their racial and antisemitic prejudices, and reprinted examples in his book. Similarly, Jackson called out the FHA Underwriting Manual for its multiple prohibitions against insuring loans in racially- or ethnically-mixed neighborhoods neighborhoods.33 For people reading about redlining for the first time, racist intent by government officials probably served as sufficient evidence of racist impact on local communities. But Jackson did not make that claim. In fact, his discussion of HOLC loans briefly noted one very surprising pattern. Although HOLC maps had redlined areas as “hazardous” to investors, HOLC distributed about 30 percent of its mortgages to homes in the lowest D-grade neighborhoods in cities that Jackson closely examined, such as Newark, New Jersey. He explained this puzzling result by stating that HOLC found that residents of poorer neighborhoods generally repaid their loans at a higher rate than more affluent neighborhoods. In this way, the HOLC program did not refuse to do business in “redlined” areas. Its own reports cautiously stated that “we do not mean to imply that good mortgages do not exist or cannot be made in the Third or Fourth grade areas,” the lowest-rated yellow and red areas of the map, “but we do think that they should be made and serviced on a different basis than in the First and Second grade areas.” Furthermore, Jackson demonstrated that publicly-funded HOLC maps influenced privately-owned banks to refuse to make loans to low-rated neighborhoods.34 Historical geographer Amy Hillier also challenged conventional understandings of “redlining” by investigating HOLC and FHA rating and lending patterns more closely across neighborhoods in the city of Philadelphia. In one study, Hillier confirmed what we suspected but did not have sufficient evidence to prove: HOLC systematically downgraded neighborhoods with Black residents, which were a statistically significant predictor of ratings when compared to census tract demographics, while controlling for differences in housing characteristics. But Hillier’s other studies yielded more surprising results when she examined which properties actually received HOLC or FHA loans for a sample of Philadelphia mortgage documents from 1940 to 1960. First, Hillier found that HOLC made a large proportion of its loans to lower-grade areas, despite the racial biases of field agents against Black, immigrant, and lower-class residents. Second, Hillier found that FHA made relatively fewer loans in lower-rated neighborhoods, but data limitations prevented her from making more definitive claims. Overall, when considering both direct and indirect evidence, the FHA is the primary culprit responsible for federal divestment and segregation that led to post-war urban decline. Hillier argues that the FHA “reflected an anti-urban and racial bias deeper than the HOLC’s,” because its Underwriting Manual required privately-owned lenders to avoid risks associated with neighborhood demographics in order to qualify for publicly-funded mortgage insurance, while HOLC reports consistently stated that loans could still be profitable in those areas. “Whether or not [the FHA] used maps with red lines” Hillier concludes, it “did more to institutionalize redlining than any other agency…”35 Available evidence from the Hartford region concurs with Hillier’s analysis that FHA was more influential that HOLC in shaping racial and social class divisions that continue today. To grasp the big picture, compare White and Blacks homeownership, and relative rates of federal lending, in both the city and the suburbs. From 1940 to 1950, homeownership rates steadily increased in the City of Hartford for Whites (from 18 to 23 percent) and Blacks (from 6 to 10 percent). Both White and Black single-family homeowners obtained mortgages through savings banks (54 percent) and commercial banks (19 percent), with the federal HOLC program far behind other providers (7 percent) in 1940. Surprisingly, while the total number of Black Hartford single-family homeowners was very small (only 119) in Hartford that year, they were more likely than Whites to hold HOLC mortgages (13 percent versus 7 percent) relative to their population. This pattern of Black access to HOLC, which contradicts what the redlining maps suggests at first glance, matches trends found by historians Michney and Winling in several other US cities.36 To understand the full influence of FHA during this period, look at Hartford’s nearly all-White, rapidly-growing suburbs. West Hartford, for example, had over 33,000 residents, with over 99.5 percent identified as White, and a homeownership rate of 59 percent according to the 1940 Census.37 FHA policies favoring new home construction in all-White areas fit this profile. While the federal government did not publish detailed FHA loan data for the Hartford region, patterns were probably similar what the agency revealed about the Northeast region at large. In 1950, about 17 percent of Northeastern White single-family homeowners benefitted from a government-subsidized FHA-insured mortgage, compared to only 9 percent of Black homeowners. US Census officials tried to dismiss this racial gap by noting that “nonwhite owners” tended to live in “older structures” with a “lower median purchase price” than White owners, and therefore were “not so likely to meet the requirements for government insurance as newer properties with a higher purchase price.” But this official explanation was silent on the role played by FHA policymakers who intentionally segregated racial and social classes by design.38 One final lasting difference between HOLC and FHA was the volume of loans serviced over time. During its rescue phase from 1933-1935, HOLC purchased mortgages with a total value of over $3 billion, but that dropped off during its consolidation phase from 1935-1951. By contrast, the FHA program steadily grew and backed over $5 billion in total loans from the 1930s Depression until World War II, then soared in the post-war years, supporting over $3 billion in loans in 1948 alone, as shown in Figure 2.10.39 While HOLC directly funded mortgages, FHA insured mortgage payments to banks and other lenders, thereby using public funding to cooperate with, rather than compete against, private enterprise. After World War II, the federal government created another FHA-style program through the GI Bill and the Veteran’s Administration, called the VA-guaranteed mortgage program, which made it more affordable for returning soldiers and sailors to purchase homes.40 Figure 2.10: Explore the full-screen interactive chart to compare the value of HOLC mortgages versus all types of FHA-insured loans and mortgages sponsored by year from 1933 to 1948. While HOLC mortgage lending peaked at $2.25 billion in 1934, FHA-insured loans have had a longer-lasting influence that surpassed HOLC in the post-war era and continues to the present. See historical sources, data, and code on GitHub. The FHA continues to exist today as the largest federal home lending program and currently insures mortgage repayments for over 8 million single-family homes. Its explicitly racist policies were removed in the 1950s, and additional improvements came when legislators voted in favor of the 1968 Fair Housing Act, which activists pressured the executive branch to enforce more consistently during the 1970s. By contrast, HOLC actively made loans for only three years during the mid-1930s, then sold off its holdings and dissolved by 1951. Although the HOLC’s color-coded redlining maps brightly stand out in our growing historical consciousness about discriminatory federal lending programs in US cities, a more important story lies inside the bureaucratic FHA policies that fueled the growth of new single-family homes in virtually all-White suburbs.41 About the authors and contributors: Shaun McGann (Trinity 2014) wrote the first draft of this essay in the Cities Suburbs and Schools seminar, and published it in ConnecticutHistory.org.42 Jack Dougherty expanded the essay for publication in this book. Ilya Ilyankou (Trinity 2018) and Jack Dougherty developed the interactive map, based on an earlier version created with contributors from UConn MAGIC and the Kirwin Institute.43 David Freund, Colored Property: State Policy and White Racial Politics in the Modern American Suburb (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), https://www.google.com/books/edition/Colored_Property/QRaH4u9yRTQC.↩︎ Ta-Nehisi Coates, “The Case for Reparations” (The Atlantic, June 2014), http://www.theatlantic.com/galleries/reparations/1/; Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America (New York: Liveright Publishing, 2017), http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/959808903; Nikole Hannah-Jones, “The 1619 Project,” The New York Times: Magazine, August 14, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/1619-america-slavery.html.↩︎ Robert K. Nelson and collaborators, “Mapping Inequality: Redlining in New Deal America, Third Version” (American Panorama, Digital Scholarship Lab, University of Richmond, December 2023), https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining/.↩︎ Elizabeth Warren, “What Is Redlining?” (Twitter, February 13, 2020), https://twitter.com/ewarren/status/1228009904973238274; Reid J. Epstein and Lisa Lerer, “Warren Says Bloomberg Shouldn’t Be Nominee, Citing Redlining Remarks,” The New York Times: U.S., February 13, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/13/us/politics/elizabeth-warren-bloomberg.html.↩︎ On national changes in home mortgage loan terms from the 1920s to the 1930s, see Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier, pp. 204-06; Rothstein, The Color of Law, pp. 63-4. On Hartford changes, see Leon A. Winslow, “Home Purchase Is Made Easier By Federal Act,” Hartford Courant, November 11, 1934, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/558502839?accountid=14405.↩︎ Todd M. Michney and LaDale Winling, “New Perspectives on New Deal Housing Policy: Explicating and Mapping HOLC Loans to African Americans,” Journal of Urban History 46, no. 1 (January 1, 2020): 150–80, https://doi.org/10.1177/0096144218819429.↩︎ “Milliken Brothers Fail for $6,500,000,” New York Times, June 11, 1907, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/96770976?accountid=14405; “Foster Milliken Jr., 1930 US Census Manuscript, New York, NY, Manhattan ED 1215, Image 10 of 70” (FamilySearch, 1930), https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33S7-9R89-DCW; “Milliken – Durell.” New York Times, January 20, 1935, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/101500203?accountid=14405; Foster Milliken Jr., “Confidential Report of a Survey in Hartford, Connecticut for the Division of Research and Statistics, Home Owners’ Loan Corporation” (Record Group 195, Records of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, Box 64, Folder Hartford CT #2, National Archives II, College Park MD, May 5, 1936), p. 3, 20.↩︎ Home Owners’ Loan Corporation, “Residential Security Map and Area Descriptions, Hartford-West Hartford-East Hartford, Connecticut” (Record Group 195: Records of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, Box 64, City Survey Files, National Archives II, College Park, Maryland, November 20, 1937), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_archives/14/; see georeferenced maps at Home Owners’ Loan Corporation, “Residential Security ’Redlining’ Map, West Hartford-Hartford, CT,” 1937, http://mapwarper.net/maps/15096; Home Owners’ Loan Corporation, “Residential Security ’Redlining’ Map, East Hartford CT,” 1937, http://mapwarper.net/maps/15097.↩︎ Milliken Jr., “Confidential Report of a Survey in Hartford, Connecticut for the Division of Research and Statistics, Home Owners’ Loan Corporation”; Home Owners’ Loan Corporation, “Residential Security Map and Area Descriptions, Hartford-West Hartford-East Hartford, Connecticut”.↩︎ Table based on geodata calculations of land areas in 1937 HOLC map and report. Not all land area in each municipality received HOLC ratings.↩︎ Home Owners’ Loan Corporation, “Residential Security Map and Area Descriptions, Hartford-West Hartford-East Hartford, Connecticut”, pp. 1, A1-D3.↩︎ Home Owners’ Loan Corporation; Ilya Ilyankou and Jack Dougherty, “Map: Federal HOLC \"Redlining\" in Hartford Area, CT, 1937” (2016; repr., On The Line, 2017), https://ontheline.github.io/otl-redlining/index-caption.html; University of Connecticut Libraries Map and Geographic Information Center, “Federal HOLC \"Redlining\" Map, Hartford Area, 1937,” 2012, http://magic.lib.uconn.edu/otl/doclink_holc.html; Jason Reece et al., People, Place, and Opportunity: Mapping Communities of Opportunity in Connecticut: A Report Commissioned by the Connecticut Fair Housing Center (Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, The Ohio State University, 2009), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/44/.↩︎ See table source in Ilyankou and Dougherty, “Map,” 2017. Although the HOLC report noted that the Hartford C-9 neighborhood included a very small percentage of Black families, that did not automatically place it in the riskiest category, in contrast to Rothstein’s claim that “A neighborhood earned a red color if African Americans lived in it, even if it was a solid middle-class neighborhood of single-family homes.” Rothstein, The Color of Law, p. 64.↩︎ See “Read about Redlining: Introduction” in Nelson and collaborators, “Mapping Inequality”.↩︎ Frederick Morrison Babcock, The Appraisal of Real Estate (MacMillan, 1924), https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/102610401, p. 71; Frederick Morrison. Babcock, The Valuation of Real Estate (New York ; London: McGraw-Hill, 1932), https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Valuation_of_Real_Estate/duDSAAAAMAAJ, p. 91. On Babcock’s role in codifying race and real estate, see Adrienne Brown, “Appraisal Narratives: Reading Race on the Midcentury Block,” American Quarterly 70, no. 2 (2018): 211–34, https://doi.org/10.1353/aq.2018.0015; Stella J Adams, “Putting Race Explicitly into the CRA,” in Revisiting the CRA: Perspectives on the Future of the Community Reinvestment Act, ed. Prabal Chakrabarti (A Joint Publication of the Federal Reserve Banks of Boston and San Francisco, 2009), 167–69; “Babcock, Frederick Morrison” (SNAC: Social Networks and Archival Content, 2020), http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6gx58gz; Harris & Ewing, “Frederick M. Babcock (Photograph)” (Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, 1937), https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2016871684/.↩︎ Federal Housing Administration, Underwriting Manual: Underwriting and Valuation Procedure Under Title II of the National Housing Act (Washington: U.S. Govt. Print. Off, 1935), http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1017217834; Federal Housing Administration, Underwriting Manual: Underwriting and Valuation Procedure Under Title II of the National Housing Act (Washington, D.C.: US Government Printing Office, 1936), http://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015018409246, section 247.↩︎ Administration, Underwriting Manual, 1936, part II, sections 226-233, 284, 289. On the racial logic of the Underwriting Manual, see Freund, Colored Property, pp. 155-162; Rothstein, The Color of Law, pp. 64-66.↩︎ Federal Housing Administration, Underwriting Manual: Underwriting and Valuation Procedure Under Title II of the National Housing Act (Washington, D.C.: US Government Printing Office, 1938), http://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015018409261, section 1849-50↩︎ N. D. B. Connolly, “How Did African Americans Discover They Were Being ‘Redlined’?” (Talking Points Memo, August 9, 2015), https://talkingpointsmemo.com/primary-source/redlining-holc-fha-wilkins-weaver; “Housing Authority Draws Mortgage Color Line,” The Crisis 46, no. 2 (February 1939): 54–55, https://books.google.com/books?id=MFsEAAAAMBAJ; Michney and Winling, “New Perspectives on New Deal Housing Policy”, pp. 152-56; Rothstein, The Color of Law, p. 64; Charles Abrams, Forbidden Neighbors: A Study of Prejudice in Housing (New York: Harper, 1955), https://www.google.com/books/edition/Forbidden_Neighbors/gxVHAAAAMAAJ, pp. 229-30.↩︎ Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier, pp. 195-218.↩︎ Jackson, p. 202; Home Owners’ Loan Corporation, “Residential Security Map and Area Descriptions, Hartford-West Hartford-East Hartford, Connecticut”, p. 2.↩︎ Amy Hillier, “Redlining and the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation,” Journal of Urban History 29, no. 4 (2003): 394–420, http://doi.org/10.1177/0096144203029004002, p. 415; Amy Hillier, “Redlining in Philadelphia,” in Past Time, Past Place: GIS in History, ed. Anne Kelly Knowles (Redlands, CA: ESRI Press, 2002), 79–92; Amy Hillier, “Spatial Analysis of Historical Redlining: A Methodological Exploration,” Journal of Housing Research 14, no. 1 (2003): 137–67, http://jstor.org/stable/44944777; Amy Hillier, “Searching for Red Lines: Spatial Analysis of Lending Patterns in Philadelphia, 1940-1960,” Pennsylvania History 72, no. 1 (2005): 25–47, https://jstor.org/stable/27778657; Amy Hillier, “Residential Security Maps and Neighborhood Appraisals: The Home Owners’ Loan Corporation and the Case of Philadelphia,” Social Science History 29, no. 2 (2005): 207–33, https://doi.org/10.1017/S014555320001292X; Amy Hillier, “Who Received Loans? Home Owners’ Loan Corporation Lending and Discrimination in Philadelphia in the 1930s,” Journal of Planning History 2, no. 1 (2003): 3–24, http://jph.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/2/1/3.↩︎ Table 1: Occupied Dwelling Units and Table 22: Occupancy, Tenure, Race, Population Per Unit (for Connecticut); Table F-4: Holder of First Mortgage on 1-Family Properties, by Race of Occupants and Year Built, for the City of Hartford; all in Volume IV: Mortgages on Owner-Occupied Nonfarm Homes, US Census Bureau, Census of Housing: 1940 (US Government Printing Office, 1943), https://www.census.gov/prod/www/decennial.html. See calculations in Sources folder in Ilyankou and Dougherty, “Map,” 2017; compare with Michney and Winling, “New Perspectives on New Deal Housing Policy”.↩︎ See Census source notes above and calculations in Sources folder in Ilyankou and Dougherty, “Map,” 2017.↩︎ Summary of Findings, Volume IV: Residential Financing, US Census Bureau, Census of Housing: 1950 (US Government Printing Office, 1952), https://www.census.gov/prod/www/decennial.html, PDF chapter 2, p. XLI↩︎ Ilya Ilyankou and Jack Dougherty, “Chart: Value of HOLC Mortgages and FHA-Insured Loans by Year, 1933-48” (On The Line, 2020), https://ontheline.github.io/otl-chart-holc-fha/, with data sources from C. Lowell Harriss, History and Policies of the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (New York: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1951), https://www.nber.org/books/harr51-1, Table 4: Loans Closed by HOLC, 1933-1936, p. 30, and Federal Housing Administration, Fifteenth Annual Report of the Federal Housing Administration, 1949, https://www.huduser.gov/portal/publications/Fifteenth-Annual-Report-of-the-Federal-Housing-Administration.html, Table 1: Yearly Volume of Mortgages and Loans Insured by FHA Under All Titles: Face amount of mortgages written and net proceeds of loans insured, 1934-1948, p. 8. Note that the chart compares HOLC mortgages versus all types of FHA-insured loans and mortgages. The majority of FHA is home mortgage insurance, but the total also includes property improvements and rental housing, which can be disaggregated in the source table.↩︎ Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier, p. 206-07.↩︎ “Federal Housing Administration History” (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), 2020), https://www.hud.gov/program_offices/housing/fhahistory.↩︎ Shaun McGann, “The Effects of ‘Redlining’ on the Hartford Metropolitan Region” (ConnecticutHistory.org, March 2014), http://connecticuthistory.org/the-effects-of-redlining-on-the-hartford-metropolitan-region/.↩︎ Ilyankou and Dougherty, “Map,” 2017; University of Connecticut Libraries Map and Geographic Information Center, “Federal HOLC \"Redlining\" Map, Hartford Area, 1937”.↩︎ "],["restricting.html", "Restricting with Property Covenants", " Restricting with Property Covenants by Tracey Wilson, Vianna Iorio, David K. Ware, June Gold, and Jack Dougherty No persons of any race except the white race shall use or occupy any building on any lot except that this covenant shall not prevent occupancy by domestic servants of a different race employed by an owner or tenant. – High Ledge Homes on South Main Street, West Hartford, Connecticut, 1940.44 To some readers, this shockingly racist language might seem like a long-ago segregation policy from the Deep South. Instead, it comes from the Deep North and represents a hidden chapter in White suburban history. Inside this 1940 property deed, meaning a real estate contract between sellers and buyers, a covenant refers to any limitation on how the land may be used, such as for residential or commercial use. Race restrictive covenants like these typically prohibited people outside of the “white race” from owning or residing on property, often with exceptions for domestic servants. Beginning in the 1920s across the U.S., real estate developers, homeowners’ associations, and private owners added racial covenants to different types of property contracts. But these represented more than agreements between racist individuals. Since property contracts were filed with local government clerks to become legally-binding public records, racial covenants became another form of government-sponsored housing segregation. White-only property covenants were enforceable in the courts. If a Black resident moved in, a White resident with legal standing could sue in court for breach of contract. Eventually the U.S. Supreme Court ruled racial covenants to be unenforceable in 1948, and the 1968 Fair Housing Act made them unlawful, yet some local governments continued to file property deeds with these restrictions until 1972.45 This chapter reveals the history of state-sponsored racial restrictions in Connecticut land records. So far, our team has located 20 racial covenants that real estate developers placed on hundreds of properties for suburban home construction from the late 1930s into the 1940s. We have documented racial covenants in the Connecticut towns of Hamden, Manchester, Newington, and West Hartford, as shown in Figure 2.11, with evidence pointing to more in East Haddam, Stamford, and other towns to come.46 Learn more about How We Found Restrictive Covenants in this book. If you know of similar covenants with racial or religious restrictions anywhere in Connecticut, contact the authors. Figure 2.11: Explore the full-screen interactive map and click links or polygons to view racist restrictions in property deeds across Connecticut in the 1930s-40s, where suburban developers prohibited occupants “other than the white race” or “other than the Caucasian race,” until the US Supreme Court declared these unenforceable in 1948. While the racist language still exists in town property records, a 2021 Connecticut law made it easier for current owners to legally remove it, without erasing it from our historical memory. To date, researchers have found racial covenants in the CT towns of West Hartford (by Katie Campbell); Newington and Manchester (by David Ware); and Hamden (by June Gold). If you know of similar covenants with racial or religious restrictions anywhere in Connecticut, contact the authors. View historical sources and the code for this map, developed by Ilya Ilyankou and Jack Dougherty, based on an earlier version created with UConn MAGIC. First, this chapter explains how race restrictive covenants arose in the nation beginning in the 1920s, and to our current knowledge, appeared later in Connecticut during the 1930s-40s, primarily in suburban housing developments. Although racist covenants were more common in Northern and Western cities such as Seattle, Minneapolis, and Chicago, so far those we have found in Connecticut vary, with a heavier concentration around New Haven suburbs than Hartford suburbs. Second, it describes how Connecticut civil rights advocates challenged restrictive covenants as an “un-American” policy during the late 1940s, and helped shift public opinion as the US Supreme Court ruled them to be unenforceable in 1948. In the present day, fair-housing advocates won passage of a 2021 Connecticut law that enables current homeowners to easily void racist covenants in the legal record, without erasing them from our collective memory. Overall, their historical legacy remains with us in two ways. On a tangible level, White homebuyers who purchased covenant-protected property gained financial benefits—meaning higher home values in legally-guaranteed all-White neighborhoods—that they passed forward as inheritances to future family members. On a structural level, the uncovering the hidden history of racist covenants in the Deep North reminds us how Connecticut’s suburbs were shaped not simply by market forces, but also government-sponsored White supremacy. The Rise of Racial Covenants The nation’s story of restrictive covenants begins with the U.S Supreme Court case Corrigan v. Buckley in 1921. White property owners in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of Washington D.C. formed a property owners’ association that used racially restrictive covenants to keep out Black homebuyers. The dispute arose when White owner John Corrigan attempted to sell his house to an African-American buyer, Irene Curtis, a violation of the property’s racial covenant. Learning of this violation, White neighbor Irene Buckley brought suit to enforce the race restrictive covenant and stop the property sale. As the case worked its way through the nation’s legal system, courts upheld this new tool for racial barriers in housing. First, the District of Columbia Supreme Court approved the racial covenant and cited existing legal segregation in schools and public recreational facilities as precedent. Second, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals also approved the racial covenant and stated that African Americans were free to include the same kind of racially exclusive language against Whites in their own property deeds. Finally, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously affirmed the lower court decisions in 1926 by refusing to hear the case on grounds that they lacked jurisdiction. When Justice Edward Sanford delivered the U.S. Supreme Court’s opinion, he narrowly defined the Constitution’s guarantee that no person should “be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law” as it applied to Corrigan v. Buckley. While the Fifth Amendment limited the actions of the federal government, Sanford asserted that it did not apply to individuals entering into a private contact, such as a restrictive covenant. Moreover, he argued that the Thirteenth Amendment did not protect individual rights of Black citizens, and the Fourteenth Amendment again referred to actions of the state, not of private individuals. Therefore, the 1926 Corrigan v. Buckley decision reaffirmed the right of property owners to legally enforce race restrictive covenants, while ignoring that the court system itself acted as governmental support for segregation. Their interpretation of the Constitution would prevail for the next two decades.47 In Connecticut, lake association developers, who sold rural summer cottages to urban residents with automobiles, apparently were among the first to take advantage of the Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of racial covenants. When Charles White and investors in the Andover Lake Corporation sought to attract buyers from Hartford, located 18 miles away, their initial 1928 full-page newspaper ad mentioned it was a “quiet, restricted lake” in regular-size type. One year later, as they struggled to entice buyers, their 1929 full-page ad made a bolder promise in a larger font: “Reasonable Restrictions Will Maintain the Desirability of this Development,” as shown in Figure 2.12. Those code words signaled that Andover Lake expressly prohibited Blacks and Jews from buying property with restrictive covenants in land records, according to two observers. Similar euphemisms by other Connecticut lake associations advertised in the late 1920s that their property was “wisely restricted” (Secret Lake in Canton), had “sensible restrictions” (Pine Lake Shores in Coventry), and that “proper restrictions assure a happy, congenial family of vacationists” (Lake Hayward in Colchester). In later years, the Andover Lake Property Owners Association prohibited anyone—even other property owners—from swimming in the lake unless they received a two-thirds majority secret ballot. Racism ran so deep that when William Philpot, an African-American minister from New Haven, successfully purchased an Andover Lake cottage in 1955, the Association rejected his application for lake access three times. Philpot protested by conducting a “Wade In” from his property to Andover Lake in 1964, with support from powerful allies, including Governor John Dempsey. Yet the Association filed an injunction to block Philpot from the lake, and persisted until they lost in court in 1967, then finally changed their bylaws to allow any property owner to join.48 Figure 2.12: The Andover Lake Corporation publicized “reasonable restrictions” as code words for racial prohibitions against Black or Jewish owners of summer cottages. Image copyrighted 1929 by Hartford Courant, reprinted here under fair-use guidelines. Racial covenants in Connecticut’s emerging single-family suburban developments appeared a decade later in the late 1930s. Previously, owners began adding non-racial types of deed restrictions to increase the desirability of property in the 1910s, perhaps earlier. For example in West Hartford, individual owners began to add home-value restrictions, requiring that future homes constructed on the land must be built above a minimum size or sold above a minimum dollar amount, to maintain property values. Some owners added “nuisance” restrictions to prohibit chicken coops or noxious fumes, again to raise property values. Finally, some West Hartford real estate developers began to add home-value restrictions across entire subdivisions, setting the stage for exclusionary zoning policies that the Town would later adopt in 1924, as described in this book chapter. While these early 1900s home-value deed restrictions effectively limited neighborhoods to wealthier White families, they did not yet contain explicitly racist prohibitions. To our knowledge, the first racial covenant in suburban Hartford-area property deeds appeared in late 1939 for an entire subdivision in Newington, a town on Hartford’s southern border, based on research by David Ware. During the Depression, real estate developers sought ways to convert rural farmland to prospective homes and make it more attractive to city dwellers to purchase. One developer was Alfred E. Hanbury, who renamed farmland he purchased near the town’s crossroads as the “Center Village” subdivision for future homes. Hanbury told city news reporters he was “optimistic concern[ing] the future of Newington as a residential community,” with its gas and electric utilities, easy trolley commute to Hartford, and affordable Federal Housing Adminstration mortgages, a topic described in this book chapter. Hanbury added several restrictions to a handwritten deed he filed when selling five property lots to homebuyers in October 1939. First, he required that only single-family homes could be constructed, on plots of land no smaller than about one-fifth of an acre, with no noxious or offensive businesses that might annoy neighbors. Later in the deed, he added an explicitly racist restriction, probably drawn from language he had seen other developers using elsewhere. “No persons of any race except the white race shall use or occupy any buildings on any lot, except that this covenant shall not prevent occupancy by domestic servants of a different race employed by an owner or tenant,” as shown in Figure 2.13. Selling homes was challenging during the Depression and World War II, but Hanbury finally sold 47 units at Center Village after the war and was selected as one of the first directors of the Home Builders Association of Hartford County, reflecting his status within the profession. Interestingly, Hanbury did not add racial covenants to two of his post-war Newington housing developments: Alandale and Belden Acres.49 Figure 2.13: Alfred Hanbury developed Newington farmland as shown in 1934 aerial image into the Center Village housing subdivision and added a race restrictive covenant in 1939. Image of Hanbury copyrighted 1950 by Hartford Courant, reprinted here under fair-use guidelines. Aerial map digitized by UConn MAGIC, and document from Town of Newington property records, both in public domain. In nearby West Hartford, some real estate developers also added racial covenants to attract homebuyers to more exclusive all-White suburban neighborhoods. Edward Hammel, president of High Ledge Homes, Inc., added the first racial covenant we have found in West Hartford in 1940. Described as a “builder of fine homes” in wealthy areas of Westchester County, New York, and Fairfield County, Connecticut, Hammel introduced new methods to make unsold property more marketable. Hammel purchased a subdivision on South Main Street, across from the Rockledge Gold Course, consisting of 84 property lots that the prior owner, developer Robert Bent, had not been able to sell during the Depression. Hammel’s land records added a “uniform plan of development” for single-family homes that also prohibited occupants “of any race except the white race.” Although High Ledge Homes did not openly publicize their White-only covenant, their 1940 advertising promised homebuyers that with A-level exclusionary zoning requirements, “you’ll like your neighbors,” as shown in Figure 2.14. The pitch also mentioned “West Hartford’s famous schools,” one of the earliest real estate advertising references to this young suburb’s public education system, and perhaps a premature one for this time period, when Hartford’s city schools still had a stronger reputation. By 1941, at least four more West Hartford developers followed Hammel’s lead and added racial covenants to their subdivisions.50 Figure 2.14: Although High Ledge Homes did not openly publicize their White-only covenant (map on left), their 1940 advertising promised homebuyers that with A-level exclusionary zoning requirements, “you’ll like your neighbors.” Image copyrighted 1940 by Hartford Courant, reprinted under fair-use guidelines. In Manchester, a suburb located to the east of Hartford, at least three real estate developers added race restrictive covenants to subdivisions in the early 1940s, according to attorney David Ware. At this stage, the ban against occupants “other than the white race” for housing developments such as Greenway Park, now appeared on pre-printed forms designed for mass duplication to individual buyers, as shown in Figure 2.15. But Ware points out how racial covenants still remained “hidden” in several ways. First, while land records are public documents in the town clerk’s office, individual pages inside large bound volumes were not easily searchable or copied in the 1940s, and still remain difficult to find in today’s digital age, as described in How We Found Restrictive Covenants in this book. Second, the White-only restriction was buried in the fine print in section F in a long page (sections A-M) of seemingly innocuous restrictions, meaning it would not stand out to homeowners unless they carefully read every line of their property deed. Third, Ware argues that racial covenants were “temporally camouflaged” because the White-only language only appeared in the original version. For all future sales, the deed simply stated that the property was “subject to certain restrictions of record,” which disguised its racist origins. For example, when Ware’s parents bought their Manchester home in 1950, their property deed vaguely stated that “said premises are subject to certain restrictive covenants of record” – which went back five prior transfers – to the original racial restriction in the 1942 deed by Lawrence Converse, present of the Greenway Park, Inc. development. Racism was legally powerful yet well-hidden in the Deep North.51 Figure 2.15: In Manchester, The Greenway Company placed racial covenants in pre-printed forms in 1940, seen only by homebuyers who read the fine print on the original property deed. View full-size document from Town of Manchester property records, public domain. Elsewhere in Connecticut, the racial covenants appeared more frequently. In Hamden, a suburb north of New Haven, real estate developers added White-only restrictions more often than the Hartford suburbs above during the 1940s. So far attorney June Gold has found racial covenants in 11 Hamden subdivisions, many of them located between the New Haven city boundary and the planned route of the Wilbur Cross Parkway, shown in Figure 2.16. Five of the nine restricted subdivisions were created by three developers: Joseph Maselli and his business partner Pasquale DeRosa, and their competitor, Veggo Larsen. In sum, these nine Hamden subdivisions added racial prohibitions to nearly 450 suburban homes.52 Figure 2.16: Hamden developers added White-only restrictions to several suburban subdivisions located between the New Haven city border (red line) and the planned route of the Wilbur Cross Parkway in the early 1940s. Explore the interactive covenants map. Overall, the frequency and concentration of racial covenants from the 1930s-40s varies across Connecticut. So far we have searched property deeds in a small number of towns, but have found over a thousand of White-only property deeds, as shown in Figure 2.17. In some suburban towns, given the large number of homes built during this period, the percentage with racial covenants can be relatively small. In Manchester, only 248 out of approximately 7,100 (3.5 percent) residential building lots approved by town officials between 1910-1950 included racial covenants. In West Hartford, only 190 homes out of approximately 3020 (6 percent) buildings constructed during the 1940s had racial covenants. Overall, despite the shocking existence of White-only covenants, many Connecticut suburbs relied more on other types of government-sponsored discrimination – such as federal lending policies, public housing barriers, and exclusionary zoning ordinances – to restrict non-White and low-income residents.53 Figure 2.17: View the table and calculations, by Jack Dougherty, June Gold, and David Ware. Compared to Connecticut, restrictive covenants were more common in other US cities, with some estimates of properties with racial restrictions ranging as high as 80 percent. Public history project teams have uncovered evidence and sparked action, according to the National Covenants Research Coalition, including those shown in Figure 2.18. One of the earliest to launch online was the Segregated Seattle project in 2005, where researchers have found White-only and anti-Jewish clauses in over 30,000 property deeds in King County to date, plus 20,000 more in other counties in Washington state. Their work pushed state legislators to approve a 2006 law to encourage homeowners to strike out racist covenants in the public record, and a 2023 law to provide compensation for victims. In the Minneapolis-St. Paul region, the Mapping Prejudice project began to document restrictive covenants in 2016 and has found over 30,000 restrictive property deeds to date. Researchers showed that current prices of Minnesota homes with racial covenants are 4 to 15 percent higher than identical homes without covenants. The Chicago Covenants project has already found over 100,000 properties with restrictive covenants, after searching about 20 percent of the city’s land records, and expects to find more as estimates of White-only property restrictions in that city range from 50 to 80 percent. In St. Louis, Missouri, the Dividing The City project found racial restrictions in about 80 percent of homes built in St. Louis county by 1950.54 Figure 2.18: Restrictive covenants were more common in other US cities. Explore digital history projects with images from Seattle, Minneapolis, Chicago, St. Louis, and more by the National Covenants Research Coalition. Challenging Racial and Religious Covenants Across the nation, a coalition of Black homebuyers, real estate agents, civil rights activists, and NAACP attorneys mounted a political and legal battle to overturn racial as well as religious covenants during the 1940s. Their efforts focused primarily on two cities. In Detroit, with its recent history of White mob violence against Black wartime workers, the McGhee family purchased a home and were sued and harassed by a White neighborhood association for violating a racial covenant. In St. Louis, the Shelley family bought their home through a “straw-party,” a White buyer who purchased from a White seller and immediately resold to a Black buyer (often at a higher price). On the day the Shelleys moved in, the White neighborhood association delivered a legal summons to evict them for violating the covenant. As state courts defended these covenants, NAACP attorney Thurgood Marshall and colleagues eventually persuaded the U.S. Supreme Court to hear their appeal in January 1948 for the consolidated cases, known as Shelley v. Kraemer55 Meanwhile in Hartford, Black activists and journalists spoke out against racial covenants and called to ban them in Connecticut. The Hartford Negro Citizens’ Council, organized at the Women’s League in the city’s North End in 1941, publicly criticized a housing committee report by the Bridgeport Chamber of Commerce in 1945, which recommended racial covenants to create White-only suburban neighborhoods. Also, Black newspapers such as the Hartford Chronicle regularly reported on the national NAACP’s efforts to eliminate covenants in other states, and indirectly referred to their existence inside the state, with few details. Perhaps Hartford’s Black community did not know the full extent of racial covenants buried deep inside the property records in suburban town clerk’s offices.56 One Jewish civil rights ally supported Black Hartford activists by condemning covenants that restricted against race or religion. Simon Bernstein, an attorney and Democratic member of Hartford’s city council, sent a public letter to the chair of the Judiciary Committee at the State Capitol in April 1947, calling for a bill to prohibit restrictive covenants. One month earlier, Hartford’s Black press had run a story on New York State legislators raising their own anti-covenant bill. Bernstein called for Connecticut to ban property covenants regarding “nationality, color and religious belief” because these “un-American” practices are “contrary to public policy”. He argued that “real estate deals are public records” and “our Town Clerks are unwitting tools in transcribing prejudices on record” in a “government publication” that grants “immunity” to perpetrators. As an attorney who handled property transfers, Bernstein described but did not name “a nearby town” where a covenant for an entire subdivision restricted sales “to only non-semitic members of the Caucasian race,” a phrase he quoted directly. Hartford’s White press summarized Bernstein’s letter, but only the Black press published it in its entirety. Despite these efforts, Connecticut legislators waited for a decision from the federal government.57 Across the nation by the late 1940s, civil rights activists successfully began to turn the tide in the political and legal struggle against racial covenants. One month before the U.S. Supreme Court heard the NAACP’s consolidated Shelley v. Kraemer case, President Truman’s Committee on Civil Rights issued its report against racial covenants, and the US Department of Justice also filed a brief against this discriminatory practice. NAACP attorneys won the case when the US Supreme Court ruled restrictive covenants to be “unenforceable” in 1948. Yet the Court’s reasoning was not a striking blow against racism. First, the Court’s unanimous vote was 6-0, minus three justices who recused themselves without explanation, which suggested that perhaps they also owned racially restricted property. Second, the Court decided that private parties could voluntarily agree to restrictive covenants, but that the judicial system could not enforce these agreements because discriminatory state action violated the Equal Protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In sum, the Shelley v. Kraemer ruling overturned the logic of the 1926 Buckley v. Corrigan decision, which refused to acknowledge legal enforcement of contracts as an act of government.58 While restrictive covenants were no longer enforceable, they did not disappear. In Connecticut, the East Haddam Town Clerk filed a racial covenant in December 1950, more than two years after the Shelley ruling. Across the nation, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) continued to require racial covenants for properties it insured until 1950, and continued to back mortgages for some White-only properties until 1962. Also, several state courts resisted the Shelley decision until a subsequent US Supreme Court decision in 1953, and the US Congress explicitly made restrictive covenants unlawful when it passed the US Fair Housing Act of 1968. Yet some local governments continued to accept restrictive covenants in property records until a US federal court struck down this practice in the 1972 Mayers v. Ridley ruling. Finally, even when local government clerks stopped accepting property deeds with unlawful covenants, generations of racist documents from the past continued to remain “on the books” in town halls across the US.59 Confronting the Legacy of Covenants Although courts ruled that restrictive covenants were no longer enforceable, and town clerks eventually stopped filing racist property deeds into the public record, their legacy still influences us today. White Christian families that purchased restricted homes in the 1940s financially benefitted from government-supported segregation that boosted the value of property that guaranteed no Black or Jewish neighbors. Decades later, even when overtly racist housing preferences have declined, the descendants of 1940s homeowners benefitted from inherited wealth built upon a more intense era of prejudice. Even if someone’s White grandparents did not personally express racist views, if their home had a restrictive covenant, or was located in an all-White neighborhood created by covenants, those more-desirable qualities among today’s homebuyers probably put more dollars into their grandchildren’s pockets. In addition, the legacy of covenants also affected Black or Jewish homebuyers in more recent decades, who had to decide whether or not to live in a neighborhood with a documented past of being openly hostile to their presence.60 Inspired by the Segregated Seattle project and related work in other states, Connecticut residents have gradually begun to confront restrictive covenants in our past, strike them out of the public record, but not erase them from our historical memory. The process is not fast, but key steps have become more visible and gained momentum over the past decade.61 After we found restrictive covenants in West Hartford property records in 2010, we contacted current residents and invited them to publicly share their reflections in oral history video interviews, to build broader awareness of how racism shaped this predominantly White suburb. Two present-day White residents of West Hartford’s High Ledge Homes development were shocked to learn that their neighborhood had been protected by a 1940s White-only covenant, and sought to make sense of its meaning on their lives. Debra Walsh, an educator and actor, reflected on the White privilege that was attached to her decision to buy her home in 2010, shown in Figure 2.19. Although she had believed that the North had not exhibited such explicit racist policies, the direct evidence of race restrictive covenants convinced her that “West Hartford made a concerted effort to stay White and WASPy and that contributes to the feel of the neighborhood.” Walsh acknowledged how the explicit racism of the covenants in her own neighborhood made her feel uncomfortable with the White privilege she experiences. “It’s really hard to look really deep within and answer those questions,” she explained, “…when you live in the dominant class. Like you don’t know how to answer it.” Even though she knew the covenants are no longer enforceable, Walsh could see how “the legacy of the piece of land gets passed on to a feeling of a neighborhood,” a sense of White exclusivity that pervades even today, when barriers take on less overtly racial language.62 Figure 2.19: Watch the oral history video or read the transcript of the interview with Debra Walsh to hear how she learned about a race restrictive covenant in her West Hartford neighborhood. Interview copyrighted 2011 by Walsh and shared under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. Yet while racial covenants make White West Hartford residents uncomfortable about the past, they remain an important piece of history, a hidden chapter that deserves more attention. Susan Hansen, a librarian and White resident who bought her home in the High Ledge Homes neighborhood in the 1990s, reflected on this theme in her 2011 oral history interview, shown in Figure 2.20. “I think this is something that people should know,” Hansen observed, “because there are people still living on my street who were here then, who must have been fully aware.” Hansen also emphasized the importance of knowing that racial covenants were not something that happened only in the Deep South long ago, but are a very recent part of Northern suburban history that should not be whitewashed out of memory. As Hansen concluded, “We need to know that we were being idiots up here, too, and it wasn’t somewhere else. It was here. It’s still here.”63 Figure 2.20: Watch the oral history video or read the transcript of the interview with Susan Hansen to hear her reflections about a race restrictive covenant in her West Hartford neighborhood. Interview copyrighted 2011 by Hansen and shared under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. After David Ware wrote his 2020 academic study of restrictive covenants in Manchester, he took it one step further by raising it with reporters and lobbying Connecticut legislators to change the law. Ware initially began his study when his father revealed that their 1950s family home contained a racial covenant, hidden in the paperwork over five prior real estate transfers. Since a growing number of states had passed laws to address the legacy of covenants, Ware believed Connecticut needed one too. In the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement in early 2021, Ware drafted a plan to strike out racial covenants, which was initially sponsored by Manchester State Rep. Jason Doucette. At the Judiciary Committee, co-chair State Senator Gary Winfield revised it into a bill that won quickly won unanimous support by the legislature and became law with the governor’s signature in 2021. Connecticut law now officially declares all unlawful covenants in land records to be void. Furthermore, the law requires towns to make available a free form for any resident to request the clerk to mark their covenant as void in the public record, though some town clerks have not yet complied. The process to void a covenant officially recognizes racism without removing it from our history. One of the first residents to void a racial covenant was David’s 95-year-old father, Frederick Ware, as shown in Figure 2.21.64 Figure 2.21: Frederick Ware (left), with his son David, one of the first Connecticut residents to void a restrictive covenant in 2021. Photo copyrighted 2021 by UConn and reprinted under fair-use guidelines. Document from Town of Manchester property records, public domain. In the New Haven suburb of Hamden, as current homeowners and community activists became aware of racial covenants in their property deeds, they spoke up and eventually connected with each other to publicly void them. Melinda Tuhus wrote a 1994 Hartford Courant opinion essay on discovering a racist covenant when purchasing her home in Hamden. At that time, Tuhus’s attorney discouraged her from attempting to strike out the restriction during the closing of her home purchase, arguing that making changes might “muddy the waters” and interfere with the sale. “You can’t change history,” her lawyer told her, yet Tuhus questioned the decision “to keep it hidden in musty tomes in the town clerk’s office.”65 Decades later during the Black Lives Matter movement in 2021, activists called attention to the history of racist property deeds in suburban developments that shaped Hamden’s Spring Glen neighborhood. When attorney June Gold attended Hamden’s Spring Glen Church in 2023, she learned about racial covenants from a speaker with Congregations Organized for a New Connecticut (CONECT). Gold also read about Ware’s work in Manchester and used her research skills to uncover several racial covenants in Hamden’s town records—to the surprise of the Town Clerk’s staff—and taught them about their legal obligation to publicize 2021 state law. Currently, Gold works with community groups to build awareness and offers her free legal services to help current homeowners void these racial restrictions. One of the many Hamden homeowners Gold assisted was Melinda Tulus, who wrote about wanting to “change history” and not “keep it hidden” in her 1994 article, and now had a way to make it happen.66 Under Connecticut Public Act 2021-173, each Town Clerk must post these forms, both on their website and inside the land records office, to allow property owners to reject unlawful covenants, free of charge. Property owners may fill out and submit either form below: CT Identification and Renunciation of Unlawful Covenant OR CT Affidavit to Identify Racial Covenant, signed by notary Help us continue the work to find and reject Connecticut’s racist covenants. In early 2024 we created the https://myCTdeed.com site to build public awareness and simplify the process for current owners to find and remove unlawful covenants from their property. To share with others, download our flyer shown in Figure 2.22. Learn more about How We Found Restrictive Covenants in this book and start research in your own community. If you know of similar property records with racial or religious restrictions anywhere in Connecticut, contact the authors. Figure 2.22: Download our myCTdeed.com flyer to share with others. About the authors and contributors: Tracey Wilson (Trinity 1976) wrote the first draft of the West Hartford portion for her 2010 article in the West Hartford Life magazine and published it in her 2018 Life in West Hartford book, which Vianna Iorio (Trinity 2019) revised for this book. David K. Ware and June Gold co-authored sections based on their covenant research in other Connecticut towns. Jack Dougherty collaborated with all and expanded the historical and comparative sections of this chapter. Ilya Ilyankou (Trinity 2018) and Jack Dougherty developed the interactive map, based on an earlier version created with UConn MAGIC. Katie Campbell Levasseur (Trinity 2011) researched restrictive property covenants, and both she and Candace Simpson (Trinity 2012) conducted oral history interviews.67 High Ledge Homes Inc., “Agreement Concerning Building Restrictions” (Volume 152, pages 224-5, maps #218, 222, 247, Property Records, Town Clerk, Town of West Hartford, Connecticut, June 10, 1940), https://github.com/ontheline/otl-covenants.↩︎ For an introduction to different types of restrictive covenants, see Examples in “National Covenants Research Coalition” (National Covenants Research Coalition, 2022), https://www.nationalcovenantsresearchcoalition.com.↩︎ See historical sources on Hamden, Manchester, Newington, West Hartford, and partial record for East Haddam in Ilya Ilyankou and Jack Dougherty, “Map: Race Restrictive Covenants in Connecticut, 1930s-40s” (On The Line, 2017), https://ontheline.github.io/otl-covenants/index-caption.html. Our current map is based on an earlier version, University of Connecticut Libraries Map and Geographic Information Center, “Race Restrictive Covenants in Property Deeds, Hartford Area, 1940s,” 2012, http://magic.lib.uconn.edu/otl/doclink_covenant.html. On Manchester research, see also David K. Ware, “The Black and White of Greenway: Racially Restrictive Covenants in Manchester, Connecticut” (Paper submitted for University of Connecticut School of Law, January 2020), http://ssrn.com/abstract=3546228. On a Stamford restrictive covenant discovered when Richard Blumenthal was campaigning for CT Attorney General, see Michele Jacklin, “Civility Getting Trampled in Attorney General Race,” Hartford Courant, June 18, 1990, https://www.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/1731514593/AF759DBAAC0E49D0PQ/1?accountid=14405&sourcetype=Historical%20Newspapers; Christopher Keating, “A Deja Vu Moment for Blumenthal,” The Hartford Courant, May 20, 2010, http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/hartfordcourant/docview/257278442/abstract/C74B42362F2248FEPQ/2.↩︎ Corrigan v. Buckley, (271 US Supreme Court 323, May 24, 1926), https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=11135903580197116691; Prologue DC, “Mapping Segregation in Washington DC,” 2015, http://prologuedc.com/blog/mapping-segregation.↩︎ “Andover Lake (Ad),” Hartford Courant, July 8, 1928, https://www.newspapers.com/image/369457693/; “Andover Lake (Ad),” Hartford Courant, April 28, 1929, https://www.newspapers.com/image/369287683/; Gerald J. Demeusy, “Negro Landowner Wins Andover Lake Rights,” Hartford Courant, December 29, 1967, https://www.newspapers.com/image/371508785/; David Rhinelander, “Andover Lake: Investors’ Creation,” Hartford Courant, February 26, 1999, https://web.archive.org/web/20210717030820/https://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-xpm-1999-02-26-9902260384-story.html; Walter Woodward, “July 29: A Determined Minister’s Swim for Justice” (Today in Connecticut History, July 29, 2021), https://web.archive.org/web/20210729112410/https://todayincthistory.com/2021/07/29/july-29-a-determined-ministers-swim-for-justice/. TODO: confirm if 1920s restrictive covenant exists in Andover property records; add newspaper sources for other lake associations and confirm if they also had restrictive covenants in their property records. TODO: decide on moving Philpot portion to latter section on challenging covenants↩︎ Alfred E. Hanbury, “Center Village Subdivision, Warranty Deed” (Land Records, Town of Newington, Connecticut, vol. 41, pp. 226-27, and maps 64, 66, 69, October 4, 1939), https://github.com/ontheline/otl-covenants; On Hanbury’s housing developments, see “Will Erect Houses in Newington: Alfred E. Hanbury,” Hartford Courant, March 29, 1937, https://www.newspapers.com/image/370101048/; “Hanbury to Build Brick Structure on Newington Site,” Hartford Courant, January 27, 1946, https://www.newspapers.com/image/367917727/; “Contractor Optimistic on Outlook,” Hartford Courant, May 14, 1950, https://www.newspapers.com/image/370251077/; “Alfred E. Hanbury: New Trustees and Officers Are Elected,” Hartford Courant, June 16, 1950, https://www.newspapers.com/image/370110307/; “Alfred Hanbury Dies,” Hartford Courant, February 5, 1970, https://www.newspapers.com/image/371464241/. Ware found no restrictive covenants in either Alandale or Belden Acres.↩︎ “100 New Homes To Be Built On High Ledge Tract: E. F. Hammel, New York Builder, Buys Tract From The R. G. Bent Co.” The Hartford Courant, March 31, 1940, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/559299850?accountid=14405; “Ad: Modern Homes in High Ledge,” Hartford Courant, March 31, 1940, https://www.newspapers.com/image/367307306/; High Ledge Homes Inc., “Agreement Concerning Building Restrictions”. See other West Hartford racial covenants in Ilyankou and Dougherty, “Map,” 2017.↩︎ Ware, “The Black and White of Greenway”, p. 4. See real estate transaction Frederick Ware, Vivian Ware, and Vincent Marcin, “Warrantee Deed Greenway Park Lot 35” (Town of Manchester CT Land Records, vol. 207, p. 62, February 24, 1950), https://recordhub.cottsystems.com/ManchesterCT/Search/Records/Details?IndexId=13094587, with 5 additional transfers between 1945-1949, back to the original race restriction in Lawrence A. Converse and Greenway, Inc., “Warrantee Deed, Greenway Park, Lots 15-17, 29-35,80-93” (Town of Manchester CT, Land Records, vol. 147, p. 463, October 7, 1942), https://recordhub.cottsystems.com/ManchesterCT/Search/Records/Details?IndexId=13333067. Interestingly, in personal correspondence Ware notes that while CT statute chapter 92 section 7.24(b) requires town clerks to record land records within thirty days, and nearly all property owners do so to make them public record, no CT law requires property owners to file land contracts with town clerks, meaning that some restrictive covenants might not have become public record. See Connecticut General Assembly, “Chapter 92 Section 7-24(b): Town Clerks. Recording,” in General Statutes of Connecticut, 2023, https://www.cga.ct.gov/current/pub/chap_092.htm#sec_7-24.↩︎ See Hamden restrictive covenant land records in Ilyankou and Dougherty, “Map,” 2017.↩︎ TODO: Request total number of homes built each year in 1940s from Hamden property assessor database to calculate percentage with racial covenants. See table calculations in Ilyankou and Dougherty. Manchester data from Ware, “The Black and White of Greenway”, p. 15↩︎ See more projects by members of the “National Covenants Research Coalition”. The earliest digital history project on racial property deeds probably was Wendy Plotkin, “Racial and Religious Restrictive Covenants in the US and Canada,” 2015, https://web.archive.org/web/20151026174853/http://wbhsi.net/~wendyplotkin/DeedsWeb/, which states that content was posted online prior to 1999. On Seattle and Washington State, see James Gregory, “Segregated Seattle” (Seattle Civil Rights & Labor History Project, 2006), https://depts.washington.edu/civilr/segregated.htm and Civil Rights and Labor History Consortium, University of Washington, “Racial Restrictive Covenants Project Washington State,” 2023, https://depts.washington.edu/covenants/laws.shtml. On Minnesota, see University of Minnesota Libraries, “Mapping Prejudice,” 2020, https://www.mappingprejudice.org and Aradhya Sood, William Speagle, and Kevin Ehrman-Solberg, “Long Shadow of Racial Discrimination: Evidence from Housing Covenants of Minneapolis,” SSRN Scholarly Paper (Rochester, NY, September 30, 2019), https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3468520. On the Chicago 80 percent estimate, see LaDale Winling, “Chicago Covenants” (Chicago Covenants, 2021), https://www.chicagocovenants.com and analysis by Robert Clifton Weaver, The Negro Ghetto (1948; repr., New York, Russell & Russell, 1967), http://archive.org/details/negroghetto00weav, p. 213 and chapter 13. On the St. Louis 80 percent estimate, see Colin Gordon, “Dividing the City: Race-Restrictive Covenants in St. Louis and St. Louis County,” 2022, https://dsps.lib.uiowa.edu/thedividedcity/ and Corinne Ruff, “80% of St. Louis County Homes Built by 1950 Have Racial Covenants, Researcher Finds” (STLPR: St. Louis Public Radio, January 31, 2022), https://www.stlpr.org/culture-history/2022-01-26/80-of-st-louis-county-homes-built-by-1950-have-racial-covenants-researcher-finds.↩︎ See also the role of Black homeowners and allies in Washington DC and other cities in Jeffrey D Gonda, Unjust Deeds: The Restrictive Covenant Cases and the Making of the Civil Rights Movement (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015), http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/906234529, chapter 1. For contemporary accounts by Black activists and researchers, see Herman H. Long and Charles S. Johnson, People Vs. Property: Race Restrictive Covenants in Housing (Fisk University Press, 1947), https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015020076074?urlappend=%3Bseq=1; Weaver, The Negro Ghetto, chapter 13. For national histories of restrictive covenants, see Clement E. Vose, Caucasians Only: The Supreme Court, the NAACP, and the Restrictive Covenant Cases (1959; repr., University of California Press, 2019), https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520325647; Richard R. W. Brooks and Carol M. Rose, Saving the Neighborhood: Racially Restrictive Covenants, Law, and Social Norms (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2013), http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/836206008; Rothstein, The Color of Law, chapter 5↩︎ “Negro Citizens’ Council Formation Is Discussed,” Hartford Courant, June 25, 1941, https://www.newspapers.com/image/369871907/; Hartford Negro Citizens’Council, “Letter to Editor: Segregation Opposed: Racial Problems in Housing Call for Post-War Settlement,” The Hartford Courant, April 5, 1945, http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/hnphartfordcourant/docview/560252900/abstract/10CAE45732FD4C54PQ/8; “Middletown (Restrictive Covenants Reference),” Hartford Chronicle, January 11, 1947, https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn92051342/1947-01-11/ed-1/?dl=page&q=restrictive+covenant&sp=1. Learn about Hartford’s 1940s Black press Hartford Chronicle, \"1940?-1947\", https://www.loc.gov/item/sn92051342.↩︎ “Bill to Outlaw Race Covenants (New York State),” Hartford Chronicle, March 8, 1947, https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn92051342/1947-03-08/ed-1/; Simon Bernstein, “Letter to the Editor,” Hartford Chronicle, April 12, 1947, https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn92051342/1947-04-12/ed-1/; “Bernstein Seeks End Of Restrictive Clauses,” Hartford Courant, March 28, 1947, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/560759017?accountid=14405; “State Law Sought Against Racial Ban In Realty Deals,” Hartford Courant, April 2, 1947, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/560760502?accountid=14405. Holly Hutton, A Brief Look Back: A Historical Overview of the Jewish Legal Community of Hartford, Connecticut (Jewish Historical Society of Greater Hartford, 2014), p. 40 briefly states that the anti-Jewish covenant was in West Hartford. But in our interview with Bernstein at age 98, he only recalled details about an anti-Black covenant in West Hartford that was settled out of court, not the anti-Jewish covenant in his 1947 letter, see Simon Bernstein, “Oral History Interview on Connecticut Civil Rights” (On The Line, Connecticut Digital Archives, August 1, 2011), http://hdl.handle.net/11134/120002:otl-bernstein. Tracey M. Wilson, “High Ledge Homes and Restrictive Covenants,” in Life in West Hartford (West Hartford Historical Society and Noah Webster House, 2018), https://lifeinwesthartford.org/world-war-ii-era.html#high-ledge-homes-and-restrictive-covenants described anecdotal accounts of anti-Jewish and anti-Catholic housing prohibitions in specific parts of West Hartford, but it is unclear whether or not these were written into property deeds or some other mechanism, as we have not yet found any religious covenants in Connecticut.↩︎ Shelley v. Kraemer, (334 US Supreme Court 1, May 3, 1948), https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=12732018998507979172; Gonda, Unjust Deeds, p. 174↩︎ Edward L. Parker and The Lake Realty Company, “Warrantee Deed, Moodus Estates, Lot 8, Block 37” (Town of East Haddam, Connecticut, Land Records, vol. 66, p. 103, December 21, 1950), https://github.com/ontheline/otl-covenants; Rothstein, The Color of Law pp. 85-91; Mayers v. Ridley, “Decision” (465 F.2d US Court of Appeals, DC Circuit, 630, March 1, 1972), https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=15478926121065691421.↩︎ Recall that in Minneapolis-St. Paul, current prices of homes with racial covenants are 4 to 15 percent higher than identical homes without covenants, according to Sood, Speagle, and Ehrman-Solberg, “Long Shadow of Racial Discrimination”.↩︎ On Seattle and Washington State, see Gregory, “Segregated Seattle” and Civil Rights and Labor History Consortium, University of Washington, “Racial Restrictive Covenants Project Washington State”. In Connecticut, the topic briefly arose in 1990 when the press reported that Richard Blumenthal, at that time the Democratic candidate for state attorney general, owned a home in Stamford CT with a race restrictive covenant. But this was driven by opponents in a political campaign, not a sustained effort for broader public awareness. See Jacklin, “Civility Getting Trampled in Attorney General Race - ProQuest Historical Newspapers”; Keating, “A Deja Vu Moment for Blumenthal”.↩︎ Debra Walsh, “Oral History Interview on West Hartford” (Cities, Suburbs, Schools Project, Trinity College Digital Repository, July 21, 2011), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_ohistory/21. ↩︎ Susan Hansen, “Oral History Interview on West Hartford” (Cities, Suburbs, Schools Project, Trinity College Digital Repository, July 22, 2011), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_ohistory/17.↩︎ Ken Dixon, “Whites-Only Rules Still Surface in Ct Property Records,” CT Insider, March 1, 2020, https://www.ctinsider.com/local/ctpost/article/Whites-only-rules-still-surface-in-CT-property-15096545.php; see public hearing testimony in Connecticut General Assembly, “Raised Bill 6665: An Act Concerning the Removal of Restrictive Covenants Based on Race and Elimination of the Race Designation on Marriage Licenses,” January 2021, https://www.cga.ct.gov/asp/cgabillstatus/cgabillstatus.asp?selBillType=Bill&bill_num=HB06665&which_year=2021; Connecticut General Assembly, “Public Act 21-173: An Act Concerning the Removal of Restrictions on Ownership or Occupancy of Real Property Based on Race and Elimination of the Race Designation on Marriage Licenses.” July 12, 2021, https://www.cga.ct.gov/2021/ACT/PA/PDF/2021PA-00173-R00HB-06665-PA.PDF; Jacalyn Severance, “Revelation of a Racist Property Restriction Leads to New State Law in Connecticut” (UConn Today, July 27, 2021), https://today.uconn.edu/2021/07/revelation-of-a-racist-property-restriction-leads-to-new-state-law-in-connecticut/; Susan Haigh, “State Lawmakers Work to Strip Old ’Whites Only’ Covenants” (Associated Press News, July 28, 2021), https://apnews.com/article/whites-only-property-covenants-race-ethnicity-56d67ad0dff72e8b71de768a24c90274; Frederick D. Ware, “Void Racially Restrictive Covenant” (Town of Manchester CT, Land Records, vol. 4659, p. 1076, August 3, 2021), https://recordhub.cottsystems.com/ManchesterCT/Search/Records/Details?IndexId=21189265.↩︎ Melinda Tuhus, “Vestiges of Racism Live on in Property Deeds (Op-Ed),” Hartford Courant, May 17, 1994, https://www.newspapers.com/image/175814134/.↩︎ Emily DiSalvo, “Hamden Confronts Legacy Of Segregation,” New Haven Independent, April 27, 2021, http://www.newhavenindependent.org/index.php/archives/entry/hamdensegregation_/; Emily DiSalvo, “Zoning Laws Have Led to a Segregated Hamden: Activists Are Working to Fix It” (HQNN.org, April 27, 2021), http://hqnn.org/2021/04/27/zoning-laws-have-led-to-a-segregated-hamden-activists-are-working-to-fix-it/; Dena Dupree, “Hamden in ’Black and White’: The Effects of Redlining Practices Today” (HQNN.org, December 7, 2021), https://hqnn.org/2021/12/07/hamden-in-black-and-white-the-effects-of-redlining-practices-today/; Austin Mirmina, “When Hamden Woman Found Racist Covenant in Her Property Deed, Rooting Them Out Became a Mission” (CT Insider, November 25, 2023), https://www.ctinsider.com/news/article/hamden-racist-property-deeds-spring-glen-18481356.php.↩︎ Tracey Wilson, “Taking Stock of High Ledge Homes and Restricted Covenants,” West Hartford Life 13, no. 2 (June 2010): 36–37, https://history.westhartfordlibrary.org/items/show/257; Wilson, “High Ledge Homes and Restrictive Covenants”; University of Connecticut Libraries Map and Geographic Information Center, “Race Restrictive Covenants in Property Deeds, Hartford Area, 1940s”; Ilyankou and Dougherty, “Map,” 2017.↩︎ "],["public-housing.html", "Racial Barriers to Public Housing", " Racial Barriers to Public Housing by Emily Meehan and Jack Dougherty As we saw in the previous section, housing discrimination did not occur solely due to private individuals, but often as a result of deliberate actions by public policymakers. Yet in some cases, different levels of government came into direct conflict over this issue. During World War II, the Roosevelt administration clashed with West Hartford political leaders over the right of African-American workers to reside in federal wartime housing. To manufacture weapons to defeat Germany and Japan, the United States Housing Authority (USHA) created shelter for thousands of wartime workers who migrated to work in factories in the city and suburbs of metropolitan Hartford. In comparison to the Federal Housing Administration, the USHA took a racially progressive stance in favor of housing blacks workers wherever need and space existed, even if that meant government-funded housing in virtually all-white neighborhoods. But in West Hartford, racism trumped patriotism. Suburban political leaders mobilized against federal authority to block African-American workers from moving into their community. Even when Washington DC pushed back, local leaders prevailed by finding a legal loophole to block non-whites from moving in. In 1943, a dispute arose in West Hartford over the Oakwood Acres public housing development, shown in Figure 2.23.68 Federal housing officials and West Hartford leaders clashed on whether or not African Americans should be allowed to live in this World War II public housing development, located in a virtually all-white town. During this period, public housing tracts were created to shelter the many war workers and their families drawn to the Hartford area by the availability of defense-related jobs. The United States government funded these developments; therefore, local housing officials needed to abide by federal laws regarding occupancy. Federal Housing authorities eventually did require West Hartford to admit African Americans; however, town residents and leaders prevailed by specifying residency criteria in such a way as to maintain the racial homogeneity of their community. Racist actions such as these, even when they occurred decades ago, have been factors in shaping the present-day demographics of West Hartford and other towns in the state. Figure 2.23: Photo of Oakwood Acres public housing in West Hartford, from the Hartford Times, February 17, 1954, digitized by the Hartford History Center, Hartford Public Library. The advent of World War II brought significant changes to a country that had been in the grip of a deep financial depression. Across the nation, as people moved into cities looking for jobs in wartime defense industries, demand for housing soared. Often, that demand far exceeded the availability of properties to purchase or even rent. In 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the United States Congress established the United States Housing Authority (USHA) and authorized it to build public housing units with the goal of providing adequate living quarters for war workers.69 An influx of war laborers, both white and African American, and their families came to the greater Hartford area in the 1940s. They worked in defense factories, such as the Pratt & Whitney Machine Tool plant and the newer Pratt & Whitney Aircraft Company. As a result, housing options were limited in the Hartford area. By August of 1943, 8,000 new housing units had been developed in Hartford and New Britain to accommodate the growing population. These apartment-style homes were built under the Hartford Housing Association (HHA) and paid for with federal funding from the USHA.70 According to a 1943 Hartford Courant report, “Connecticut has about half of all the government war housing constructed in New England. Half of the government housing in this state has been put up in the Hartford-New Britain area…” With these statistics, one might think that workers’ need for housing in Greater Hartford had been met. However, families and single African American war workers found it more difficult to procure homes. The Courant noted that “400 housing units for white in-migrant families” were being constructed and, in “the case of Negroes,” it was thought that “temporary dormitories” might be built if additional government grants could be obtained. Berkley Cox, chairman of the HHA called this situation “satisfactory.”71 Figure 2.24: Headline from 1943 Metropolitan News stated that “Negroes may not move into Oakwood” wartime public housing in West Hartford. Digitized by West Hartford Public Library. One unit developed under the HHA was the Oakwood Acres Housing Tract. Located on Oakwood Avenue in West Hartford, it spanned the area between St. Charles Street and Seymour Avenue. Contemporary descriptions present the Oakwood Acres’ living spaces as new, simplistic, and affordable. In 1943, only 14 out of the 300 apartments in the building were occupied at a time when many African Americans either had no place to live or could only find substandard accommodations. The federal government planned to use the complex to provide housing for these workers and their families.72 Figure 2.25: Aerial images of Oakwood Acres Housing Tract, in 1951 and today, on the West Hartford border with Hartford, from MAGIC UConn Libraries. Because the government funded Oakwood Acres, the unit needed to abide by federal law, which stated that officials could not legally reject African Americans applying for housing. West Hartford homeowners, living near Oakwood Acres, were quoted in a September 1943 issue of the Metropolitan News as being “alarmed” and “horrified” at the idea of “Negroes” living in their neighborhood. One woman said she and her family would move out the day after any African Americans moved in. The paper itself described the situation in harsh, racist language, calling it an “infiltration,” and reported the prevailing sentiment among community homeowners as being: “We don’t want them here.” The consensus among West Hartford realtors and homeowners, the newspaper reported, was that real estate values would show “an immediate and sharp” drop if “Negroes in any considerable number moved into town.”73 Furiously, homeowners wrote to the HHA and West Hartford Housing Authority (WHHA) asking if African Americans would indeed be admitted to Oakwood Acres. When the Hartford Courant posed the question to WHHA chairman Richard F. Jones, he equivocated, saying, “I won’t say we are and I won’t say we’re not going to admit Negroes… At the present time that is a topic we’d rather not publicize too much.” This prompted West Hartford residents to send petitions to their senators, Francis Maloney and John A Danaher, and congressman, William Miller. Miller responded that he would look into the issue.74 The United States Housing Authority responded with an ultimatum. They stated that it was unlawful to exclude occupants from Oakwood Acres based on race. Local housing officials were advised that unless the race restrictions were lifted, the federal government would step in. Under this decision, African Americans would be admitted if they applied for a unit. This angered many West Hartford homeowners, prompting the town’s housing officials to find a loophole. They decided to accept applications only from “Negroes with essential West Hartford industry jobs.” Officials made this ruling knowing that, at the time, only six African American families fit this criterion–and they had not expressed interest in living in Oakwood Acres. Ultimately, with this restrictive technicality in place, no African American war workers moved into the housing tract. The white West Hartford housing officials and their supporters had trumped the federal government. They found a way to circumvent federal guidelines and discourage African Americans from living in publicly funded housing within the town’s borders.75 In 1956, Oakwood Acres was demolished. It had become dilapidated and the people of West Hartford feared it made their neighborhood look like a “slum.”76 By destroying the unit, West Hartford also erased the physical remnants of this racist chapter in the town’s housing history. Today, West Hartford remains a predominately white community. One can argue that its demographics have been shaped, in part, by discriminatory housing practices of which the standoff over Oakwood Acres is but one example. About the authors and contributors: Emily Meehan (Trinity 2016) wrote the first draft of this essay in the Cities Suburbs and Schools seminar, and published it in ConnecticutHistory.org.77 Jack Dougherty expanded the essay for publication in this book. Hartford Times, “Oakwood Acres Temporary Housing, West Hartford” (Photograph, Hartford History Center, Hartford Public Library, February 17, 1954), https://www.flickr.com/photos/cthistoryonline/5717411442/in/set-72157626521582021.↩︎ Kristin M Szylvian, “The Federal Housing Program During World War II,” in From Tenements to the Taylor Homes: In Search of an Urban Housing Policy in Twentieth-Century America, ed. John F Bauman, Roger Biles, and Kristin M Szylvian (University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000), 121–38, https://books.google.com/books?id=YZ9mO3NLP90C&pg=PA121#v=onepage&q&f=false.↩︎ “1877 Worker Visits New Tool Plant,” Hartford Courant, October 29, 1941, http://www.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/559524037/abstract/AC77F88C6CE3454EPQ/1; “Housing Reaches 8000 Mark in City and New Britain,” Hartford Courant, August 14, 1943, https://www-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/historical-newspapers/housing-reaches-8000-mark-city-new-britain/docview/559829506/se-2?accountid=14405.↩︎ “Housing Reaches 8000 Mark in City and New Britain”.↩︎ “Negroes May Occupy Oakwood Acres to Solve Rental Lag,” The Metropolitan News, September 30, 1943.↩︎ “Negroes May Occupy Oakwood Acres to Solve Rental Lag”.↩︎ “Housing Official Noncommittal on Racial Question,” Hartford Courant, October 21, 1943, https://www-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/hnphartfordcourant/docview/559844453/4279A3CDE13D4FE9PQ/1?accountid=14405; “Residents Ask Congressmen’s Aid on Negro Housing Threat,” Metropolitan News, November 4, 1943, https://history.westhartfordlibrary.org/items/show/420.↩︎ “Negroes May Not Move Into Oakwood War Housing Tract,” Metropolitan News, December 16, 1943, https://history.westhartfordlibrary.org/items/show/421; Katherine Ellen Winterbottom, “Beneath the Veneer,” The Spectator [West Hartford Historical Society Newsletter] Autumn (1998): 1, 10–14.↩︎ Tracey M. Wilson, “Resistance to Public Housing and Integration During World War II,” in Life in West Hartford (West Hartford, CT: West Hartford Historical Society and Noah Webster House, 2018), http://lifeinwesthartford.org/world-war-ii-era.html#resistance-to-public-housing-and-integration-during-world-war-ii.↩︎ Emily Meehan, “The Debate Over Who Could Occupy World War II Public Housing in West Hartford” (ConnecticutHistory.org, January 2014), http://connecticuthistory.org/the-debate-over-who-could-occupy-world-war-ii-public-housing-in-west-hartford/.↩︎ "],["excluding.html", "Chapter 3 Excluding Through Zoning Lines", " Chapter 3 Excluding Through Zoning Lines This chapter makes the hidden history of zoning more visible, and explains how decisions made by elected leaders, real estate developers, and property owners shaped the suburban landscape in metropolitan Hartford. Zoning is key to understanding the history of where people live in our segregated US metropolitan areas today. In general, zoning refers to rules governing how land can be used. Some policies have progressive goals, such as separating industrial factories from residential neighborhoods. In present-day debates, exclusionary zoning refers to policies that favor expensive single-family home construction that requires large amounts of property, over more affordable multi-family homes that use less land per resident. In Connecticut, the origins of exclusionary zoning can be traced back to efforts by the West Hartford town government to block a Hartford Jewish grocer from building a store in a residential neighborhood in the early 1920s. Although suburban town leaders failed to block this store, they helped spark a statewide political movement to create stronger legal tools to control future real estate development in order to exclude certain types of property–and people that suburban residents deemed undesirable. West Hartford’s role in this history matters, because in 1924 the town raced to become Connecticut’s first municipality to enact local zoning ordinances enabled by a new state law. West Hartford also hired national experts to design a town-wide exclusionary zoning plan that set precedents followed by other suburbs in subsequent decades. Exclusionary zoning laws intentionally made it more expensive to build homes in suburban neighborhoods, which effectively deterred lower-income people from living there. Unlike other discriminatory barriers of this era—such as mortgage redlining, restrictive covenants, and segregated public housing—exclusionary zoning did not directly refer to race, religion, or nationality. Instead, exclusionary zoning cleverly carved up suburban neighborhoods using minimum-land rules that segregated residents by their wealth. In this way, exclusionary zoning became a more sophisticated tool for housing discrimination that largely resisted the fair-housing legislation of the 1960s-1970s civil rights era and continues to divide Connecticut residents into the present day. "],["origins-zoning.html", "A Jewish Grocer and the Origins of Zoning in Connecticut", " A Jewish Grocer and the Origins of Zoning in Connecticut When Jacob Solomon Goldberg returned home to Hartford after military service in World War I, he sought to advance himself from a butcher to a businessman. Jacob partnered with his brother Barney and their brother-in-law Hyman M. Cohen to buy a small grocery store in downtown Hartford, near their East Side neighborhood, which they managed together during the early 1920s. Like other entrepreneurs of their era, they “followed the trend of business to the west,” they told local reporters, and dreamed of opening a second grocery store in the rapidly-growing suburb of West Hartford. This town’s population grew at a faster rate than Hartford during the 1910s, nearly doubling in size to almost 9,000 residents during that decade. West Hartford town officials granted more than 300 building permits for single- and two-family homes in 1922, more than any other town in Connecticut that year. Linked by convenient trolley lines to the capital city with its corporate headquarters for the nation’s leading banks and insurance companies, West Hartford was quickly becoming an ideal destination for the rising middle class. The emerging suburb, adjacent to Hartford’s premier West End neighborhoods, was politically independent, and its real estate opportunities became a magnet for the elite.78 Goldberg and his family searched for the perfect location to open a second grocery store. With funds from Jacob’s father David, who previously owned a kosher meat market in Hartford, they bought two valuable parcels of undeveloped land on Farmington Avenue at the corner of Ardmore Road, on the trolley line about halfway between the Hartford border and West Hartford’s town center. In the early 1920s, only a dozen grocers served all of West Hartford’s population, including several small shops where owners sold food products out of their homes. Customers typically made frequent purchases from neighborhood grocers during the week due to limited transportation and refrigeration. Goldberg’s closest competitors were located about a half-mile in opposite directions: West Hill Grocery (also on Farmington Avenue, closer to the Hartford border) and M.J. Burnham’s (a larger store in West Hartford Center). Although the immediate area around Goldberg’s property had only 60 houses in 1923, real estate developers and town officials had subdivided the land into smaller lots, and were building side streets and sewer lines, in anticipation of many more homebuyers. Next door to Goldberg’s vacant lots stood the only non-residential building in the vicinity: the West Hartford Armory for the Connecticut National Guard Troop B Cavalry, built in 1913. Perhaps the odor from its horse stables helped explain why no one had yet built a home on Goldberg’s empty property lots.79 But when Goldberg applied for a building permit in January 1923, the West Hartford building inspector refused to grant it. Instead, the inspector called a public hearing, where reporters described how “a score of property owners in the Ardmore Road section appeared and protested” against Goldberg’s plan to build a grocery store. In their eyes, it made no difference that Goldberg had hired a well-known local architect whose design followed every legal requirement in the town building code. It made no difference that his proposed store would be facing the busier Farmington Avenue or occupy much less space than the Armory building next door, as shown in Figure 3.1. What mattered was that property owners objected to Goldberg’s right to build a store in their neighborhood, and the town government took their side by declining to grant a permit. Goldberg eventually prevailed and opened the Kingswood Market grocery store, as shown in Figure 3.2. He probably chose the name to identify with the Kingswood School, an elite private country day school for boys that opened three blocks away in 1922, and did not generate controversy among property owners. Although Goldberg won this battle, the dispute over property rights and the exclusionary climate surrounding it helps to explain how zoning happened in Connecticut in the 1920s.80 Figure 3.1: In 1923, West Hartford property owners and town officials objected to Jacob Goldberg’s application to build a grocery store at the corner of Farmington Avenue and Ardmore Road (shown in blue), which would be much smaller than the West Hartford Armory next door (shown in red). Source: Sanborn fire insurance maps digitized by the Library of Congress. Interactive map developed by Ilya Ilyankou and Jack Dougherty, with sources and code on GitHub. Figure 3.2: Jacob Goldberg eventually won the legal battle to open Kingswood Market in November 1924, pictured here on its third anniversary (bottom left) and also in 2004. Other first-floor storefronts included the Kingswood Pharmacy and Dettenborn Hardware, with small shops and offices on the second floor. Images from Hartford Courant (1928); Noah Webster House & West Hartford Historical Society (2004), used with permission. Opposing Goldberg and Urban Influences Why did West Hartford property owners and town officials block Goldberg’s building permit? Were they opposed to a grocery store in their residential neighborhood—or to the presence of a Jewish grocer from Hartford? The best answer is both. During this period of rapid growth, challenging Goldberg’s grocery was a way for West Hartford neighbors and leaders to share their fears about “undesirable” urban influences infringing on their suburb and threatening their property values. Some objected to business development, some resented immigrant outsiders, and Goldberg symbolized both. To fully tell Goldberg’s story and explain how it fits into the origins of zoning, we need to consider both aspects of opposition. On the surface, there is no evidence of overt anti-Semitism against Goldberg in this 1923 dispute. No one publicly uttered an anti-Jewish slur against him, nor did he publicly charge that his permit was rejected due to his religion, according to available documents. Similar opposition arose against Fred Kenyon, a local Protestant real estate businessman, who in December 1922 proposed to build a public garage for residents to park their automobiles, to be located in the rear of Lancaster Road, only one block away. The West Hartford building inspector refused to grant Kenyon a permit due to objections from property owners at a public hearing. Two months later, homeowners on nearby Fern Street went to court to stop Kenyon’s real estate company from removing a deed restriction that guaranteed only single-family homes would be built on property in their neighborhood, since they feared that multi-family apartment buildings would lower their property values. Since West Hartford residents and town officials blocked both Goldberg (a Jew) and Kenyon (an Episcopalian), we can conclude that religion was not the sole factor. Both cases reveal a common fear that real estate development would threaten residential property values.81 But we also need to understand that the controversy over Goldberg’s store arose during a period of intense anti-Jewish and anti-immigrant fervor. Around 30 percent of Hartford’s population were foreign-born immigrants between 1910 and 1920, with Russians, Italians, Irish, and Poles as the largest groups. In the aftermath of the first World War and the Russian Revolution, a “Red Scare” prompted many native-born Americans to fear that anarchists and Communists were spreading their ideas among US immigrant workers. In Hartford, when 2,000 people attended an anti-capitalism rally led by the International Workers of the World in 1919, the city council voted unanimously to prohibit the IWW and Communists from holding public meetings, distributing literature, or raising the Red flag. The Palmer Raids, organized by the US Attorney General, targeted cities like Hartford to arrest and deport immigrant labor activists. Governor Marcus Holcomb launched Connecticut’s Department of Americanization in 1919 with a mission to convert “our foreign-born and illiterate population.” He sought to adopt what former President Theodore Roosevelt envisioned as “one common language, one country, one allegiance, one loyalty and one flag.” The state-funded Connecticut Americanizer reminded readers not to forget Roosevelt’s warning that Americans should live as one nation, “not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding house.” The US Congress passed the Emergency Immigration Act of 1921 with quotas that sharply reduced migration from Eastern and Southern Europe. Amid all of this, US automaker Henry Ford and others widely circulated anti-Jewish conspiracy theories. Newspapers announced that the Ku Klux Klan had established a “small but well-organized local chapter” in Hartford, and its members declared that “You have to be a Protestant to belong to this organization… And you can’t be a half-hearted Protestant either.” In Protestant-led small towns like West Hartford, even if no one publicly uttered an anti-Jewish slur against Goldberg, some local officials and property owners most likely perceived him as a Jewish Hartford outsider to their community.82 Decades earlier, Hartford Jews had to push state leaders to grant them religious freedom. Connecticut began as a Christian colony, with no separation of church and state. After Reverend Thomas Hooker and his followers broke away from the Massachusetts Bay Colony and settled Connecticut in the 1630s, they interwove their local churches with town government, and required residents to pay taxes to support them. Despite the promise of freedom of religion in the First Amendment to the US Constitution in 1789, Connecticut did not officially remove the Congregational Church as the state religion until three decades later. Delegates to Connecticut’s Constitutional Convention in 1818 debated the topic of religious freedom, but deliberately voted to extend it only to “every society or denomination of Christians,” not other faiths. Jews were not permitted to form their own congregations or worship publicly until 1843, when a delegation of German Jews persuaded the state legislature to grant this right by statute (though the state’s laws remained overtly Christian until another constitutional convention in 1965).83 When Jacob’s parents, David and Rachel Goldberg, migrated from Latvia to England to Hartford in 1884, they established one of the city’s first kosher meat markets, and helped to settle many of the Eastern European Jews who came after them. In the 1920s, Hartford became home to Connecticut’s largest Jewish community, estimated to be about 11 percent of the city’s population. Most of the recent Jewish immigrants lived in crowded tenements in the Front Street and Windsor Street neighborhoods near the Connecticut River, which experts had declared to be “the worst housing conditions in the country” among cities of Hartford’s size. Photographs of multi-family tenement buildings appeared in the pages of Progressive-era reformers’ reports, as shown in Figure 3.3, and visually represented the “undesirable” urban elements that suburban leaders strongly sought to avoid. To earn a living, Jewish men commonly became peddlers who vocally advertised their goods up and down the streets, and maybe after gaining a foothold, opened a retail storefront. They sometimes came into conflict with Hartford police over noise complaints in the streets, or doing business on Sundays in violation of Connecticut’s Blue Laws, intended to protect the Christian sabbath.84 Figure 3.3: Photo with the caption, “Hartford - A Type of Tenement House,” appeared in Lawrence Veiller’s 1903 report on Housing Conditions and Tenement Laws, and visually symbolized urban influences that suburban leaders sought to avoid. Most Jews who climbed up the economic ladder moved out of Hartford’s crowded East Side. In 1912, the Goldberg family had earned enough money from their retail business to purchase a home in Hartford’s North End. “The poor Jews still lived in the Third Ward” along the Connecticut River, recalled Joseph Klau, one of Goldberg’s contemporaries, while many middle-class Jews in the 1920s bought property along Albany Avenue, heading west from downtown. “Every little Jewish builder was given a [property] lot and a construction loan,” Klau remembered, “and the two- and three-family houses went up like mushrooms…with central heating and electric lights, and real bathrooms.” Some middle-class Jews moved further away from the central city and rented apartments or bought homes in West Hartford.85 Owning a retail business was the best route to the middle class for Jacob Goldberg, because Hartford’s most prestigious institutions in finance, medicine, and law generally refused to employ Jews in higher-status positions. Although the city was one of the nation’s centers of banking and insurance, companies such as The Hartford, Aetna, and Travelers only hired a few Jews to serve as bookkeepers or sales agents, and did not allow them to rise into positions of authority until the 1950s. According to a survey of 800 officers and directors employed at Hartford’s ten largest insurance companies and six largest banks in 1967, only 1 percent were Jewish (and most of them were concentrated in one institution, Constitution National Bank). Both the Protestant-run Hartford Hospital and the Catholic-run St. Francis Hospital barred nearly all Jewish doctors, with rare exceptions, from practicing medicine at their facilities until World War II. These hospital hiring policies were “never written and seldom articulated,” but clearly understood. Similarly, Hartford’s top three corporate law firms at that time—Robinson, Robinson & Cole; Day, Berry & Howard; and Shipman & Goodwin—refused to employ Jews through the 1950s. Joseph Klau recalled how he earned his undergraduate and law degrees from Harvard University, then came back to Hartford in 1927 but couldn’t get a job. “I went for all of them, knocking on doors… nobody was taking in a Jew as their [lawyer]” at any of the city’s major law firms. Exclusion from upper-status employment was based on unwritten but widely recognized “gentleman’s agreements” that Jews should not apply, nor would they be considered.86 Although “unwritten rules” against Jews typically did not appear in public, occasionally we can find them in private documents that their creators believed would remain secret, such as minutes of closed-door board meetings. At Trinity College, Hartford’s preeminent institution of higher education, Rev. Flavel S. Luther served as president from 1904 to 1919, and also was elected by Hartford voters as a Progressive-era Republican in the Connecticut State Senate, where his key accomplishment was to consolidate rural school districts and solidify town-level governance. But in Trinity’s Board of Trustee meetings from 1915 to at least 1922, Luther and his contemporaries strongly expressed anti-Semitic views and implemented strategies to reduce the number of Jewish students, and reject all Black applicants, according to minutes that were long hidden from public view, as shown in Figure 3.4 and described in more detail in the “Uncovering Unwritten Rules Against Jewish and Black Students at Trinity College” chapter in this book. The prevalence of anti-Jewish policies at Hartford’s most respected academic institution—established in 1823 on the grounds of religious tolerance by Episcopalians who objected to the Congregational Church’s dominance in Connecticut—demonstrates that over the course of a century, its leaders had become skilled in hiding their own prejudices from the public eye.87 Figure 3.4: Read more about the words and actions of Trinity’s leaders in the supplemental chapter on “Uncovering Unwritten Rules Against Jewish and Black Students at Trinity College” in this book. To be clear, anti-Jewish or anti-immigrant views among the Protestant leadership in Hartford’s preeminent colleges, banks, insurance companies, hospitals, and corporate law firms does not prove that they were also held by West Hartford’s Protestant property owners and town officials who objected to Jacob Goldberg’s building permit in 1923. But the evidence from Trinity College demonstrates how hateful biases were hidden behind closed doors. Oral history also reveals that anti-Semitism was not far beneath the surface in West Hartford. In 1925, Rabbi Abraham Feldman arrived in Hartford to lead Congregation Beth Israel, a Reform synagogue whose members were considering moving to West Hartford, and had purchased land on Farmington Avenue, not far from Goldberg’s store. Feldman reflected on some of his early, unpleasant encounters with West Hartford town leaders while speaking with an oral historian in 1974. “West Hartford was a closed community politically,” Feldman recalled, labeling it “the most Republican town in the US” in the 1920s. Although Jews were just beginning to move from the city to the suburb, “there was no chance for a young Jew, or a Jewish lawyer… who wanted to enter the political life of the community,” he remembered, adding that West Hartford’s Protestant leaders “didn’t want any Catholics, either.” Overall, while there is no direct evidence of overt anti-Semitism during the Goldberg controversy, the widespread prevalence of these views means we cannot ignore them when telling the story of an urban Jewish grocer and the origins of exclusionary zoning in the suburbs.88 Fighting Back Faced with these anti-Semitic barriers, many Hartford Jews fought back by gathering resources to create their own institutions during this era. Jewish doctors opened Hartford’s Mount Sinai Hospital in 1923, and proudly declared that their doors were open “to all citizens regardless of race or creed.” Connecticut’s only Jewish-led hospital both served the needs of immigrant patients who were viewed as second-class citizens by other hospitals, and created employment opportunities for Jews in medical professions. Jacob’s sister, Celia Goldberg Pessin, earned her nursing degree at New York City’s Mount Sinai Hospital, and became the first Jewish woman to enter nurse’s training in Hartford. When Jewish lawyers were refused jobs at Hartford’s corporate law firms, some opened their own smaller law offices. Another one of Jacob’s sisters, Dora Goldberg Schatz, married attorney Nathan Schatz, who partnered with his brother Louis (a Jewish graduate of Trinity College) to create the Schatz and Schatz law firm in Hartford in 1917. Decades later, in higher education, Rabbi Feldman also played an instrumental role in the founding of the University of Hartford, open to all students, in 1957.89 Jacob Goldberg also fought back. When the West Hartford building inspector refused to grant him a permit to construct his grocery store in January 1923, Goldberg hired an attorney and filed a lawsuit. (Perhaps he received informal advice from his brother-in-law Nathan Schatz, the Jewish attorney who was a rising figure in the Connecticut Republican party.) Goldberg’s lawsuit challenged the constitutional authority of the local government to block construction of a building on the arbitrary grounds that “neighbors do not want it.” The lawsuit spelled out how Goldberg employed a respected local architect, William T. Marchant, to design the 80 by 60 foot store to conform with all aspects of the West Hartford building code, and also to be an attractive building. While Goldberg could have hired one of several Jewish architects in Hartford, he probably selected Marchant, a Gentile who resided in West Hartford, because he was well-known to town officials and had recently designed the high school and several other public buildings. Goldberg’s lawsuit claimed that West Hartford’s building inspector was “exceeding his constitutional rights” by rejecting the project, even if the town government had delegated him “with such arbitrary powers.” This fight over issuing a building permit to a Jewish Hartford grocer grabbed large headlines, as shown in Figure 3.5, especially when compared to a similar rejection of local Protestant businessman Fred Kenyon two months earlier, which barely made it into the news.90 Figure 3.5: The controversy over granting a building permit to Jewish Hartford grocer Jacob Goldberg grabbed larger headlines than a similar conflict involving local Protestant real estate businessman Fred Kenyon. Source: Hartford Courant, February 7, 1923. Initially, West Hartford leaders fought back against Goldberg. Town Council members voted in March 1923 to task their attorney, and also to retain the services of a second attorney, to defend their building inspector’s refusal to grant a permit. Behind the scenes, West Hartford’s attorneys realized that Goldberg had a strong case. Without a clearly-defined policy, a court might rule that the Town had refused to grant him a permit for arbitrary reasons, and might reduce the Town’s authority to reject other buildings in the future. Perhaps they also discussed the potential risks of bad press over a Protestant-led town government fighting to block a Jewish-owned grocery. In any case, the Town Council eventually relented. At the end of their June 1923 meeting, the Council went into a closed-door executive session, away from the press and the public. They quietly voted to approve Goldberg’s building permit, and also created a committee to review local ordinances on building restrictions in residential areas, to ensure they were on stronger legal footing next time. The Council succeeded in keeping the Goldberg controversy out of the headlines, at least temporarily. The following day’s news did not mention Goldberg by name, and only hinted at the end of the story that it was “unofficially rumored” that a permit would be granted.91 For a second time, West Hartford residents spoke out against Goldberg’s proposed store. A group of 14 local property owners protested at the next Town Council meeting, and were represented by a spokesperson: real estate businessman M. Martin Kupperstein, who also was one of the few Jewish residents in the neighborhood. Perhaps he was selected to counter any perceptions that their opposition was anti-Semitic. After Kupperstein urged the Council to reverse its decision, the Town Council’s attorney informed the protesters that they had examined Goldberg’s case “from every possible angle” and decided “it would be a poor policy for the town to attempt to withhold the permit.” To put it more simply, another council member stated that the Town would not prevail in court.92 Who were these West Hartford property owners, and what motivated their protests against Goldberg’s grocery store? With the exception of Kupperstein, none of their names appear in official minutes or news accounts of the two public hearings in 1923, nor do we have a record of the words they spoke. Furthermore, while the Hartford Courant referred to this neighborhood as “one of West Hartford’s exclusive residential sections,” that description did not match Ardmore Road, where nearly every building was a two-family duplex, in contrast to several other nearby streets with more expensive single-family homes. Perhaps the relative affordability of two-family homes explained why Ardmore Road developed so rapidly, growing from 1 household in 1922 to over 40 households by 1926, according to city directory listings as shown in Table 3.1. Interestingly, the proportion of households with Jewish names rose from 0 out of 13 in 1923 to 8 out of 43 (nearly 20 percent) by 1926, meaning that Ardmore Road also attracted a larger percentage of Jewish residents than probably any other street in West Hartford at that time. Moreover, the Catholic Church purchased a large parcel of land in October 1923 on Farmington Avenue, near the Ardmore Road intersection, where they built St. Thomas the Apostle Church, a structure nearly as large as the nearby Armory. To be clear, we do not know precisely which families lived on Ardmore Road in early 1923, nor could they predict the future, but the Goldberg store controversy may have symbolized that their neighborhood was rapidly changing.93 Table 3.1: Households on Ardmore Road, 1922-26 Year Households Percent Jewish 1922 1 1923 13 1924 34 1925 41 1926 43 19% After Jacob Goldberg finally won his building permit, Kingswood Market opened its doors for business in November 1924. He incorporated the business with his brother Barney and two brothers-in-law: attorney Nathan Schatz and Hyman M. Cohen, who managed the market. Jacob Goldberg also moved into the West Hartford neighborhood and purchased a single-family home on nearby Outlook Avenue. Two years later, the Goldberg family sold the business, and a series of owners continued to operate Kingswood Market for decades, until it was unable to compete against a much larger and more modern Whole Foods grocery store that opened four blocks away in 2005. Neighborhood residents mourned when Kingswood Market closed its doors in 2007.94. The Town Council concluded this episode by announcing the creation of a new Zoning Commission in July 1923, to find a better way to deal with decisions over what kinds of buildings should be constructed in the future. But zoning was still a new concept, and the council did not yet have a clear idea of how it would work. At that same meeting, the attorney for Fred Kenyon, the local Protestant businessman whose public garage permit also had been rejected, sought to re-open the issue for his client. Since the Town granted a building permit to Goldberg, he argued, shouldn’t they also grant a permit to Kenyon? One Council member moved to refer the request to the brand-new Zoning Commission they had created a few minutes earlier, but Kenyon’s attorney objected because this entity “had not yet consulted any regulations.” The Council agreed with him, but then voted to refer Kenyon’s request back to the building inspector who had previously rejected it, which meant it went nowhere.95 Pressure continued to mount to define what zoning would mean for West Hartford. Simply put, town leaders were searching for a legally defensible framework for preventing what they deemed to be undesirable urban elements from entering their rapidly-growing suburb. When West Hartford property owners complained about grocery stores, public garages, and apartment buildings, these types of buildings symbolized their larger fears about Hartford city life—especially its growing population of immigrants in crowded tenements—invading their small town. Very soon, zoning would be designed primarily to protect them and their property values. Jacob Solomon Goldberg (1891-1939) and his wife Anna Miller Goldberg should not be confused with other Hartford residents with similar names. Jacob and his partners purchased and re-named the Guilfoil City Hall Grocery at 42 State Street, Hartford, in 1919. “Second Anniversary: City Hall Grocery Celebrate Event with Special Sale,” Hartford Courant, March 4, 1921, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/556910904/citation/EE1EE7C7950F4DE3PQ/1; “Kingswood Market Has Opening Today,” Hartford Courant, November 22, 1924, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/553827702/abstract/805AA50C69BD44BAPQ/1; “Jacob S. Goldberg Obituary,” Hartford Courant, December 20, 1939, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/559263239/citation/62D945CA6CE44030PQ/3; Connecticut State Board of Education, A Survey of the Schools of West Hartford (Hartford, 1923), https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100787377, p. 103.↩︎ When David Goldberg died in 1924, his estate valued the property at $40,000, and Jacob and his mother Rachel became its administrators. “David Goldberg Obituary,” Hartford Courant, April 25, 1924, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/553648639/citation/8B13F3407C8F4BA6PQ/1; “David Goldberg [Estate],” Hartford Courant, October 29, 1924, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/historical-newspapers/mary-g-bingham-estate-333-694/docview/553830321/se-2?accountid=14405; “In Probate Court [Goldberg],” Hartford Courant, May 11, 1924, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/553742314/citation/49D98236446F4D8FPQ/1; Morris Silverman, Hartford Jews, 1659-1970 (Hartford: Connecticut Historical Society, 1970), https://www.google.com/books/edition/Hartford_Jews_1659_1970/Llk8AAAAIAAJ, p. 170. West Hill Grocery was located at 765 Farmington Avenue, near the corner of Whiting Lane, and M.J. Burnham’s was located at 19 South Main Street in West Hartford Center. Sanborn Map Company, Hartford Connecticut Insurance Maps, 4 Volumes (New York: Sanborn Map Co, 1922–1961), https://github.com/ontheline/otl-sanborn-1961-hartford-vol1; Geer’s Hartford Directory, Including West Hartford and East Hartford, Connecticut (Hartford, Conn: Hartford Printing Company, 1923), https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/2469/images/1338432; Geoffrey Louis Rossano and Mary M. Donohue, Built to Serve: Connecticut’s National Guard Armories 1865-1940 (Hartford, Conn.: Connecticut Historical Commission, 2003), http://worldcat.org/oclc/52455387; “West Hartford Armory (1913)” (Historic Buildings of Connecticut, April 21, 2015), https://historicbuildingsct.com/west-hartford-armory-1913/.↩︎ “Legal Fight For Store In Exclusive Section,” Hartford Courant, February 7, 1923, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/553358624/abstract/BB63B923AF094563PQ/1. Goldberg and his partners probably selected the name “Kingswood Market” to identify with the private Kingswood School, which opened in 1922 on nearby Outlook Avenue, “Kingswood School’s Proposed New Home in West Hartford,” Hartford Courant, July 17, 1921, http://www.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/556946596/abstract/10F9686609B84ACAPQ/2; “Kingswood School Home Completed,” Hartford Courant, September 21, 1922, http://www.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/557110097/abstract/10F9686609B84ACAPQ/1. Images of Kingswood Market originally appeared in “Kingswood Market 3rd Anniversary [Advertisement),” Hartford Courant, March 28, 1928, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/557481790/citation/805AA50C69BD44BAPQ/2; and courtesy of the Noah Webster House & West Hartford Historical Society in Wilson H. Faude, West Hartford (Arcadia Publishing, 2004), https://books.google.com?id=ernPkuTE1N8C; “Kingswood Market: West Hartford’s ’Thursday Throwback’” (We-Ha: West Hartford News, January 8, 2015), https://we-ha.com/west-hartfords-thursday-throwback-15/.↩︎ No evidence of overt anti-Semitism appears in the newspaper accounts of public meetings, nor in the sparse minutes from town council meetings on the matter. Thanks to local historian Jeff Murray for his research and analysis on Fred Kenyon. West Hartford, “Town Council Meeting Minutes” (Town Clerk, West Hartford, Connecticut, June 1923); “West Hartford Has Zoning Commission,” Hartford Courant, July 18, 1923, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/553441491/abstract/76D50A7CBB164588PQ/5; “Land and House Restriction Case Heard in Court,” Hartford Courant, February 9, 1923, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/553346686/abstract/89BA266AD5FD4663PQ/13; “[Fred H. Kenyon] Dies at His Home In West Hartford,” Hartford Courant, October 1, 1937, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/558957948/citation/89BA266AD5FD4663PQ/10.↩︎ Bruce M. Stave, “Making Hartford Home: An Oral History of 20th Century Ethnic Development in Connecticut’s Capitol City,” in Hartford, the City and the Region: Past, Present, Future: A Collection of Essays, ed. Sondra Astor Stave (West Hartford, CT: University of Hartford, Division of Adult Educational Services, 1979), 31–43, http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/6088095; US Census Bureau, “Table 13: Country of Birth of Foreign-Born White for Cities, Volume 3: Composition and Characteristics,” in Census of Population: 1920 (Government Printing Office, 1922), https://www.census.gov/prod/www/decennial.html; Bruce B. Shubert, “Palmer Raids in Connecticut, 1919-1920,” Connecticut Review 5, no. 1 (October 1971): 53–69, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.$b221679&view=1up&seq=61; Glenn Weaver and Michael Swift, Hartford, Connecticut’s Capital: An Illustrated History (American Historical Press, 2003), https://www.google.com/books/edition/Hartford_Connecticut_s_Capital/Jo8eVaMqarkC, pp. 113-114; Jeffrey J. White, “Stamping Out the Reds: The Palmer Raids in Connecticut,” Connecticut Explored, Autumn 2005, https://www.ctexplored.org/stamping-out-the-reds-the-palmer-raids-in-connecticut/; Steve Thornton, A Shoeleather History of the Wobblies: Stories of the Industrial Workers of the World in Connecticut (Shoeleather History, 2013), https://www.google.com/books/edition/A_Shoeleather_History_of_the_Wobblies/KGIpngEACAAJ; Steve Thornton, “The \"Red Scare\" in Connecticut” (Connecticut History, November 7, 2020), https://connecticuthistory.org/the-red-scare-in-connecticut/; “Good Luck Says Governor,” Connecticut Americanizer, January 22, 1919, http://hdl.handle.net/11134/30002:21739255; “Americanization Is Urged by Roosevelt in His Last Message,” Connecticut Americanizer, January 22, 1919, http://hdl.handle.net/11134/30002:21739255; “Ku Klux Klan Activity in Conn. To Be Probed by State Police Dept,” Hartford Courant, September 3, 1921, http://www.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/556975111/abstract/1A40A3B582D945FAPQ/14; “Ku Klux Klan Is Well Organized in Hartford,” Hartford Courant, May 23, 1922, http://www.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/557047297/abstract/C7304FCE07CB4FCDPQ/1; “Ku Klux Klan in Monster Meeting Near New Haven,” Hartford Courant, May 21, 1922, http://www.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/557046344/abstract/1A40A3B582D945FAPQ/19.↩︎ David G Dalin and Jonathan Rosenbaum, Making a Life, Building a Community: The History of the Jews of Hartford (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1997), http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/502317401, pp. 10-13; Henry S. Cohn, “Civil Rights of Jews in Connecticut,” in A History of Jewish Connecticut: Mensches, Migrants and Mitzvahs, ed. Betty N. Hoffman (Arcadia Publishing, 2010), 21–24, https://www.google.com/books/edition/A_History_of_Jewish_Connecticut/o2l2CQAAQBA; Wesley W. Horton, The Connecticut State Constitution (Oxford University Press, 2011), https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Connecticut_State_Constitution/Du9MAgAAQBAJ, pp. 11-13; Nancy Finlay, “The Importance of Being Puritan: Church and State in Colonial Connecticut” (ConnecticutHistory.org, September 2015), http://connecticuthistory.org/the-importance-of-being-puritan-church-and-state-in-colonial-connecticut/; Rebecca Furer, “Church and State in the ’Land of Steady Habits’” (Teach It, 2018), https://teachitct.org/lessons/church-state-in-the-land-of-steady-habits/.↩︎ Silverman, Hartford Jews, 1659-1970, p. 170; Sandra Hartwell Becker and Ralph L Pearson, “The Jewish Community of Hartford, Connecticut, 1880-1929,” American Jewish Archives 31, no. 2 (November 1979): 184–214, http://americanjewisharchives.org/publications/journal/PDF/1979_31_02_00_becker_pearson.pdf; Lawrence Veiller, “Housing Conditions and Tenement Laws in Leading American Cities,” in The Tenement House Problem, Volume 1, ed. Robert Weeks DeForest (New York: MacMillan, 1903), https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100857263, p. 155; Susan Pennybacker and Nancy Albert, “East Side Story: Life and Death in the Front Street Neighborhood, and the Tricks of Collective Memory,” Hartford Courant: Northeast Magazine, July 2, 1995, https://www.newspapers.com/clip/77146292/; Dalin and Rosenbaum, Making a Life, Building a Community, ch. 4; Peter Baldwin, Domesticating the Street: The Reform of Public Space in Hartford, 1850-1930 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1999), https://www.google.com/books/edition/Domesticating_the_Street/8aRAtAEACAAJ, ch. 7↩︎ The Goldberg family moved to 47 Clark Street, according to Geer’s Hartford Directory (Hartford, CT: Hartford Printing Company, 1912), https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/2469/images/885752?ssrc=&backlabel=Return, p. 263; Joseph E. Klau, “Oral History Interview by Joseph D. Hurwitz” (Jewish Historical Society of Greater Hartford, April 17, 1974), https://jhsgh.org, cited in Hutton, A Brief Look Back, p. 12; Sanborn Map Company, Hartford Connecticut Insurance Maps, 4 Volumes. See also Joan Walden, ed., Remembering the Old Neighborhood: A Compilation of Memories by and About Residents of Hartford, Connecticut’s North End Covering the Early and Middle Decades of the 20th Century (Jewish Historical Society of Greater Hartford, 2010), https://www.google.com/books/edition/Remembering_the_old_neighborhood/bRJOAQAAIAAJ; Joan Walden, ed., Revisiting Our Neighborhoods: Stories from Hartford’s Past (Jewish Historical Society of Greater Hartford, 2013), http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/864356686.↩︎ Silverman, Hartford Jews, 1659-1970, p. 86; Barry A. Lazarus, “The Practice of Medicine and Prejudice in a New England Town: The Founding of Mount Sinai Hospital, Hartford, Connecticut,” Journal of American Ethnic History 10, no. 3 (1991): 21–41, http://www.jstor.org/stable/27500839, p. 24; Dalin and Rosenbaum, Making a Life, Building a Community, pp. 59, 78-82, 174-75; Klau, “Oral History Interview by Joseph D. Hurwitz”, p. 14; Hutton, A Brief Look Back.↩︎ 18 June 1915 Report by President Luther, read aloud at 21 June 1915 meeting, Trinity College, Board of Trustees Minutes, Volume 3 (1908-1926), 1926, https://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/trustees_mins/12, p. 169.↩︎ “May Build Temple in West Hartford,” Hartford Courant, April 16, 1924, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/553660370/citation/DCFCECD65A734AD3PQ/1; Rabbi Abraham Feldman, “Oral History Interview” (The Peoples of Connecticut, Center for Oral History Interviews Collection, University of Connecticut Archives, October 21, 1974), http://hdl.handle.net/11134/20002:860341946, p. 19.↩︎ Mount Sinai Hospital opening in Hartford Times 3 March 1923, cited in Lazarus, “The Practice of Medicine and Prejudice in a New England Town”, p. 36; Leon Chameides, “Mount Sinai: Connecticut’s Only Jewish Hospital,” in A History of Jewish Connecticut: Mensches, Migrants and Mitzvahs, ed. Betty N. Hoffman (Arcadia Publishing, 2010), 32–35, https://www.google.com/books/edition/A_History_of_Jewish_Connecticut/o2l2CQAAQBA; “Nursing Pioneer Dies at Age 86,” Hartford Courant, June 7, 1975, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/543929256/abstract/86070A0BE45B46EBPQ/2; Dalin and Rosenbaum, Making a Life, Building a Community, pp. 62, 78; Silverman, Hartford Jews, 1659-1970, p. 86; “Rabbi Abraham J. Feldman Interview” (University of Hartford Early History Collection, June 12, 1967), http://hdl.handle.net/11134/550002:arch011av0006c; “Rabbi Abraham Feldman Interview” (Jewish Historical Society of Greater Hartford, May 10, 1972), https://jhsgh.org/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=29.xml; “University of Hartford Early History Collection” (University of Hartford Special Collections and Archives, 2005), http://archives.hartford.edu:8081/repositories/2/resources/166.↩︎ “Legal Fight for Store in Exclusive Section”; “William T. Marchant Collection” (Connecticut Historical Society eMuseum, 2021), http://emuseum.chs.org/emuseum/people/8245/william-t-marchant; “Marchant, 68, Dies,” Hartford Courant, May 8, 1948, http://www.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/561038029/abstract/42F5A775969E471EPQ/1; Silverman, Hartford Jews, 1659-1970, p. 258. By comparison, the rejection of Fred Kenyon’s public garage permit at a December 14, 1922 public hearing was not reported at the time, and appeared near the bottom of a story six months later in “West Hartford Has Zoning Commission”.↩︎ “Demand Economy in West Hartford,” Hartford Courant, March 7, 1923, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/553376988/abstract/BB63B923AF094563PQ/42; West Hartford, “Town Council Meeting Minutes”, June 5, 1923, p. 210; “West Hartford Tax to Be Collected,” Hartford Courant, June 6, 1923, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/553457937/abstract/9D000C8C14E448AEPQ/2.↩︎ West Hartford, “Town Council Meeting Minutes”, June 19, 1923, p. 211; “West Hartford Store Causes Protests,” Hartford Courant, June 20, 1923, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/553416053/abstract/BB63B923AF094563PQ/3; “Morris Martin Kupperstein Obituary,” Hartford Courant, June 22, 1938, https://www.newspapers.com/image/369879010/. Kupperstein resided at 847 Farmington Avenue, West Hartford, Geer’s Hartford Directory, Including West Hartford and East Hartford, Connecticut, p. 466.↩︎ “Legal Fight for Store in Exclusive Section”. Out of 54 buildings on Ardmore Road today, all appear to have been constructed as 2-family units except two addresses: 10 and 14. See Ardmore Road household data from Geer’s City Directory listings, 1922-26, and West Hartford Voting Registration Records for Ardmore Road (1920-1926; transcribed by Jeff Murray in 2017 from West Hartford Historical Society archives), both available at https://github.com/OnTheLine/otl-ardmore-road-wh.↩︎ “Kingswood Market Has Opening Today”; “[Kingswood Market] Corporation Papers Filed for Record,” Hartford Courant, November 21, 1924, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/553847758/abstract/BB63B923AF094563PQ/15; “City Hall Market and Kingswood Market (Ad),” Hartford Courant, November 28, 1924, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/553818328/citation/805AA50C69BD44BAPQ/7; “Kingswood Market 3rd Anniversary [Advertisement)”; “Kingswood Building on Farmington Avenue Sold For $100,000 to Willis J. Gengras West Hartford,” Hartford Courant, September 2, 1926, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/557252686/abstract/805AA50C69BD44BAPQ/5; “West Hartford Men Buy Two Buildings [Kingswood Market],” Hartford Courant: III, February 3, 1952; WFSB Eyewitness News, “Kingswood Market Closing?” (WFSB television broadcast video, Hartford CT, October 19, 2007), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDrOjqPBSAg; “Kingswood Market Closing Doors” (The West Hartford Blog, October 19, 2007), https://whdad.wordpress.com/2007/10/19/kingswood-market-closing-doors/. Jacob Goldberg resided at 17 Outlook Avenue in late 1924, “Building Permits Worth $367,098,” Hartford Courant, November 6, 1924, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/553867283/abstract/9D21989B47CB4455PQ/1.↩︎ “West Hartford Has Zoning Commission”.↩︎ "],["bringing-zoning.html", "Bringing Zoning to Connecticut", " Bringing Zoning to Connecticut How did Connecticut’s suburban leaders define what zoning would look like in their local communities? West Hartford’s history matters because it hired national experts to design a town-wide plan and became Connecticut’s first municipality to enact local zoning in 1924, and set precedents followed by many other suburbs. Zoning in West Hartford did not only separate industrial, commercial, and residential areas. The plan went further by economically segregating residential areas through minimum-land rules that favored neighborhoods with more expensive single-family homes, and physically distanced them from less expensive multi-family housing and apartment buildings. Although Connecticut state law justified zoning on the basis of public health and welfare, suburban leaders refined its purpose to attract higher-income homebuyers and protect their property values. Moreover, in the aftermath of the Goldberg grocery store controversy, town leaders turned to zoning as a legally defensible strategy that enabled suburbs to segregate or exclude what they viewed as “undesirable” urban influences—on the basis of wealth—without directly referring to their race, religion, or nationality. In this way, zoning became a powerful and long-lasting tool of government-sponsored housing discrimination that continues into the present day. Across the US, when local governments began to adopt zoning laws during the 1910s, state and federal courts were still sorting out what types of restrictions they would permit. Traditionally, US law had been established to defend individual property owners and courts were reluctant to infringe on their rights in the free market. In this context, some cities defended their zoning policies on the grounds that local governments had a responsibility to exert some authority over the real estate market to protect the interests of their residents. For example, New York City’s 1916 zoning code separated industrial and residential land for health reasons, and limited the height of skyscrapers to ensure that air and sunlight reached people in smaller buildings nearby. Zoning advocates carefully justified New York City’s right to exercise limited “police powers” over land use in order to protect the “public health, safety, order, and general welfare” of its residents. The courts gradually seemed to accept this rationale.96 But US courts objected to other forms of zoning, such as race-based zoning that explicitly separated residents into Black or White neighborhoods. The US Supreme Court’s ruling in the 1917 Buchanan v. Warley case overturned race-based zoning, but not on the civil rights grounds that we might expect today. Three years earlier, the city of Louisville, Kentucky approved a zoning law that prohibited Blacks from living in residential blocks that were more than 50 percent White, and vice versa. William Warley, the Black president of the local NAACP chapter, tested the zoning law by purchasing vacant property in a White-majority block from Charles Buchanan, a White real estate agent. Warley cleverly inserted a clause that required him to complete the contract only if the law allowed him to occupy the property as a residence, which the zoning law did not permit. Buchanan went to court to demand his right to sell the property to Warley, and the scenario reversed traditional roles, by forcing the White real estate agent to argue against the segregationist housing policy. The US Supreme Court agreed and overturned Louisville’s racial zoning on grounds that it interfered with the White agent’s constitutional right to sell his property as he pleased—which also happened to protect the Black buyer’s right to live in a White-majority neighborhood.97 In West Hartford, town councilman Josiah B. Woods stood out among his peers as the strongest advocate for zoning in the early 1920s, and served continuously on its zoning commission until 1945. Educated at Amherst College and employed in the business world, he recognized the need for a long-term strategy to manage real estate development in his rapidly growing suburb. Woods witnessed the heated conflict between Goldberg, property owners, and the building inspector who refused to grant the permit, and sought to replace arbitrary decision-making with a town-wide land-use policy that promoted efficient and orderly economic growth. Up to this point, land owners occasionally inserted restrictions into property deeds, such as requiring homes to be built above a minimum size or sold above a minimum price, to increase its value. But deed restrictions relied on individual actions, in contrast to a more comprehensive town-wide policy that Woods desired. Zoning seemed promising, but the concept was still new across the nation, and relatively unknown in Connecticut. Woods persuaded other members of the town council to create a zoning committee in the fall of 1922, and to appoint him as chair. Months later, his photo appeared prominently in local newspaper coverage that explained how zoning would solve West Hartford’s problems, as shown in Figure 3.6.98 Figure 3.6: Josiah B. Woods, West Hartford town councilman and zoning committee chair, appeared prominently in newspaper coverage in support of Connecticut’s zoning enabling act. Source: Hartford Courant, March 13, 1923. To figure out how zoning might work for West Hartford, Josiah Woods and his colleagues sought advice from national leaders. Herbert Hoover, the US Secretary of Commerce (and future US President), led the most activist federal agency of his era by promoting a zoning framework for states and local governments to adopt. The Commerce Department actively circulated the Standard Zoning Enabling Act, drafted by New York City attorney and zoning advocate Edward M. Bassett in late 1921. The document offered legally defensible language for state governments to grant zoning authority to local municipalities to achieve multiple objectives. The first few lines introduced zoning in benevolent terms, such as making land-use decisions to reduce street congestion, ensure fire safety, and prevent overcrowding “for the purpose of promoting health, safety, morals, or the general welfare of the community.” But the document also mentioned that zoning regulations would consider “the character of the district… with a view to conserving the value of buildings.” In other words, the federal government’s Standard Zoning Enabling Act gave legal cover to local municipalities: if they acted under the pretense of public health and community welfare, they could write zoning laws to exclude undesirable types of housing (and their undesirable occupants) in order to raise property values for more desirable homes. Hoover’s strategy quickly succeeded. When his Commerce Department began working on this issue, only 48 US cities and towns had enacted zoning in late 1921, but that number grew to 218 by late 1923.99 Connecticut lawmakers latched onto Hoover’s language and considered a bill modeled on the Standard Zoning Enabling Act in March 1923, during the peak of the Goldberg controversy. Josiah Woods publicly urged other West Hartford town council members to support the bill, which would grant decision-making authority to West Hartford and seven other municipalities that it specifically listed. Zoning would solve West Hartford’s long-term problems, Woods declared, by giving the town the power “to protect the residential character” of designated areas. Woods testified on behalf of the Town Council in favor of the zoning enabling act at the Connecticut legislature, as did New York City zoning advocate Edward Bassett. Their advocacy helped Connecticut’s first zoning bill sail through the legislature without controversy, and the governor signed it on June 1923.100 Designing Zoning to Exclude Josiah Woods pushed West Hartford to move as quickly as possible to become Connecticut’s first municipality to act on its new local zoning powers. With the Goldberg controversy still hanging over their heads, the Town Council quickly appointed a Zoning Commission (chaired by Woods), and allocated funds to hire zoning attorney Edward Bassett to advise them on next steps in the summer of 1923. Bassett cautioned Woods and his colleagues that “all zoning must be constructive and not arbitrary,” in order to avoid legal challenges in court. Furthermore, zoning policies affected only future construction in this fast-growing suburb, and would not apply retroactively to existing buildings.101 West Hartford also hired Robert Harvey Whitten, an urban planner who helped Bassett create New York City’s zoning code, and also served as a zoning consultant for Cleveland, Ohio; Atlanta, Georgia; and several cities in New England states. In each of these places, Whitten’s job was to design the details of a zoning plan and draft them into a public document to persuade local leaders and their constituents to support it. His 1921 Cleveland Zone Plan featured many visual elements, including diagrams of the dangers of mixing residential and commercial buildings, and photographs of apartment buildings intruding on single-family homes, as shown in Figure 3.7. Whitten’s vision of urban planning emphasized homogeneity, with uniform building types in the same neighborhood. Zoning is “like good housekeeping,” he quipped. “It provides a place for everything and tries to keep everything in its place.”102 Figure 3.7: Whitten illustrated his zoning reports to praise neighborhoods with only single-family homes (left image), and to oppose mixing them with apartment buildings and small businesses (center and right images). Source: Cleveland Zone Plan, 1921, hosted by HathiTrust. Whitten’s dream of purely homogeneous housing led him to propose a racially-segregated zoning plan for Atlanta, Georgia. Despite the US Supreme Court’s 1917 Buchanan v. Warley ruling against this policy, his 1922 Atlanta Zone Plan, published by city officials, directly called for “Race Zoning” to divide residential areas into “white”, “colored”, and “undetermined” districts. Under Whitten’s plan, Black families were not permitted to move into homes in White zones that they did not occupy prior to the passage of the proposed zoning law, and vice versa. “Race zoning is essential in the interest of the public peace, order and security,” Whitten wrote, “and will promote the welfare and prosperity of both the white and colored race.” Although the Georgia Supreme Court ruled that this plan was unconstitutional, Atlanta’s city planners relied on Whitten’s race-based zoning maps in future decades. Whether they explicitly called for racial separation (as Whitten did in the South), or discreetly avoided any direct mention of race, religion, or nationality (as Whitten did in the North), urban planners of the 1920s commonly used zoning as a tool for social separation.103 Whitten crafted the 1924 West Hartford Zoning report to blend the soft rhetoric of inclusion with hard rules of exclusion. The introduction promised that zoning would bring “orderliness” and “efficiency” to the town’s rapid growth, with “an increase of health, comfort and happiness for all people.” It recognized that the suburb’s primary function was to provide housing for people who worked in the adjacent city of Hartford and to serve “all classes and all grades of economic ability,” including “factory workers, office employees, and the various business and professional groups.” But deep inside the body of the report, Whitten devised a system to sort residents into economically segregated homogeneous neighborhoods.104. Whitten’s zoning plan divided West Hartford into five residential areas—A, B, C, D, and E—based on new rules that required a minimum amount of land per family to construct housing, as shown in Table 3.2. The most exclusive A zones were designated for upper-income single-family homes because they required at least 9,000 square feet of land (1/5 of an acre) per family. At the opposite end were the C, D, and E zones, set aside for more affordable multi-family duplexes, triples, and apartments, where the rules required significantly less land per family. Additional rules also increased the amount of land needed to build in more exclusive areas: A-zone homes could occupy no more than 30 percent of the property lot, and also must be 60 feet wide on the street-facing side in order to spread them further apart. While these 1920s rules may seem modest by today’s standards, Whitten recommended nearly twice the amount of land per family in West Hartford’s most exclusive zone compared to similar zones in Cleveland and Atlanta. Connecticut’s suburbs offered more space for large-lot zoning requirements.105 Table 3.2: Minimum Land Required Per Family in West Hartford Zoning, 1924 Zone Intended use Min. land per family Land cost per family Scale diagram A 1-fam home 9,000 sq ft $$$$$ B 1-fam home 6,000 sq ft $$$$ C 2-fam duplex 3,000 sq ft $$$ D 3-fam triple 1,500 sq ft $$ E apartments 750 sq ft $ Each zone set a minimum land requirement per family, shown in green, which intentionally made it “uneconomic” to build affordable multi-family housing in the A and B areas. Icons by Georgiana Ionescu. Overall, West Hartford’s 1924 zoning formula relied on minimum-land rules to create separate neighborhoods for expensive single-family homes and affordable multi-family homes, and to physically distance these residents from each other. Whitten’s report bluntly stated its objectives. Zoning policy would make it “uneconomic to build two-family houses” in A and B areas because real estate developers needed to buy twice as much land compared to the amount needed for a single-family home, as shown in Figure 3.8. Given the same land costs, developers would generate more profits by building and selling two single-family homes, rather than one two-family home. While “three-family houses and apartment houses are not prohibited in the A, B, or C area districts,” Whitten clarified, his zoning laws would influence the marketplace by removing incentives to build mixed-income housing. In short, the new rules rewarded developers who built economically exclusionary neighborhoods.106 Figure 3.8: Whitten’s zoning plan for West Hartford demonstrated how local governments could create minimum-land rules that made it “uneconomic” for private real estate developers to build multi-family housing in areas designated for single-family homes, thereby creating powerful incentives for exclusion. Source: West Hartford Zoning, 1924, hosted by Google Books. Exclusionary zoning was designed to sharply reduce the amount of multi-family housing that developers would build. Although West Hartford’s zoning plan did not prohibit multi-family housing, it pushed lower-income families into lower-rated C, D, and E areas—the only zones where duplexes, triples, and apartments could be constructed economically—which sharply limited the supply of affordable housing in the suburb. Whitten’s 1924 report cautioned readers about multi-family housing taking over suburban space that, in his view, should be reserved for single-family homes. It featured photographs with captions warning that “large apartment houses are spreading farther west along Farmington Avenue and into side streets,” the same areas as the Goldberg grocery store controversy the prior year, as shown in Figure 3.9. Through minimum-land rules, Whitten promised that “crowded tenement house conditions [that] exist in many larger communities,” such as the city of Hartford, “will be effectively prevented in West Hartford.” It’s unclear whether Whitten knew that one of the buildings pictured in his report was The Packard, originally designed by Jewish builders in 1917 to become upscale apartments, though it was not a financial success when it finally opened in 1922. In any case, Whitten’s words and images were intended to stir up anxieties among suburban homeowners about multi-family urban tenements and their “undesirable” occupants.107 Figure 3.9: The 1924 West Hartford Zoning report warned that “large apartment houses are spreading farther west along Farmington Avenue” from the city into the suburb, where town leaders and their zoning experts believed single-family homes belonged. On the right side is The Packard, originally designed by Jewish builders to become upscale apartments. The true power of zoning was revealed in Whitten’s 1924 map and its vision for future real estate development in West Hartford. The policy envisioned that most property would become single-family housing, as shown in the darker green shades on top of the original black-and-white map in Figure 3.10. Zoning assigned more than 80 percent of West Hartford property to zones A and B combined, the most exclusive areas that required the highest minimum amount of land per family, as shown in Table 3.3. Furthermore, the vast majority of the town’s undeveloped property (to the north and the west) was labeled zones A and B, which Whitten’s report acknowledged “would assume a single-family development through this entire area” if no changes were made in years to come. By contrast, less than 20 percent of West Hartford’s property was intended for multi-family housing in C, D, and E zones. Moreover, much of the C and D areas were assigned to the town’s southeast corner, which Whitten’s zoning plan also designated as the industrial area (shown in dark cross-hatch on the original map), making housing less desirable. Apartment buildings were only intended for the thin strip of E zone on Farmington Avenue from the Hartford border to West Hartford Center. Finally, C, D, and E zones had already been mostly developed, which limited new opportunities for multi-family construction. Overall, the zoning policy guaranteed that West Hartford’s future housing would be more expensive and exclusive.108 Figure 3.10: Explore the interactive map. When West Hartford became the first Connecticut municipality to enact zoning in 1924, leaders followed Robert Harvey Whitten’s recommendation to divide the town into five residential zones (A to E), shown here in dark-to-light shades of green overlaid on top of the original black-and-white map for clarity. Zone A required at least 9,000 square feet of property per family, and was intended for more expensive single-family homes, while making multi-family housing “uneconomic” to build there. Over 80 percent of the town’s land—and nearly all of its undeveloped land to the north and west—was assigned to zones A and B to ensure the dominance of single-family housing across the suburb. Follow zoning maps over time by changing the background layers. Map developed by Ilya Ilyankou (Picturedigits) and Jack Dougherty, with MAGIC UConn Libraries. View historical sources and code on GitHub. Table 3.3: Land Assigned by Zone, West Hartford, 1924 Zone Land (acres) Percent A 6,430 45% B 5,540 39% C 1,825 13% D 435 3% E 109 1% Total 14,339 100% Josiah Woods and his colleagues embraced Whitten’s zoning plan for West Hartford. As the Zoning Commission chairman, Woods wrote the foreword to the published report, which called attention to the need for an “orderly” process to develop the suburb’s “large unbuilt areas” in the near future. After public discussions and some minor adjustments, the Town Council voted to approve nearly all of their consultant’s recommendations in March 1924, and became Connecticut’s first municipality to enact local zoning ordinances, only nine months after the state enabling act. New York City zoning attorney Edward Bassett sent his compliments to West Hartford on their fast adoption of Whitten’s recommendations. The Connecticut Chamber of Commerce brought Bassett back the following year, to advise more towns that sought to be granted the same zoning powers as West Hartford. Bassett persuaded them to drop their individual petitions for zoning, which he argued would be found unconstitutional, and instead to support a state-wide comprehensive bill that he assured them would “stand the tests of the court.” Local leaders followed Bassett’s advice, and Connecticut passed its second enabling act in 1925, a more comprehensive bill that expanded zoning power to nearly all 169 municipalities across the state.109 Bassett’s prediction was accurate. In its landmark 1926 Euclid v. Ambler decision, the US Supreme Court shifted its interpretation of individual versus governmental property rights. The test case came the Cleveland suburb of Euclid, Ohio, which created residential zoning that blocked landowners from selling their property for industrial use. Previously in the 1917 Buchanan case, the Court ruled against racial zoning on the grounds that local government infringed on individual rights to sell property to whomever they chose. But less than a decade later in the Euclid case, the court’s 6-3 majority agreed that local governments could limit individual rights to property as long as they “find their justification… for the public welfare.” Zoning laws are constitutional, the Court ruled, unless they are “clearly arbitrary and unreasonable, having no substantial relation to the public health, safety, morals, or general welfare” of the community. This language precisely matched the state zoning enabling bill that Bassett, Hoover, and other zoning advocates had recommended. Also, while the Euclid case involved industrial versus residential zoning, and did not directly address exclusionary minimum-land zoning that towns like West Hartford had implemented, the Court made its views on multi-family housing very clear: “very often the apartment house is a mere parasite, constructed in order to take advantage of the open spaces and attractive surroundings” created by single-family homes, which are threatened by the growth of multi-family homes.110 The US Supreme Court’s Euclid decision emboldened local governments to enact more exclusionary zoning. Back in West Hartford, the fast-changing real estate market led some developers to test the boundaries by buying sufficient land to meet the minimum requirements to build 6-family and 12-family apartments in A and B zones, which Whitten intended for single-family homes. In response, the Town Council made zoning even more restrictive in 1927, by voting to outright prohibit the construction of “houses for more than one family” in A and B areas, regardless of the amount of land per family. Once again, local government protected single-family housing and prevented multi-family housing, with little justification on how its laws served the general welfare of the community.111 Although West Hartford initially justified its zoning policy on the grounds of public health and welfare, this soft rhetoric steadily slipped away and was replaced by harder rules of economic exclusion over time. We can see this shifting rhetoric in Josiah Woods, West Hartford’s long-time zoning commissioner. Back in 1923, Woods defended zoning on the grounds that it was deigned to “protect the residential character” of neighborhoods. But in 1944, during a local dispute over the scope of the town’s zoning authority, he spoke more bluntly about its true purpose. “It is wise to go back to the fundamentals of zoning,” Woods reminded his audience. The underlying goal is “to make West Hartford a suburban town ‘for real homes’,” meaning single-family owner-occupied dwellings, rather than multi-family housing for renters. “The Town is given the authority to make zones for the preservation of existing [property] values,” he reasoned, and “zoning exists to protect those values.” If suburban property owners simply understood that the zoning was created to defend their common economic interests—and to protect them from urban intrusions—there would be no antagonism in West Hartford, he believed.112 Around the same time, some prominent urban planners who had been early advocates of zoning recognized that its purpose had shifted over time. William Munro, a former professor of municipal government at Harvard, called out this problem in his 1931 article titled “A Danger Spot in the Zoning Movement.” Back in the early 1900s, Munro recalled how US city planners first discussed the concept, adopted from progressive German cities, as a means to control private property for the public good. Looking back, “the chief argument in favor of zoning… was a means of promoting the welfare of the whole community and guiding its growth along orderly lines.” Zoning solved municipal design problems, Munro argued, by preventing industrial intrusions into residential neighborhoods, and promoting thoughtful planning about where to construct public schools. But zoning “quickly became popular” because “real estate agents and promoters throughout the country got behind the movement” as “an opportunity to boom their business” by separating residential areas for higher profits. Nowadays, Munro observed that people think about zoning “as merely a matter of maintaining or increasing property values.” In local disputes over rezoning, Munro lamented that “the issue is not usually approached from the standpoint of what the city needs.” Instead, property owners “have come to feel that they have a vested right” to preserve single-family zoning in which they have invested, and to prevent changes that would permit the construction of a two-family duplex on their street. “We seem to be in danger of forgetting the original purpose of the zoning process as a whole,” Munro concluded, because we have placed private interests over the public good.113 While Munro’s interpretation describes how the zoning movement veered away from the goals of progressive urban planners, it does not explain what happened in suburban communities in Connecticut. When West Hartford adopted zoning in 1924, its rhetoric briefly referenced the public welfare, but its rules were clearly designed to separate and stratify neighborhood residents by income. There was no early progressive phase to zoning in West Hartford, as its original intent was to be exclusionary. In fact, Josiah Woods and other local leaders defined the public good in West Hartford as distancing itself from urban elements they deemed as undesirable. This is the story of how exclusionary zoning began in one Connecticut suburb, and quickly spread to other suburban towns that surrounded its major cities. Robert H. Whitten, “The Building Zone Plan of New York City,” National Municipal Review 6, no. 3 (1917): 325–36, https://heinonline.org/HOL/P?h=hein.journals/natmnr6&i=359, p. 334; Michael Allan Wolf, The Zoning of America: Euclid v. Ambler (Lawrence, Kan.: University Press of Kansas, 2008).↩︎ Buchanan v. Warley, “Decision” (US Supreme Court 245 US 60, November 5, 1917), https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/245/60.html; Garrett Power, “Apartheid Baltimore Style: The Residential Segregation Ordinances of 1910-1913,” Maryland Law Review 42, no. 2 (1983): 289–329, http://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/mlr/vol42/iss2/4, pp. 311-313↩︎ “West Hartford Hopes for Zoning Bill,” Hartford Courant, March 19, 1923, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/553376669/abstract/76D50A7CBB164588PQ/3; “J. B. Woods To Leave West Hartford Town Plan Commission Leadership,” Hartford Courant, December 7, 1945, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/560468247/abstract/94D526928229421FPQ/3; “J. B. Woods Dies, Was Member Of Plan Commission: Services Friday,” Hartford Courant, July 28, 1948, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/561043124/abstract/BEEB76AEB6514C00PQ/1.↩︎ US Department of Commerce, A Standard State Zoning Enabling Act (Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1924), http://archive.org/details/standardstatezon05bass, pp. 4, 6; Ruth Knack, Stuart Meck, and Israel Stollman, “The Real Story Behind the Standard Planning and Zoning Acts of the 1920s,” Land Use Law and Zoning Digest, February 1996, 3–9, https://planning-org-uploaded-media.s3.amazonaws.com/legacy_resources/growingsmart/pdf/LULZDFeb96.pdf.↩︎ Josiah Woods most likely obtained an early draft of US Commerce Department’s Standard Zoning Enabling Act by spring 1923, because the 1924 edition stated it was first distributed as a mimeograph in August 1922, revised and made public in the same form in January 1923, then printed for wider distribution. US Department of Commerce, A Standard State Zoning Enabling Act. Indirect quote of Woods on “protect the residential character” in “Demand Economy in West Hartford”. US Department of Commerce, A Standard State Zoning Enabling Act; “W. HARTFORD HOPES FOR ZONING BILL”; “Expert Favors General Zoning Bill for Conn.” Hartford Courant, April 14, 1923, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/553384922/citation/13E0D686BAE24FA2PQ/6?accountid=14405; “Plans To Apportion Population Of Cities,” Hartford Courant, May 29, 1923, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/553403648?accountid=14405; “Ballot Probe Bill Signed by Governor,” The Hartford Courant, June 8, 1923, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/553472092/citation/13E0D686BAE24FA2PQ/11?accountid=14405; Connecticut General Assembly, “Public Act 279: An Act Concerning Zoning in Certain Cities and Towns,” in Public Acts Passed by the General Assembly of the State of Connecticut, January Session, 1923, 3790–92, https://heinonline.org/HOL/P?h=hein.ssl/ssct0160&i=318.↩︎ “Zoning Commission to Be Appointed,” Hartford Courant, June 21, 1923, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/553415093/abstract/259F4C144CC44403PQ/1; “West Hartford Has Zoning Commission”; “Money for West Hartford Zoning,” Hartford Courant, August 9, 1923, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/553505479/abstract/25FC2CA0205C4D31PQ/1; “Zoning Commission Ready for Work,” Hartford Courant, September 21, 1923, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/553475423/abstract/A0FC04626954B44PQ/1.↩︎ “Expert on Zoning Engaged by Town,” Hartford Courant, November 7, 1923, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/553559655/abstract/439FAAE8A904982PQ/1; “Robert Whitten, City Planner, Dies,” New York Times: General News, 1936, http://search.proquest.com/hnpnewyorktimes/docview/101877162/citation/60094A1DAEEF4AB3PQ/1; Robert Harvey Whitten, The Cleveland Zone Plan (Cleveland, OH, 1921), http://hdl.handle.net/2027/yale.39002044619519.↩︎ Robert Harvey Whitten, The Atlanta Zone Plan (Atlanta GA: City Planning Commission, 1922), https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Atlanta_Zone_Plan/MmNAAQAAMAAJ, p. 10; Christopher Silver, “The Racial Origins of Zoning in American Cities,” in Urban Planning and the African American Community: In the Shadows, ed. June Manning Thomas and Marsha Ritzdorf (Sage Publications, 1997); Rothstein, The Color of Law, pp. 46-53↩︎ Robert Harvey Whitten, West Hartford Zoning (West Hartford CT: Zoning Commission, 1924), https://www.google.com/books/edition/West_Hartford_Zoning/bdKsAAAAMAAJ, pp. preface, 1, 2, 10↩︎ Whitten, pp. 10, 13. Whitten recommended a minimum of 5,000 square feet of land per family in A-1 zones in Cleveland and Atlanta, Whitten, The Cleveland Zone Plan, p. 12; Whitten, The Atlanta Zone Plan, p. 13↩︎ Whitten, West Hartford Zoning, p. 10.↩︎ Whitten, pp. 10, 12, 16, 17. Thanks to Mary Donohue for her research on The Packard, an upscale apartment building originally designed in 1917 by Jewish architect Harry Beckanstin, on land purchased by Barnet Sharfman and his partners, which was resold several times. Mary Donohue, “West Hartford House Tour” (Noah Webster House and West Hartford Historical Society, November 11, 2018); “West Hartford: Ask for Changes in Building Lines at Selectmen’s Meeting [Packard],” Hartford Courant, January 20, 1917, http://www.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/556428448/abstract/6FF848EE3CBB485APQ/1; “Hartford’s Largest Apartment Block for Farmington Ave,” Hartford Courant, May 25, 1919, http://www.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/556691467/abstract/D668B64BA808413EPQ/1; “Packard Apartments Sold at Auction,” Hartford Courant, July 12, 1923, http://www.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/553442168/abstract/B24B2EF08631464DPQ/2; Ray Routhier, “Bank to Foreclose on Vintage Buildings [Packard],” Hartford Courant: Connecticut, August 22, 1992, http://www.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/1981515333/abstract/B24B2EF08631464DPQ/16.↩︎ Robert Harvey Whitten, “Tentative Zoning Map, West Hartford, Connecticut” (Zoning Commission, Town of West Hartford, 1924), https://mapwarper.net/maps/56736; Whitten, West Hartford Zoning, p. 14. See 1924 zoning geodata and land calculations in Ilya Ilyankou and Jack Dougherty, “Map: Exclusionary Zoning in West Hartford, CT, 1924-Present” (On The Line, 2021), https://github.com/OnTheLine/otl-zoning-west-hartford. Even with a more refined estimate of land assignment that removes parcels that were or became non-residential (schools, parks, cemeteries, streams, industrial areas, commercial-only areas, etc.), the percentage of A and B property combined is more than 80 percent.↩︎ Whitten, West Hartford Zoning, p. 1; “Framing Zoning System for Town,” Hartford Courant, February 13, 1924, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/553684816/abstract/7642B87823624487PQ/1; “Zoning Plan for West Hartford Announced by Town Commission,” Hartford Courant, March 9, 1924, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/553716586/abstract/141192AC6E83BE6C3C8/1?accountid=14405. See seven minor adjustments listed in “Zoning Commission Plan Is in Force,” Hartford Courant, March 24, 1924, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/553717249/abstract/19ED20ED98F74683PQ/22; “Vote to Support Zoning Measure,” Hartford Courant, March 26, 1925, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/553965338/citation/93A704BA781E41E8PQ/1; Connecticut’s 1925 zoning act specifically exempted the city of New Haven. Connecticut General Assembly, “Public Act 242: An Act Concerning Zoning,” in Public Acts Passed by the General Assembly of the State of Connecticut, January Session, 1925, 4037–43, https://heinonline.org/HOL/P?h=hein.ssl/ssct0161&i=241.↩︎ Euclid v. Ambler, “Decision” (272 US Supreme Court, 365, November 22, 1926), https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=8376015914752485063; Freund, Colored Property, pp. 81-87; Rothstein, The Color of Law, pp. 52-53. Prior to the 1926 US Supreme Court decision, a 1924 Federal District Court ruled against Euclid’s zoning ordinance as an overreach of governmental power, but accurately recognized that its true purpose was “to classify the population and segregate them according to their income or situation in life. The true reason why some persons live in a mansion and others in a shack, why some live in a single-family dwelling and others in a double-family dwelling, why some live in a two-family dwelling and others in an apartment, or why some live in a well-kept apartment and others in a tenement, is primarily economic. It is a matter of income and wealth, plus the labor and difficulty of procuring adequate domestic service.” Ambler v. Euclid, “Decision” (Federal Reporter 297 F. 307 [Federal District Court of Ohio], 1924), https://heinonline.org/HOL/P?h=hein.cases/fedrep0297&i=329&a=dHJpbmNvbGwuZWR1, p. 316. See also the CT Supreme Court’s reasoning about crowded housing creating immoral people in its 1920 Windsor v. Whitney decision, which recognized the Town of Windsor’s right to lay out streets and claim eminent domain while taking private property for the public good. “Streets of reasonable width add to the value of the land along the street, enhance the general value of land and buildings in the neighborhood and greatly increase the beauty of the neighborhood. These are all facts of universal knowledge…Narrow streets in congested industrial centers breed disease. Too many houses crowded upon a lot without sufficient space for light and air menace health. Such a neighborhood affects the morals of its people.” Windsor v. Whitney, “Decision” (Connecticut Supreme Court, 95 Conn. 357, August 5, 1920), https://heinonline.org/HOL/P?h=hein.statereports/cadscect0095&i=369&a=dHJpbmNvbGwuZWR1, p. 365↩︎ “12-Family Apartment Under Way,” Hartford Courant, November 6, 1926, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/557279717/abstract/89BA266AD5FD4663PQ/7; “Apartments Banned In A And B Areas,” The Hartford Courant (1923-1995), March 26, 1927, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/557325139/abstract/AA121907A7BE4D68PQ/1; West Hartford, “Report of the Zoning Commission,” in Annual Report of the Town of West Hartford, Connecticut, 1928, https://lci-mt.iii.com/iii/encore/record/C__Rb1497880, p. 83↩︎ “Demand Economy in West Hartford”; “Protection Of Property Values Aim: Chairman Woods of Zoning Commission,” Hartford Courant, May 22, 1944, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/559985482/abstract/94D526928229421FPQ/6.↩︎ William B. Munro, “A Danger Spot in the Zoning Movement,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 155, no. 2 (May 1, 1931): 202–6, https://doi.org/10.1177/000271623115500226; Marc A Weiss, The Rise of the Community Builders: The American Real Estate Industry and Urban Land Planning (Columbia University Press, 1987), p. 99↩︎ "],["expanding-zoning.html", "Expanding Zoning Across Suburbs", " Expanding Zoning Across Suburbs After Connecticut legislators allowed town governments to enact zoning regulations in 1923, local land-use policies spread quickly across the state. While each town made its own decisions, the growth of zoning was tracked by the Connecticut Development Commission, a state agency created in 1939 to promote economic growth and efficient planning for industry and housing. The Commission published a series of maps to illustrate the growth of local planning and zoning agencies in Connecticut, as shown in Figure 3.11 from its 1944-1946 report. Towns that enacted local zoning policies tended to be clustered in the rapidly-growing suburbs around the state’s major cities of Hartford, Bridgeport, and New Haven. By 1957, 77 percent (131 out of 169) of town governments had established some type of planning and/or zoning agency, as shown in Figure 3.12. Nearly every town within a 20-mile radius of Hartford—including outlying rural areas far from the city center—enacted some type of land-use agency to exert control over what kind of housing could be built in their community. During the 1950s, suburban towns began to compete against one another by establishing more exclusive zoning requirements – such as a minimum of 87,000 square feet of land (about 2 acres) to construct a single-family home – to attract higher-income homebuyers. Similarly, many suburban towns began to expressly prohibit the construction of more affordable multi-family homes to keep out lower-income residents. Uncovering the roots of our state’s zoning history helps us understand present-day political battles to end exclusionary practices, led by statewide advocacy groups such as the Connecticut Fair Housing Center, the Open Communities Alliance, and Desegregate Connecticut.114 Figure 3.11: A Connecticut Development Commission employee reviews a 1938 map of local planning and zoning agencies in order to create an updated version in this photo from their 1944-1946 report. Zoning grew most quickly in suburban towns clustered around the major cities of Hartford, Bridgeport, and New Haven. Figure 3.12: Explore the full-size interactive map. By 1957, more than 77 percent of town governments had established some type of planning and/or zoning agency, including nearly every town within a 20-mile radius of Hartford, according to the Connecticut Development Commission. View historical sources and open-source map code, developed by Jack Dougherty and Ilya Ilyankou. How and why did zoning expand across Connecticut? How did exclusivity vary in different communities? This chapter compares how zoning grew in three adjacent but very different suburban towns: Avon, Bloomfield, and West Hartford. Although West Hartford acted first to enable zoning in 1924, the neighboring town of Bloomfield hired its own expert to catch up in the late 1920s, and zoned its land with more exclusive minimum requirements than West Hartford during its 1950s building boom. Meanwhile, residents in the farming town of Avon initially opposed zoning in the 1930s, but changed course by hiring its own expert in the 1950s and approved even more exclusive minimum-land requirements than its neighbors. To some degree, the differences in the timing of zoning across these three towns can be explained as local government responses to population growth. West Hartford enacted zoning in response to its high growth rate during its housing boom of the 1920s, when the population increased 182 percent. Similarly, Bloomfield actively expanded its zoning policies during its peak growth decade of the 1950s, when its population climbed 137 percent, as shown in Figure 3.13.115 Figure 3.13: Explore the full-size interactive chart, which uses a logarithmic scale to better compare growth rates for small and large communities. Each suburban town experienced sharp population growth (West Hartford in the 1920s, Bloomfield and Avon in the 1950s) as the population of the central city of Hartford peaked in 1950. Source: US Census. View historical data. But zoning was not merely a response to population growth…. TODO contextualize… Figure 3.14.116 Figure 3.14: Explore the full-size interactive map of property development in suburban West Hartford, which shows two key periods of activity. The 1920s construction boom on the east side and town center filled up 15 percent of all parcels available today, and 1950s growth on the north, west, and south sides filled up 31 percent of all parcels. Also, the total land area of developed property increased from the 1920s (6 percent of all available acres) to the 1950s (24 percent of all available acres), when parcel sizes grew larger. By the late 1960s, the town was almost entirely built out. Source: Property assessment data provided by the Town of West Hartford and AppGeo, only for properties that currently exist. Also, “year built” means the most recent year of construction recorded, which is missing for about 3 percent of nearly 20,000 parcels. Map developed by Jack Dougherty (Trinity College CT) and Ilya Ilyankou (Picturedigits). View data and code on GitHub. Source: US Census. View historical data. TO COME in this section This section will trace the growth of exclusionary zoning during the twentieth century, as Hartford-area suburbs competed against one another to attract higher-income families… Across these three suburbs, the most restrictive minimum-land requirement for a single-family home increased from 9,000 square feet in the 1920s to over 87,000 square feet in the 1950s, as shown in Table 3.4.117 Table 3.4: Most Exclusive Minimum-land-per-family Zoning Rules in Three Hartford Suburbs, mid-1950s Town Zone Min. land per family Scale diagram Avon East 87,000 sq ft Bloomfield R-40 40,000 sq ft West Hartford AAA 18,000 sq ft In the mid-1950s, the minimum amount of land required per single-family home in Avon’s most exclusive zone (87,000 square feet) was more than two times larger than Bloomfield’s most exclusive zone (40,000 square feet), and more than four times larger than West Hartford’s most exclusive zone (18,000 square feet). Icons by Georgiana Ionescu. TODO: Describe how the three towns decided to zone land for future residential growth that would attract higher-income families. To draw meaningful comparisons between suburbs, we digitized and stitched together mid-1950s paper zoning maps from their three separate town governments, and converted their minimum-land rules into a common scale with modern labels. For example, the most exclusionary zone in this map, R-87, represents a residential zone that requires at least 87,000 square feet of land (about 2 acres) to construct a single-family home…as shown in Figure 3.15. Figure 3.15: Explore the interactive map by floating your cursor to view mid-1950s minimum-land zoning rules in three suburban towns: Avon, Bloomfield, and West Hartford, Connecticut. TODO: … How much land did each town assign to exclusionary residential zones in the mid-1950s? …summarize data as shown in Table 3.5. Table 3.5: Percent of Land Area by Town and Zone Type, mid-1950s Zone equivalent Avon Bloomfield West Hartford R-87 26% R-40 32% R-30 72% 27% R-20 14% R-18 31% R-15 10% R-10.5 19% R-10 5% R-9 24% R-6 11% R-3 6% R-1 2% non-residential 2% 12% 7% Total acres 14979 16943 14333 TODO: Note that a strict calculation might manually remove park areas (such as Pennfield state park in Bloomfield) from residential zone calculations, but towns did include them in zoning maps, so left as-is. Connecticut Development Commission, Report (Hartford, 1946), https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015079960137, p. 19; Connecticut Development Commission, “Legislation Passed at 1957 Session of the General Assembly of Planning and Zoning Interest” (State of Connecticut, 1957), http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1140223706; Connecticut Development Commission, “Department of Economic and Community Development Records” (Connecticut State Library Archives, 2019), https://cslarchives.ctstatelibrary.org/repositories/2/resources/635. See historical sources for 1957 map at https://github.com/ontheline/otl-planning-zoning-ct↩︎ See 1900-1960 population data at https://github.com/ontheline/otl-datawrapper. See similar use of logarithmic scale for comparative population growth across metropolitan Hartford towns in Technical Planning Associates and Connecticut Development Commission, Wethersfield, Connecticut Plan of Development for Southwest Section: Report to the Town Plan Commission, Wethersfield, Connecticut Plan of Development for Southwest Section (New Haven, Connecticut: Technical Planning Associates, 1950), https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/102602086, PDF p. 18.↩︎ See West Hartford property development data and tables from pre-1900s to 2010s at https://github.com/ontheline/otl-year-built.↩︎ TODO FIX: Avon Zoning Regulations (amended Oct 19, 1951, and Fall 1953); Bloomfield (adopted March 15, 1950); West Hartford (amended to Dec 3, 1951); adapted from Avon, “Present Zoning Fact Sheet [Map of Avon and Adjacent Towns]” (Joseph Moschner and Avon Town Planning Committee, Connecticut, January 1954), https://www.avonct.gov/planning-community-development/files/1956-pocd-maps-908; see also Bloomfield 1958 and West Hartford 1958 zoning map legends. Assume 1958 Bloomfield R-40 minimum lot width of 150 ft based on present-day requirements.↩︎ "],["selling.html", "Chapter 4 Selling and Shopping the Lines", " Chapter 4 Selling and Shopping the Lines This chapter explores the pivotal relationship between public schooling and private housing, which fundamentally reshaped metropolitan life and upward mobility strategies in Connecticut in the latter half of the twentieth century. By contrast, in the early 1900s, when a smaller proportion of youth pursued secondary education and beyond, most families did not choose their homes based on the boundary lines of desirable public schools. Prior to the 1950s, schools were relatively weak in attracting middle-class families to the suburbs, but in post-war human capital markets, education became a powerful magnet. Pro-suburban government, real estate interests and prospective homebuyers converged to create the practice commonly known today as “shopping for schools.” Agents began to advertise private homes by their location in higher status public school areas. Local school leaders competed for upper-class families by offering curricular extras. State legislators invested in suburban schools, and legitimized school-by-school rankings by publishing standardized test results. Upwardly mobile families with children sought more desirable school attendance areas, and paid higher prices for private homes that included access to this public good. Overall, the rise of shopping for schools unites the twin narratives of credentialism and consumerism in American metropolitan history. MORE TO COME… This chapter expands on themes that previously appeared in Jack Dougherty, “Shopping for Schools: How Public Education and Private Housing Shaped Suburban Connecticut,” Journal of Urban History 38, no. 2 (March 2012): 205–24, http://juh.sagepub.com/content/38/2. "],["challenging.html", "Chapter 5 Challenging the Power Lines", " Chapter 5 Challenging the Power Lines This chapter tells the stories of everyday families and civil rights activists who sought to cross over, redraw, or erase schooling and housing boundaries in metropolitan Hartford, focusing primarily on the past five decades. When comparing these stories, we learn that the tools of privilege do not stand still, but evolve when confronted by civil rights challenges. In turn, this requires newer generations of activists to continually rethink and revise strategies to address the limited successes of prior years. After Connecticut civil rights advocates won legislative bans against overt racial discrimination in public housing in the late 1940s, and most private housing in the 1960s, they needed to create more sophisticated strategies to combat racial steering and redlining practices, since these were more difficult to prove without direct testing and quantitative studies. Similarly, although activists won a 1965 state constitutional amendment for equal public schools, initial efforts to implement this law were equally challenged in moving students or dollars across city-suburban district lines. This portion concludes with the 1996 courtroom victory of the Sheff v O’Neill school integration plaintiffs, where Connecticut’s highest court outlawed the segregation of Hartford minority students, but left the specifics of the remedy to be determined by a suburban-dominated political process. "],["mobilizing.html", "Mobilizing Against Racial Steering and Redlining", " Mobilizing Against Racial Steering and Redlining by Jasmin Agosto, Vianna Iorio, and Jack Dougherty In the early 1970’s, Julia Ramos, Ben Dixon, and Boyd Hinds gathered in a small storefront office at 1170 Albany Avenue, located in a predominantly Black neighborhood in the North End of Hartford. Armed with scissors, glue, and string, they cut, pasted, and connected the names of board members from leading corporations and government: the big banks, insurance companies, real estate firms, and regulatory agencies. On their office wall, the trio mapped out the interconnected lines of power between a handful of wealthy White men who “sat on each other’s boards, who knew each other, and who were comfortable with each other.” This “spider web” visually depicted a concept that was difficult for many people to grasp: institutional racism. Collectively, these power brokers drew the lines that racially and economically segregated metropolitan Hartford, by deciding which neighborhoods received home mortgages and insurance, where different groups of people would be allowed to buy or rent property, and how everyone played the rules of the game. This was the beginning of Education/Instrucción, and its mission was to mobilize people to “eliminate racism wherever it existed.”118 Ramos, Dixon, and Hinds co-founded Education/Instrucción, an innovative team with an intentionally bilingual name, designed to teach Hartford communities and organizations to use their power to challenge institutional racism. Originally, this multicultural trio met as teachers at Westledge, a private school in suburban Simsbury, Connecticut. Although the school promoted racial equality, none were fully satisfied in this isolated setting, as they dreamed about tackling broader political and economic issues beyond the classroom. Hinds asked Ramos and Dixon to join him, on equal footing as co-directors, to start a new Hartford-based organization to take on larger challenges of institutional racism in housing, education, and employment.119 The trio came from starkly different backgrounds but shared a common moral compass that drove their activism. Julia Ramos, a Puerto Rican woman and recent graduate of the University of Hartford, had learned to speak Spanish, English, German, and French by living in various bases with her father, who served in the US military. She worked as a translator at Travelers Insurance, one of Hartford’s largest corporations, then later became the assistant director for an anti-poverty organization, the Poor People’s Federation. Ben Dixon, who grew up in Hartford’s North End, learned about inequality and power as a Black student during the 1950s at Hartford Public High School. When he was assigned to the vocational track, his mother marched into the superintendent’s office and insisted that he be moved up to the college preparatory track. He later earned his degree from Howard University and returned to Hartford to become a music teacher. Boyd Hinds, a White man who graduated from Amherst College, developed his organizational skills in the telecommunications business world and also as an educator. Later, he and his wife Wendy moved their family from an all-White suburb to live in Blue Hills, a racially-mixed neighborhood in Hartford’s North End. People called their trio, as pictured in Figure 5.1, the “Mod Squad,” referring to the late-1960s television show starring three multicultural undercover crime fighters, because as Ramos recalls, “when they saw us coming, they always expected some kind of problem or issue to arise.”120 Figure 5.1: Education/Instrucción Co-Directors Boyd Hinds, Julia Ramos McKay, Ben Dixon, circa 1974. When Hinds, Ramos, and Dixon initially launched Education/Instrucción (EI) as a non-profit organization in July 1971, they pitched their “consulting services” to advance “cultural pluralism” in educational, governmental, and business organizations across the Hartford region. EI conducted training sessions and anti-racism workshops, and offered Spanish/English translation and program evaluation, to help their clients identify and eliminate institutional bias within their organizations.121 Hartford’s demographics were rapidly changing, with the city’s combined Black and Puerto Rican population reaching 30 percent in 1970. “You need to get ready for it,” Julia Ramos recalled telling business leaders, because “you are not going to have that many White people to turn to… [If] you want to continue to make money as an organization, you need to pay attention to that. Not only… to get employees, but to sell products.” Yet even when EI emphasized profits, Hartford’s business leaders were not receptive. So the trio found more creative and assertive approaches to push their agenda. For example, they bought one share of stock in several of Hartford’s largest corporate employers—such as Aetna, Travelers, and United Technologies—in order to attend the annual meeting of shareholders. “We would stand up and talk about the institutional racist practices of the company,” Julia Ramos recalled, and “people started coming out of the woodwork. We would get calls from some of the employees from some of these companies to give us information about what was going on.”122 Overall, Education/Instrucción mobilized both city and suburban residents to document and directly challenge the discriminatory lines that divided metropolitan Hartford, with two major successes. First, their “¡Ya Basta!” (Spanish for “Enough already!”) campaign organized the area’s first mass-participant investigation of racial steering by the real estate industry, by sending pairs of White, Black, and Puerto Rican testers to local offices, to compare differences in the properties shown and how they were treated. When EI publicized the damning evidence of discrimination that they had collected, the US Justice Department prosecuted Hartford’s leading real estate firms for violating the 1968 Fair Housing Act. Second, EI creatively publicized deeper levels of discrimination in the home mortgage and insurance industries, and lack of enforcement by Connecticut state regulators. Its series of “Fair Housing at its Worst” reports translated these complex issues into easier-to-understand text and graphics for everyday readers. But EI’s successes were tempered by limitations. Working with the US Justice Department, their out-of court settlement against Hartford’s leading real estate agencies yielded no financial penalties for decades of damages to Black and Puerto Rican families. Furthermore, although the “Mod Squad” was innovative, their work was not part of a sustainable institution, and EI eventually folded as its founders went their separate ways. ¡Ya Basta!: Taking Real Estate Racism to Court In 1973, the EI trio launched its ambitious campaign against racial steering in the Hartford-area real estate industry. They titled the project “¡Ya Basta! Sue the Bastards,” and defined their goal: “to bring statewide attention to the dual housing market problem and to strike deep at the institutionally racist and elitist causes.” This investigative study was motivated by local residents’ experiences with real estate agents who “steered” Black and Latino home buyers into predominantly minority or racially-mixed neighborhoods in Hartford and Bloomfield, but guided White homebuyers to nearly all-White suburbs such as Avon or West Hartford. Past attempts by Hartford-area activists to challenge housing discrimination from the 1940s through the 1960s were relatively isolated and short-lived. By contrast, EI and its ally, the Open Housing Coalition, systematically documented bias at Hartford’s largest real estate firms, using methods adopted from organizations such as National Neighbors. They trained dozens of White, Black, and Puerto Rican couples to become “testers,” who posed as clients during visits to real estate agencies, where they used the same script: “Tell us about what kinds of homes and communities are available through the $40,000 range.” As shown in 5.2, testers carefully listened to how real estate agents spoke about different areas, especially racially-coded phrases such as “bad neighborhoods” or “poor schools” or “those people.” The testers wrote detailed accounts of what agents told them. In total, EI mobilized over 100 volunteers from activist and religious networks to conduct 600 hours of testing, and produce 150 pages of testimonial evidence on racial steering.123 Figure 5.2: Scroll the full-screen document to read instructions for housing discrimination testers in the Ya Basta: Sue the Bastards project, 1973. To demonstrate persistent racial steering by real estate firms, volunteer testers wrote testimonials that provided damning evidence. For example, when Barbara and Richard Benson, a White couple, phoned the Hartford office of the Barrows & Wallace Company in August 1973, the receptionist directed them to the suburban Wethersfield branch. The Bensons arrived for their appointment, met real estate agent Tom Ryan, and told him that they had no preference about the location of homes, as long as it was within their price range. The agent explained that “there were three problems with living in Hartford:… high taxes… the poor school system… and integration.” If they wanted to live in Hartford’s West End neighborhood, the agent warned that “we would want our children out of the city by the time they were ready for middle school,” and that people already living there “sent their children to private school.” He also warned the Bensons against the Blue Hills neighborhood in Hartford’s North End, which he said “used to be all Jewish, and now it was all Black…” and “he said flatly that we did not want to live there.” Hartford’s South End also should be avoided, the agent told them, because “as the Puerto Ricans moved in, Italians moved out.” As the agent continued talking about the city, he shared his personal theory of “ethnic blocks that reacted like molecules bumping into one another.” Finally, he recommended to the Bensons that “West Hartford was obviously the kind of place where we wanted to be, but that we could not afford it” within their current budget “because he could not get us out of the city for that price.” Using a combination of overtly racial scare tactics and more subtle coded warnings, the agent clearly steered this White couple out of racially-mixed city neighborhoods to a White suburb.124 To compare discriminatory treatment by race, organizers also arranged for Charles and Shirley Gray, a Black couple, to visit the same real estate office in August 1973, and offer the same price range. Real estate agent Larry Poulin sat them down and thumbed through a book of listings. First, he suggested “a broken down house” in Hartford’s South End, which he described as “a good neighborhood… [with] good schools… and a good buy.” Next, he pointed out a house in Hartford’s West End that “needed a little work” but “he said the schools were good,” the opposite of what his co-worker told the White couple. Even though their meeting took place in the suburban Wethersfield office, the agent solely recommended listings inside the city of Hartford. Only after persistent questioning about his occupation did Charles Gray reveal that he was a deputy commissioner for child and youth services, a state government agency. But even with new information about the client’s status and income, the agent did not offer to show homes in White suburbs. Instead, he referred the Grays to the Windsor branch of their firm, located to the north of Hartford, near the increasingly Black suburb of Bloomfield. After the Grays left the agent’s office, they looked through the newspaper and found several real estate listings that matched their desired home description and price range, which were located in White suburbs such as Newington and Simsbury. Most likely, the agent knew about these homes through the Multiple Listings Service, a clearinghouse for sharing information between real estate firms. But he never mentioned them to the Grays, to avoid violating the real estate industry’s prevailing but unwritten rule to steer Black homebuyers away from White neighborhoods and suburbs.125 Organizers also invited residents of the Hartford region to share personal accounts of racial discrimination they encountered in the real estate industry, and these individual stories became more powerful when compiled into a comparative document. For example, real estate agents steered White and Black faculty from Trinity College in opposite directions. When Andrew and Toni Gold, a White couple, visited the J.W. Beach real estate office in West Hartford in December 1973, they told agent Gloria Winans that they wished to buy a home and mentioned that Andy would be teaching economics at Trinity College in Hartford. The agent recommended that they look in suburban Wethersfield or Newington, or perhaps the Foster Heights area of Hartford because “it was up on a hill and isolated from the rest of the city.” She warned that the rest of that area “was not safe and was changing,” and told two stories about friends who had been attacked or robbed by “a colored man” in other parts of Hartford.126 By contrast, Ed Johnetta and James Miller, a Black couple, came to Hartford in 1972 when Jim accepted a position in the English Department at Trinity College. His wife called the Hurwit and Simons real estate firm to inquire about their ad for a home for sale in the Blue Hills neighborhood in the North End of Hartford. On the phone, a female agent responded, “Do you know anything about that neighborhood?… That it’s slowly turning into a Black ghetto?” The agent recommended homes outside of this area. In her account, Ed Johnetta stated that “It was clear to me that the Hurwit and Simons agent did not realized that I was Black. She assumed that because my husband was being hired by Trinity College, we were white buyers.” 127 In fact, EI collected so much damning evidence on racist real estate practices from testers’ reports that they devised creative strategies to publicize their findings. In early 1974, they compiled pages and pages of handouts that summarized the most glaring examples of racial steering, and mimeographed these for broader audiences. Later that year, EI organizers produced an audiotape with extended excerpts from rental apartment testers who carried recording devices. At one apartment building in West Hartford, near the Hartford border, a White male tester had this exchange with a White building superintendent, captured on a recorder: Tester: Tell me, what kind of neighborhood is it around here? Building superintendent: Oh, this is a really good section here. You can’t beat nothing here. There’s no Puerto Ricans, no niggers around here. When the tester asked how building remained all-White amid the growing minority population nearby, the superintendent explained techniques that he and the White owner developed to avoid Fair Housing laws. When prospective tenants phoned to ask about rentals advertised in the local newspaper, the superintendent explained that “we don’t put up the price over the phone unless we’re really talking to somebody that, you know, we’re sure that they are white.” In cases when Blacks show up to look at the rental, the superintendent described how “I just jack up [the price]… We’re sure they won’t take it because they can’t afford it.” If necessary, the superintendent required Blacks to fill out a “long form” with “all kinds of questions” about their occupation, to discourage them from renting. About 45 minutes after the White tester left, a Black female tester approached the same superintendent to ask if any apartments were available. “Not in this building here,” the superintendent replied. “You missed by a couple of hours.” He falsely claimed that the White tester already paid a deposit for the last unit. Then 5 minutes after the Black tester left, the White tester returned to ask if the unit is still available. “We had more people come in right after you,” the superintendent explained, “and I told… because she was a colored girl, I told her the place was already taken.” After capturing this blatant evidence of racial discrimination on audiotape, EI organizers played an edited recording, with narration, for audiences that included newspaper editors, churches, the metropolitan board of realtors, state lending regulators, and federal housing officials, as shown in 5.3.128 Figure 5.3: Scroll the full-screen document to read the transcript of housing tester secret tape-recordings in the Ya Basta: Sue the Bastards project, 1974. EI organizers and their allies shared their evidence with sympathetic lawyers at the US Department of Justice in early 1974, who requested that FBI agents launch an investigation. Front-page news on racial discrimination rattled the metro Hartford real estate industry. It also troubled Connecticut’s real estate commission, which publicly questioned EI’s tester evidence and complained that they should have brought the case to their state agency, rather than the federal government, despite their past inaction. Shortly afterwards, federal attorneys filed a lawsuit, US v Barrows and Wallace Company et al., which charged 7 of the 8 largest real estate brokerage firms in metropolitan Hartford with violating the Fair Housing Act of 1968. These real estate firms were: The Barrows and Wallace Co., Hartford The T.R. Preston Co., West Hartford The Heritage Group, Inc., West Hartford Bulkeley Realtors South, Inc. & Bulkeley Realtors West, Inc., Wethersfield Hurwit & Simons Realtors, a Partnership, West Hartford J. Watson Beach Real Estate Co., Hartford Colli-Wagner Realty Co., Hartford According to lawsuit, real estate firms “steered” White buyers away from racially mixed neighborhoods in Hartford and Bloomfield, and instead funneled in Black and Puerto Rican buyers. Together, these seven firms employed about 170 sales agents, who sold about 1500 homes annually in the region. Based on over 30 documented cases by housing testers, the government argued that discrimination did not arise merely by the actions of individual agents, but was caused systemically by these major real estate firms. In addition, activists from the region’s only racially-mixed suburb, Bloomfield, joined with the plaintiffs in US v Barrows and Wallace to challenge blockbusting, another real estate tactic that played on White racial fears to turn a quick profit.129 Although EI activists and their allies won an out-of-court settlement in US v Barrows and Wallace, the remedy focused on educational programs for real estate agents, with no financial penalties. All seven firms signed a consent decree in July 1974, which contained no admission of “unlawful conduct,” but instead a promise to obey the Fair Housing Act of 1968 and take affirmative measures to comply with the law. Specifically, the firms agreed to refrain from “refusing or failing to show” or “providing or volunteering different information about homes” or “influencing the residential choice of any person” on the basis of race, color, religion, or national origin. The decree expressly prohibited sales tactics such as “discouraging white prospective buyers from inspecting or purchasing homes in racially transitional areas” (one type of racial steering) and “‘cold canvassing’ in areas of racial transition” (also known as blockbusting). The real estate firms agreed to educate all employees about these rules, prominently display “Equal Housing Opportunity” slogans in their offices and advertisements, and to reach out to prospective minority home buyers in the future. Over the next few months, they submitted compliance reports and real estate sales activity data by race to the court, as required by the consent decree, until the US Justice Department moved to dissolve the order in 1977. But these real estate firms never admitted wrongdoing, nor did they pay any financial compensation to Black and Puerto Rican families who were blocked from moving to higher-opportunity suburbs. EI had won a victory, but only a partial one. They turned their attention to the next phase of the struggle.130 Exposing Institutional Racism through Fair Housing At Its Worst Education/Instrucción did not cease with its limited legal victory against racial steering by real estate firms. Instead, as Boyd Hinds led the expansion of EI’s scope in the mid-1970s, the organization challenged racial discrimination across what it described as an “overlapping, interlocking, and powerful” political and economic network. Segregation was caused not only by individual racism of one real estate broker toward a prospective buyer, but rather by a broader network of institutional racism where real estate firms collaborated with insurance companies, influential banks, and the state regulatory agencies that were supposed to serve as government “watchdogs” for the public interest. Together, EI charged this network with taking actions that favored the interests of White suburbanites over Black and Puerto Rican city residents, and thereby intensified the boundaries between them. To expand both their analysis and audience, Hinds and his EI colleagues published an innovative series of ten reports from 1974 to 1978, titled Fair Housing At Its Worst. This series of reports revealed how this powerful network intentionally maintained segregation in the metropolitan Hartford region by violating the federal Fair Housing Act (reports 1-8) and promoting mortgage and insurance redlining (reports 9-10). To help audiences make the conceptual leap from individual to institutional racism, Education/Instrucción creatively used 70s-style graphic design, data, and maps, as shown in @ref(fig:1974-fairhousingreports-ctda.png) and 5.5.131 Figure 5.4: Explore the “Fair Housing At Its Worst” series of ten reports, based on originals in the Boyd Hinds Papers at the Hartford History Center, and shared online through the Connecticut Digital Archive. Figure 5.5: Education/Instrucción creatively communicated its message by placing ads in the 1972 Hartford Courant Sunday real estate section to ask “What Creates, Maintains, and Condones over 99% White Population in the Hartford Suburbs?” and “Can You Understand Institutional White Racism?” (left). Its 1974 Fair Housing At Its Worst report 4 placed 1970s racial census data on a map to illustrate segregated housing (center), and report 2 showed layers of corporate and governmental control over the housing market (right). EI’s expanding analysis of the institutional networks that housing discrimination appears in the progression of topics in the Fair Housing At Its Worst reports. In the first set of reports (number 1-4, published in February 1974), EI outlined its investigation of racial steering by real estate firms. Complicit in this discrimination, EI claimed, were industry associations (such as the Greater Hartford Board of Realtors, which tolerated racist actions by many of its members) and state regulators (such as the Connecticut Real Estate Commission, which refused to enforce existing laws against racist sales practices). But after the 1974 Barrows case brought weak penalties against the real estate industry, EI activists pivoted their campaign to demonstrate complicity by larger corporations and the federal government. The second set of reports (numbers 5-8, published May 1974) criticized Hartford’s leading businesses (such as Travelers Insurance) for promoting employee relocation services that steered new hires out of the city, and encouraged them to buy homes in the suburbs. Also, EI charged the US Department of Housing and Urban Development with failing to reverse federal mortgage programs that favored all-White suburbs, such as Federal Housing Administration loans from the 1930s through the 1950s described in the Federal Lending and Redlining section in this book, as well as the Section 235 program of the 1970s. Furthermore, pointed out how Connecticut’s weak regional government failed to act against powerful White suburban interests. During the early 1960s, Hartford’s federally-certified development authority, the Capitol Region Planning Agency, warned how local land-use policies caused racial and economic segregation. But in 1971, this same agency opposed opposed state legislation to halt exclusionary zoning practices, and thereby blocked affordable housing programs in favor of more expensive (and racially exclusive) single-family home construction.132 In their third and final set of reports (numbers 9-10, which began in 1974 but were not published until 1977-78), Boyd Hinds and EI confronted Hartford banking and insurance corporations over “redlining.” Generally defined as denying mortgage loans or homeowner insurance due to an area’s racial composition—and depicted with red ink on a map—this discriminatory practice can be traced back to the infamous Home Owners’ Loan Corporation residential security maps of the 1930s, as described in the Federal Lending and Redlining section in this book. But since these Depression-era maps were hidden from the public, the phrase “redlining” (sometimes spelled “red-lining”) did not become popularized until the late 1960s, when civil rights activists began using the term, which then appeared in press reports and publications.133 Boyd Hinds most likely encouraged staff members of the US Commission on Civil Rights to investigate discriminatory home lending practices by Hartford-area banks in its 1974 report, Mortgage Money: Who Gets It?. This case study focused national attention on Hartford, a leading financial center, and revealed unfair treatment of racial minorities and women who applied for home loans. Although the federal report did not name specific lenders, local journalists soon revealed that the study was based on nine large banks that provided most of the conventional home loans in the Hartford region at that time: Hartford Home Savings & Loan Association Hartford National Bank & Trust Co. Windsor Federal Savings & Loan Association Mechanics Savings Bank State-Dime Savings Bank Hartford Federal Savings and Loan Association Connecticut Savings and Loan Association Connecticut Bank & Trust Co. Society for Savings Prior to its report, the US Commission on Civil Rights held public hearings, where Hartford residents described the redlining practices they witnessed. For example, real estate agent Mark Lawrence explained how banks simply refused to fund mortgages in racially “transitional” areas, such as the Asylum Hill neighborhood near downtown Hartford. Boyd Hinds charged that Connecticut’s regulatory agencies failed in their responsibility to prevent racial discrimination by the banking, insurance, and real estate industries. Sally Knack, who authored the report for the US Commission on Civil Rights, told local reporters that the Commission’s findings had been forwarded to Congress and the White House, and that “we expect some action on it.” The report contributed to the passage of a new federal law, the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act of 1975 (HMDA), which improved monitoring of discrimination by requiring lenders to publicly share data on mortgage applications and approvals.134 Armed with newly-available public HMDA data, Hinds and his colleagues published a 1977 report that challenged Hartford-area banks with “disinvestment” in urban areas. According to EI, the City of Hartford invested its employee pension funds in local banks, which in turn reinvested this money in home mortgages in predominantly White suburbs, thereby funneling funds away from urban neighborhoods. But others argued that HMDA data was insufficient to prove that the banks were guilty of redlining. Trinity College professor Andrew Gold, who had participated as a housing discrimination tester for EI in the early 1970s, wrote a report for the State Banking Commissioner in 1977 that challenged the civil rights organization’s analysis. Given that HMDA data for 11 Hartford-area banks only revealed the number of loans and their dollar amounts, Gold concluded that due to “the absence of information on the demand for loans, it is impossible to know if redlining (or disinvestment) occurred. Of those loans that were made, we do not know if, how or why the terms may have differed between the city and suburb.” In other words, although banks made more loans to suburbs than the city, that fact could be explained by other factors, and by itself did not prove discrimination.135 But even if federal HMDA data did not prove the existence of redlining, EI’s final report made a strong case against Hartford’s insurance industry by using testers. In order to qualify for a home loan, mortgage lenders typically required that applicants also obtain a homeowner’s insurance policy to cover any damages to the property in order to protect the bank’s investment. But EI charged that homeowners’ insurance policies were subject to discriminatory redlining by racial composition of the neighborhood. EI staff conducted homeowner’s insurance testing by phone. Testers contacted insurance agents about coverage for identical types of homes (by size, construction, and age) in different areas of the city: a predominantly Black neighborhood in the North End of Hartford, a White neighborhood in the South End, and a White neighborhood in West Hartford. Overall, the influence of location was unmistakable. In the Black neighborhood, 9 out of 13 agents denied home insurance coverage, but they approved it for an identical home in a White neighborhood. On the phone, agents affiliated with major insurance corporations typically offered these reasons for denial of coverage: “It’s simply because of the location… You have a problem being up in the North End…” —agent affiliated with Travelers Insurance Company “Well, I will be honest with you. We have very little available that our companies will let us write anywhere in the City of Hartford.” —agent affiliated with The Hartford insurance company Without homeowner’s insurance, mortgage lenders typically rejected buyers’ applications in Hartford neighborhoods, citing risks about the general location without considering the individual applicant or property. In the view of Boyd Hinds and EI, this evidence proved to them that the “spider web” network of real estate firms, leading banks, and insurance companies, with the approval of state regulators, favored investment in White suburbs, to the detriment of Black and Puerto Rican city neighborhoods. 136 Successes and Limitations Looking back, the Education/Instrucción leadership trio of Hinds, Dixon, and Ramos and their supporters deserve credit for their accomplishments in civil rights activism during the 1970s. First, EI mobilized large numbers of city and suburban residents to serve as testers to challenge racial discrimination by Hartford’s largest real estate firms, and collaborated with the US Justice Department to win a court-approved settlement. Second, EI expanded the Hartford region’s understanding of discrimination from individual actions by real estate agents to broader patterns of institutional racism. Through their creative public information campaigns, EI explained how real estate, banking, and insurance corporations—with the complicity of government agencies—intensified racial and economic divisions between the city and its suburbs. But the Education/Instrucción story also reveals the limitations of activism during this era. Fighting an ambitious civil rights struggle on multiple fronts, with few victories that delivered tangible results, would be difficult for any organization to sustain, especially a small one such as EI. By the mid-1970s, the trio began to move in different directions. Julia Ramos decided to focus her work in the field of psychology, and she eventually left Hartford to obtain her doctoral degree. Ben Dixon saw education as a lever for social change, and he moved his way up through educational administration posts in city and suburban school districts, the Capital Region Education Council, and later as Connecticut’s deputy commissioner of education. Boyd Hinds identified government inaction as the root cause of the problem, so he entered politics and won election to the 8th District of the Connecticut General Assembly to represent Hartford’s North End from 1976-80. While he soon became known as the most left-leaning representative in state government, his positions on issues limited his ability to form coalitions with moderate Democrats, and it diverted energy and funding away from the organization. While EI continued to exist on paper, it ceased operations in Hartford in 1979. “I am exhausted and overextended,” Boyd Hinds wrote to Julia Ramos and Ben Dixon, and explained that all staff positions had been terminated due to lack of grant funds. “I intend to let EI remain dormant for awhile until I get my political involvement completed and my brother’s business straightened out.” He had already moved to spend half his time in Greenfield, Massachusetts, and he and his spouse Wendy tragically died in a car accident Vermont in 1988.137 Did the work of Education/Instrucción produce lasting reforms against racism? One answer appeared in 1989, when the Hartford Courant newspaper sent a team of Black and White investigative reporters to pose as homebuyers at Hartford-area real estate agencies. Back in 1974 when EI conducted similar testing, 7 out of 8 of Hartford’s largest real estate agencies racially steered buyers. In this 1989 Courant study, only 6 out of 15 agencies racially steered buyers, a noticeable improvement. But the Courant also found that 14 out of 15 agencies treated White testers more favorably than Black testers. In half of these cases, real estate agents subjected Black testers to significantly more scrutiny of their personal finances before showing them homes. Judging from this 1974 to 1989 comparison, the frequency of racial steering declined but persisted, despite being expressly prohibited by the 1968 Fair Housing Act and the 1974 U.S. v Barrows settlement that mandated equal opportunity training for real estate firms and their employees. Moreover, the 1989 study revealed how White buyers continued to enjoy hidden privileges in over 90 percent of their encounters with real estate agents. The lesson is clear: Education/Instrucción definitely made a difference, but institutional racism did not disappear. Rather, racism continued to evolve and express itself in ways that still favored White suburban interests. Civil rights victories had been won, but the larger struggle remained unfinished, with new challenges to be taken up by the next generation of activists.138 About the authors and contributors: Jasmin Agosto (Trinity 2010) wrote the first draft as her senior thesis, researched additional sources, and conducted oral history interviews.139 Vianna Iorio (Trinity 2019) and Jack Dougherty expanded on her work for the final draft. Special thanks to Ben Dixon and Lisa Hinds Humphreys (daughter of Boyd Hinds), who both contributed their archives, which were combined into the Boyd Hinds Papers at the Hartford History Center, Hartford Public Library. Julia Ramos Grenier, “Oral History Interview on Education/Instruccion, Part 1” (Cities, Suburbs, Schools Project, Trinity College Digital Repository, November 14, 2009), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_ohistory/10.↩︎ Grenier↩︎ Grenier; Benjamin Dixon, “Oral History Interview on Education/Instruccion” (Cities, Suburbs, Schools Project, Trinity College Digital Repository, August 12, 2010), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_ohistory/3; Lisa Hinds Humphreys, Ben Hinds, and Bo Hinds, “In Memory: A. Boyd Hinds Jr. ’61” (Amherst College, 2011), https://www.amherst.edu/aboutamherst/magazine/in_memory/1961/aboydhinds; Education/Instruccion, “Co-Directors Boyd Hinds, Julia Ramos McKay, Ben Dixon” (Photograph, Boyd Hinds Papers, Hartford History Center, Hartford Public Library, [1974?]), http://hhc2.hplct.org/repositories/2/resources/29.↩︎ Education/Instruccion, Inc., “[Bilingual Pamphlet]” (Boyd Hinds Papers, Hartford History Center, Hartford Public Library, circa 1970s), http://hhc2.hplct.org/repositories/2/resources/29.↩︎ Grenier, “Oral History Interview on Education/Instruccion, Part 1”; Education/Instruccion, Inc., “[History of the Organization]” (Boyd Hinds Papers, Hartford History Center, Hartford Public Library, [1975?]), http://hhc2.hplct.org/repositories/2/resources/29.↩︎ Education/Instruccion, Inc., “Project Ya Basta” (Boyd Hinds Papers, Hartford History Center, Hartford Public Library, 1973), http://hhc2.hplct.org/repositories/2/archival_objects/10747; Musa Bish, Jean Bullock, and Jean Milgram, Racial Steering: The Dual Housing Market and Multiracial Neighborhoods (Philadelphia, Pa.: National Neighbors, 1973), http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/974253.↩︎ US v. Barrows and Wallace Company et al., “Documents Pertaining to Defendants (Discriminatory Evidence)” (US District Court, Connecticut, Civil Action H74-173, 1974), PDF pp. 12-13; US v. Barrows and Wallace Company et al., “Plaintiff’s Combined Answers to Interrogatories of Defendants” (US District Court, Connecticut, Civil Action H74-173, June 14, 1974), attachment I, paragraph 1a.↩︎ US v. Barrows and Wallace Company et al., “Documents Pertaining to Defendants (Discriminatory Evidence)”, PDF pp. 7-8; US v. Barrows and Wallace Company et al., “Plaintiff’s Combined Answers to Interrogatories of Defendants”, attachment I, paragraph 1b.↩︎ US v. Barrows and Wallace Company et al., “Documents Pertaining to Defendants (Discriminatory Evidence)”, PDF pp. 110-11; US v. Barrows and Wallace Company et al., “Plaintiff’s Combined Answers to Interrogatories of Defendants”, attachment I, paragraphs 6b, 4h. See also testimony by the Golds about their initial visit to find a home in Hartford in 1971, US v. Barrows and Wallace Company et al., “Documents Pertaining to Defendants (Discriminatory Evidence)”, PDF p. 86.↩︎ US v. Barrows and Wallace Company et al., “Documents Pertaining to Defendants (Discriminatory Evidence)”, PDF p. 94; US v. Barrows and Wallace Company et al., “Plaintiff’s Combined Answers to Interrogatories of Defendants”, attachment I, paragraph 5b.↩︎ Education/Instruccion, Inc., “Hartford Area Housing Horrors: Samples from a Cross Section of Real Estate Monitoring Tests Conducted 12/73 - 3/74” (Boyd Hinds Papers, Hartford History Center, Hartford Public Library, 1974), http://hhc2.hplct.org/repositories/2/archival_objects/10747; Education/Instruccion, Inc., “More Fair Housing At Its Worst, Project Ya Basta, Excerpts from Recent Real Estate Testing Patterns” (Boyd Hinds Papers, Hartford History Center, Hartford Public Library, December 1974), http://hhc2.hplct.org/repositories/2/archival_objects/10747; Education/Instruccion, Inc., “He’s Got A Secret: Excerpts from Recent Real Estate Testing Patterns” (Boyd Hinds Papers, Hartford History Center, Hartford Public Library, December 1974), http://hhc2.hplct.org/repositories/2/archival_objects/10747.↩︎ US v. Barrows and Wallace Company et al., “Plaintiff’s Memorandum in Support of Motion for Preliminary Injunction” (US District Court, Connecticut, Civil Action H74-173, May 2, 1974); “FBI Probes Charges of Racial Bias: Complaints Filed Against Realtors,” Hartford Courant, February 21, 1974, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/552094538?accountid=14405; Michael Regan, “Real Estate Unit’s Head Questions Bias Charges,” Hartford Courant, February 22, 1974, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/552111580?accountid=14405; Thomas D. Williams, “U.S. Sues 7 Area Realty Firms,” Hartford Courant, May 3, 1974, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/552284751?accountid=14405; US Congress, Public Law 90-284 (Civil Rights Act of 1968: Fair Housing Act) (Washington, D.C: Government Printing Office, 1968), https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/STATUTE-82/pdf/STATUTE-82-Pg73.pdf. Also, Education/Instruccion filed a state-level employment discrimination complaint against the Greater Hartford Board of Realtors and the seven firms, which counted only 3 minority workers among its 330 employees, in “Realtors Charged With Unfair Hiring,” Hartford Courant, June 29, 1974, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/552254027?accountid=14405.↩︎ US v. Barrows and Wallace Company et al., “Consent Decree” (US District Court, Connecticut, Civil Action H74-173, July 25, 1974); Bruce Kauffman, “7 Firms Sign Antibias Decree,” Hartford Courant, July 26, 1974, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/552259961?accountid=14405; Richard Lowenstein, “Real Estate Firms Settle Bias Suit, Ban Racial Steering,” The Hartford Times, July 26, 1974; Richard Goodman, “Letter to US District Court Judge T. Emmet Clarie on Motion to Dissolve Consent Decree” (US v Barrows court exhibit, case 741143, US District Court in Hartford, July 28, 1977).↩︎ Education/Instruccion, Fair Housing At Its Worst (Hartford, CT, 1974), http://hdl.handle.net/11134/120002:otl-ei-fairhousingworst. In Report 2, EI’s preliminary statement credited national networks of housing activists, such as Rose Helper, Racial Policies and Practices of Real Estate Brokers (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1969), https://jstor.org/stable/10.5749/j.cttttjd9. On creative advertising, see Education/Instruccion, Inc., “What Creates, Maintains, and Condones Hartford Suburbs?” Hartford Courant, February 13, 1972, http://search.proquest.com/docview/551070696/citation/3DE9E1C8303F48B2PQ/1; Education/Instruccion, Fair Housing At Its Worst: The Flagrant Violation of Title VIII of the 1968 Civil Rights Act in Greater Hartford, Connecticut, Report 4. (Hartford, CT, 1974), http://hdl.handle.net/11134/120002:246; Education/Instruccion, Fair Housing At Its Worst: The Flagrant Violation of Title VIII of the 1968 Civil Rights Act in Greater Hartford, Connecticut, Report 2. (Hartford, CT, 1974), http://hdl.handle.net/11134/120002:243.↩︎ Education/Instruccion, Fair Housing At Its Worst, 1974, report 5, p. 89; report 6, pp. 99-105; report 7, pp. 108-118.↩︎ See early instances of “red-lining” in the national press by New Jersey Governor Richard Hughes and National Urban League Executive Director Whitney Young in Robert B. Semple Jr., “U.S. Panel Prods Ghetto Insurers,” New York Times, September 16, 1967, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/117652693?accountid=14405 and “Insurers Are Warned on Slums: ’Red-Lining’ Cited,” New York Times: Business & Finance, December 13, 1967, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/118088780?accountid=14405.↩︎ U. S. Commission on Civil Rights, Mortgage Money: Who Gets It?: A Case Study in Mortgage Lending Discrimination in Hartford, Connecticut (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1974), http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/944502594; Michael Regan, “Leaders’ Policy Biased, HUD Panel Told,” Hartford Courant, May 21, 1974, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/552196476?accountid=14405; Michael Regan, “9 Area Banks Named Targets Of U.S. Discrimination Study,” Hartford Courant, July 18, 1974, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/552263901?accountid=14405; US Congress, “Public Law 94-200: Home Mortgage Disclosure Act” (Government Printing Office, December 31, 1975), https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/STATUTE-89/pdf/STATUTE-89-Pg1124.pdf.↩︎ Education/Instruccion, Fair Housing At Its Worst: Redlining in Hartford Connecticut, Report 9 (Hartford, CT, 1977), http://hdl.handle.net/11134/120002:251, pp. 185-192; Andrew J. Gold, “A Report to the State Banking Commissioner Regarding ’Redlining’ and Home Mortgage Disclosure” (Unpublished report, 1977), http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/3251054, p. 37↩︎ Education/Instruccion, Fair Housing At Its Worst: Insurance Redlining, Report 10 (Hartford, CT, [1978?]), http://hdl.handle.net/11134/120002:253, pp. 202-209↩︎ Boyd Hinds, “[Letter to Ben Dixon and Julia Ramos]” (Boyd Hinds Papers, Hartford History Center, Hartford Public Library, September 18, 1979), http://hhc2.hplct.org/repositories/2/resources/29; Dixon, “Oral History Interview on Education/Instruccion”; Grenier, “Oral History Interview on Education/Instruccion, Part 1”; Julia Ramos Grenier, “Oral History Interview on Education/Instruccion, Part 2” (Cities, Suburbs, Schools Project, Trinity College Digital Repository, July 1, 2010), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_ohistory/11; Humphreys, Hinds, and Hinds, “In Memory”.↩︎ The 1989 Courant study also found that Black and White testers received equal treatment in only 1 of the 15 real estate firms, Armstrong Realty in Bloomfield, which also employed the only Black agent that testers encountered in all of their visits. Lyn Bixby et al., “Some Real Estate Agents Discriminate Against Black Home Buyers: Two Connecticuts Series,” Hartford Courant, May 21, 1989, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/1637840117?accountid=14405.↩︎ Jasmin Agosto, “Fighting Segregation, Teaching Multiculturalism: The Beginning of the Education/Instruccion Narrative of the 1970s Hartford Civil Rights Movement” (Educational Studies Senior Research Project, Trinity College, 2010), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/10.↩︎ "],["jumping.html", "Jumping the School District Line", " Jumping the School District Line by Vianna Iorio, JiYun Lee, and Jack Dougherty In 1984, Saundra Foster, a Black single mother living in Hartford, was searching for a better school for her teenage son, Trevor. She described him as “a good kid” who liked to go to school and learned some topics faster than other students, but ran into problems at Hartford Public High School, which in her view was “geared for special education.” Saundra explained that it was “almost impossible” to get Trevor into more rigorous classes, and he was turned down when he tried to raise the issue with his teacher. Trevor was then referred to the district’s alternative education center for students it deemed not suited for regular classrooms. Faced with this bleak prospect, Trevor considered dropping out of high school altogether. This was the breaking point for the Foster family, and Saundra knew she had to take immediate action. “For a child like that to say that he is contemplating dropping out of school, it’s time to start thinking about alternatives,” she later told a reporter.140 Saundra Foster decided to “jump the line” by enrolling Trevor, a resident of the city of Hartford, in the suburban school district of Bloomfield, located immediately to the north. Registering her son to attend a public school outside of her legal residence, without permission, was a serious step; although many parents had done it before, her decision could interrupt his education if they were caught. Saundra decided on Bloomfield because he could live with his aunt, who legally resided in the district. Trevor transitioned well into Bloomfield High School by fall 1984 and even became a starting player in the boy’s varsity basketball team. There was no record of him getting in conflict with peers or teachers and Saundra believed “he was much better off in Bloomfield.” Although she had to live apart from her son, “jumping the line” was the right decision in her mind, because city-suburban school district boundaries were unjust. “I didn’t deal this deck of cards,” she later explained, “I just have to play them,” and her son Trevor “should be able to go where he can to get the best education.”141 Figure 5.6: Watch this 1985 television excerpt about how Saundra Foster, a Hartford resident, and three other Black parents were arrested by the suburban Bloomfield public school district for “stealing” a public education for their children. Although this video reveals her discomfort in discussing her case, local and national activists publicized her arrest to draw attention to broader issues of city-suburban inequity. Source: Mendoza and Saunders, The Public File, copyrighted by WVIT 1985, and included here under fair-use guidelines. Suburban districts referred to non-resident students like Trevor Foster as “line jumpers,” and school officials usually took administrative action to “disenroll” them from the district. But this case was different. In April 1985, Bloomfield police arrested Saundra Foster and three other parents, and charged them with a first-degree felony for larceny, for “stealing an education” worth $4,000, the average expenditure per pupil. This highly-publicized action was unprecedented in Connecticut, and perhaps the nation, as no one in recent memory had been charged as a criminal for enrolling their child in a public school outside of their home district. The arrests highlighted race and city-suburban boundaries. Of the four, three were Black parents from Hartford (Saundra Foster, Elizabeth Brown, and Claude Johnson), and the fourth was a White parent, Norma Wright, who had previously lived in Bloomfield but moved to the adjacent suburb of Windsor due to a divorce. The timing was intentional. Bloomfield town leaders had authorized the arrest warrants in the early spring, just before town residents were asked to approve the next year’s school budget. Furthermore, White Bloomfield residents became increasingly anxious as the town’s high school tipped from majority-White to majority-Black in the early 1980s. Bloomfield leaders’ decision to introduce a felony charge clearly was designed as a scare tactic to discourage Black Hartford families from “jumping the line” into their racially transitional suburban school district. Town leaders played on then-President Ronald Reagan’s racist “welfare queen” stereotype to portray Black Hartford parents like Saundra Foster as “stealing an education,” but looked the other way when White parents had done the same thing a generation earlier.142 While the arrests drew the public eye and may have intimidated some parents, they also sparked a civil rights debate on the growing disparity between city and suburban schools in metropolitan Hartford. Saundra Foster’s advocates and civil rights activists capitalized on her arrest to raise pivotal questions on one’s right to an education. Is it possible to “steal” a public education that the state is required to provide to all students? Did the growing inequality between Hartford and its suburbs prove that Connecticut was not meeting its constitutional obligations for equal educational opportunity for all students? These questions were not just important in the abstract. The arrests forced a closer public examination of education inequity across the Hartford region. During the 1980s, city-suburban school district boundaries became increasingly contested due to a combination of the rising disparities between urban and suburban schools, increasing costs of public education, and rising White suburban barriers against non-resident students of color, in contrast to more relaxed policies towards non-resident White students a generation ago. Although Saundra Foster’s case was eventually was dismissed in court, public criticism against these arrests helped set the context for the landmark Sheff v O’Neill school integration lawsuit four years later, in 1989, where plaintiffs directly challenged the legality of the public school boundaries that divided Hartford and suburban students. Figure 5.7: Boundary between the adjacent school districts of Hartford and Bloomfield CT. Line Jumping Over Time “Jumping the line” was a familiar issue in Bloomfield. When police arrested Saundra Foster in 1985, school leaders estimated that perhaps 100 other non-resident students also attended the Bloomfield School District (about 4 percent of the total enrollment), while others disputed that figure. Beginning in the early 1970s, Bloomfield school officials began to investigate suspected non-residency cases, and Bloomfield police officers photographed students as they stepped off city transit buses that rolled down Blue Hills Avenue from Hartford to the suburban high school. In the 1975-76 school year, Bloomfield school administrators held 58 non-residency hearings, and about half of those students were removed from the district. “Parents want a better education and they’re concerned about the discipline problem in city schools,” assistant superintendent Joseph O’Donnell told the Bloomfield Board of Education in 1976. “A few come from Windsor [a neighboring suburb], but most [come from] Hartford…We don’t get them from lily-white suburbs like Avon or Simsbury.”143 In prior decades, most line-crossers moved in the opposite direction, from poorly-resourced rural and early suburban schools to better-resourced city schools. As previously described in A Golden Age for City Schools in this book, Hartford Public High School acted as a magnet that drew 20 percent of its class from outside the city lines, with families paying tuition of about $3 per week, in 1882. Around the same time, Bloomfield town leaders lamented that so many families from their rural community sent their children by railroad each day to attend Hartford’s public schools. “The practice of sending scholars out of town to school-though entirely justifiable and desirable in many cases-has the effect to diminish the interest in our own schools,” Bloomfield leaders observed in 1888. “While it is admitted that the Hartford schools are, in every respect, excellent, there is a tendency among our people to undervalue our own schools.” In the town of Wethersfield, on Hartford’s southern border, a residency scandal arose at a school meeting in 1917. “It was brought out at the meeting that four members of the school board are sending their children to Hartford schools and have no real interest in Wethersfield schools ‘other than to lower the taxes as much as possible’,” the press reported. Decades later, in 1952, the Hartford school district enrolled at least 18 “out-of-town” students whose families paid $240 per year for them to attend the city’s public high schools, even though this tuition was about half of the actual cost per pupil. A family from the White rural town of Marlborough argued in 1959 that their daughter had the right to attend Hartford public schools, at no tuition, by claiming that they kept a residence above the father’s place of business in the city. Overall, Hartford’s widely-acclaimed city school district retained its desirable status among line-crossers through the middle of the twentieth century, and for the most part these non-resident students were allowed to attend Hartford schools, with the caveat that they had to pay tuition.144 But Bloomfield began to attract significant numbers of non-resident students in the 1960s, and as the racial and economic context shifted in the 1970s and 80s, town leaders began treating “line jumpers” very differently. Wayne Porter, the Bloomfield High School principal from 1962 to 1968, recalled in his 1985 letter to the editor that “the problem of non-resident students has existed for many years.” During the “racial unrest” of the 1960s, many White families pulled their children out public schools in Hartford’s North End, and enrolled them in nearby Bloomfield schools, long before they bought or rented property there. “The [Bloomfield] school administration elected to look the other way in order to avoid controversy,” Porter confided. “What seemed like a reasonable policy 15 years ago was definitely faulty. It made it appear there was no policy and that non-resident student enrollment was sanctioned by the Bloomfield public schools.”145 When Bloomfield’s non-resident students shifted from White to Black in the 1970s and 80s, town leaders took a more aggressive stance against “line jumpers,” by launching police investigations and pressing charges against parents like Saundra Foster. Although former principal Porter preferred to frame the events of 1985 primarily as an “economic matter” due to the rising costs of schooling, rather than a “racial issue,” looking back we cannot ignore this racial reality: the suburb criminally prosecuted Black Hartford parents in the 1980s for taking the same actions that they condoned by White Hartford parents in the 1960s. White racial anxiety at Bloomfield High was driven by the dramatic shift in racial demographics during this period, as shown in Figure 5.8.146 The school enrolled only 13 percent Black students in 1967, which rose to 37 percent by 1977, then climbed to 62 percent by 1984. But the primary driver of this racial change was plummeting White enrollments. Between 1967 and 1984, the number of Black high school students gradually rose from 160 to 421, while the number of White students sharply dropped from 1073 to 267. Furthermore, Bloomfield High had recently tipped from a White-majority to a Black-majority school in the early 1980s, setting into motion broader conflicts around the case of Saundra Foster.147 Figure 5.8: This chart of racial change at Bloomfield High School, 1967-84, shows how it tipped from a White-majority to a Black-majority student population in the early 1980s, just before Bloomfield town leaders authorized the arrest of Saundra Foster and other parents. Just as White parents left the city school district for the suburbs in the 1960s and ’70s, many Black parents sought to follow similar paths, using whatever means were possible. The Project Concern city-to-suburb desegregation program opened new doors in 1966, and enabled nearly 1200 Black Hartford students to attend predominantly White suburban schools at its peak in 1980. But suburban district participation was voluntary, and the total number of lotteried seats available declined to below 800 by 1984, making this strategy more difficult.148 Other Black Hartford parents who earned sufficient incomes sought to rent apartments or buy homes in suburban towns to purchase access into suburban public schools, as many Whites had done a generation earlier. But racial steering by real estate agents, and other forms of housing discrimination, continued to block many Black families from entering White towns or neighborhoods during the 1980s and beyond.149 Given these constraints, Saundra Foster and others registered their children under relatives’ addresses in affordable suburbs such as Bloomfield and Windsor, located on Hartford’s northern border, with growing numbers of Black residents. Both of these districts reported around 20-30 non-residency cases annually in the mid-1980s, though Windsor school administrators handled these through registration checks. By contrast, West Hartford, a wealthier suburb that historically kept out most Black renters and homebuyers, reported only 6 non-residency cases each year, despite having much larger student enrollments.150 Black Hartford parents had fewer familial ties in West Hartford, and their children would have clearly stood out in West Hartford high schools in 1984, each of which enrolled between 10 to 40 Black students.151 Moreover, Bloomfield dramatically shifted its stance on non-resident students when town leaders decided that the police department, rather than school administrators, should investigate and arrest violators. Police charged Saundra Foster and three other parents with first-degree larceny, a class B felony offense that could bring up to 20 years in prison and a fine up to $10,000 in Connecticut at that time. Initially, police planned to charge the parents with third-degree larceny for defrauding Bloomfield taxpayers of $4,001, the average expenditure per pupil in Bloomfield public schools. (If students had remained in Hartford schools, the average would have been around $3,700, or 8 percent less.) But Bloomfield police increased the charge to first-degree larceny on the grounds that the crime included an element of “extortion” by parents. When the story broke in March 1985, attorneys at the Connecticut Department of Education told reporters that they had never before heard of a case where local law enforcement pressed criminal charges in a school residency case.152 Through their highly-publicized scare tactics, the Bloomfield police adopted President Reagan’s racial and gendered stereotype of “welfare queens” who “stole” funds from more-deserving taxpayers. But Saundra Foster did not fit this description. She was a Black single mother who also held a white-collar job at Travelers’ Insurance in Hartford.153 Yet even if Saundra Foster had received government assistance, her son would still be entitled to a free, quality, public education. But suburban law enforcement did not care about the state’s constitutional rights to equal educational opportunity. Instead, by appealing to White suburban distrust of Black urban mothers, the police exploited racist and sexist images to uphold exclusionary school district lines. Some news reporters also played into suburban readers’ anxieties over non-resident students. In the Hartford Courant daily paper, journalists occasionally referred to Hartford residents in Bloomfield public school as “illegal students,” which conjured up popular images of “illegal aliens” on the US-Mexican border.154 The Courant’s political cartoonist highlighted this “illegal” theme by drawing Black Hartford students being smuggled into Bloomfield High School in the trunk of a car, as if they were crossing the US border, with Black suburban students posing questions about the identity of the intruders, as shown in 5.9.155 By labeling Hartford students as “illegals,” the media implied that Hartford students should be denied their state constitutional right to equal educational opportunity, and distanced suburban readers from the growing problem of city-suburban inequity. Figure 5.9: Amid the controversial arrest of Saundra Foster, Hartford Courant political cartoonist Bob Englehart portrayed Black Hartford students arriving at Bloomfield High School hidden in the trunks of cars, conjuring imagery of “illegal aliens” crossing the US-Mexico border. Source: Hartford Courant, copyrighted 1985, included here under fair-use guidelines. Criticizing the Arrests When police arrested Saundra Foster and three other parents, local and national activists seized this opportunity to call attention to the broader issues of city-suburban inequity and the state’s constitutional rights to equal education. State Senator Frank Barrows, who represented Hartford’s predominantly Black North End and Bloomfield, accompanied Foster when she turned herself in at the Bloomfield police station. Barrows publicly criticized Hartford’s “deplorable” educational system. “It’s a shame that someone has to be arrested while trying to educate their children,” he told reporters, and praised Foster as “the next Rosa Parks.” Reverend Jesse Jackson, the nation’s most prominent civil rights activist, publicly denounced the arrests while speaking in Hartford at the National Association of Black Mayors. “These parents have exposed… a two-tier educational system,” Jackson declared. “Other parents should be encouraged to take their children to Bloomfield or wherever good education exists.” Local television publicized the arrests and national newspaper headlines announced that the quality of city schools was on trial in Connecticut. Even Gerald Tirozzi, the State Commissioner of Education, acknowledged his growing concern over the “two Connecticuts” and the widening disparity between urban and suburban public schools.156 Foster’s attorney, M. Donald Cardwell, raised the most provocative question: “How does one steal a free public education?” The underlying issue was not larceny across school district lines, but the growing socioeconomic disparities between districts. The median household income in 1980 ranged from under $12,000 in the impoverished city of Hartford to over $24,000 in middle-class suburbs such as Bloomfield and West Hartford, to nearly $32,000 in upper-class suburbs such as Avon.157 “When you educate the poor people in one group, the middle class people in another group, and the upper-class people in the other third group, something unfair is happening,” Cardwell observed.158 When Saundra Foster’s case moved from Bloomfield into state criminal court in May 1985–and public scrutiny of the arrests intensified–the charges against her and the other parents were dropped. State’s Attorney John M. Baily recommended dismissal after he researched Bloomfield’s recent shift on school residency cases from administrative action to police enforcement. Singling out Foster and the other parents, he warned, would appear to be highly selective and “could be looked upon as malicious prosecution.” Furthermore, the Foster case spoke “to the core of the issue of the constitutional right to a free education,” Baily cautioned. “These questions should be litigated. But this is not the right forum.” Judge Joseph Purtill agreed with the State’s Attorney and dismissed the case.159 After the court dropped the charges against Foster and other parents, Bloomfield leaders recognized their mistake in authorizing the arrests, but devised a more acceptable means to heighten enforcement of residency requirements. The Bloomfield Town Council and the Board of Education jointly adopted a resolution to allot more funds to check residency status and enforce policies through school administrative action before resorting to criminal proceedings.160 Also, the Bloomfield Board of Education began charging tuition to non-resident students, which gave the district a legal basis to pursue civil suits to recover costs.161 As educational costs continued to rise during the 1980s, Bloomfield and other suburban districts began to routinely hire residency officers – and private investigators in some cases – to actively police their boundaries. “The student expulsion business is booming,” read the news story that tracked the number of cases identified by school residency officers in towns bordering Hartford, such as Bloomfield, East Hartford, West Hartford, and Wethersfield. “It’s very cost efficient,” noted one suburban school superintendent, who explained that identifying and removing nearly 30 non-resident students saved the district over $130,000, well worth the $30,000 annual salary of the school residency officer, who previously was a town police officer. Local journalists wrote stories about accompanying residency officers on “stakeouts” to catch lime-jumpers. Suburban districts created tougher requirements for new students during school registration, such as showing a property deed, lease, or utility bill as proof-of-residency. Heightened enforcement of rigid city-suburban school boundaries – with administrative enforcement rather than criminal prosecution – became the new norm.162 Saundra Foster gladly stepped away from the spotlight when her case was dismissed in 1985. But the activists who came to her defense continued to raise public awareness of city-suburban inequity, and questioned whether it is possible to “steal” an education that Connecticut is constitutionally obligated to provide to all students. Four years later in 1989, a coalition of Black, White, and Puerto Rican parents from city and suburban schools, along with a creative team of civil rights attorneys, filed their lawsuit to challenge racial and economic segregation in metropolitan Hartford, which came to be known as the Sheff v. O’Neill case. About the authors and contributors: Vianna Iorio (Trinity 2019) and JiYun Lee (Trinity 2017) both wrote essays on this topic for the Cities Suburbs and Schools seminar, which Vianna later merged and revised for this book, in collaboration with Jack Dougherty. Also, Jasmin Agosto (Trinity 2010) and Richelle Benjamin (Trinity 2015) researched school residency sources. William Mendoza, “Jumping the Line” (The Public File, WVIT Channel 30 television broadcast video, August 31, 1985), http://www.criticalcommons.org/Members/jackdougherty/clips/jumping-the-line/.↩︎ Dave Drury, “Bloomfield Cracking Down on Non-Residents in Schools,” Hartford Courant, March 21, 1985, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/758745359?accountid=14405; Paul Bass, “Case on Residency and Schools Halted,” New York Times: Connecticut Weekly, June 9, 1985, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/111144867?accountid=14405.↩︎ Drury, “Bloomfield Cracking Down on Non-Residents in Schools”; Dave Drury, “2 City Parents Are Charged in Residence Case,” Hartford Courant, April 2, 1985, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/755821077?accountid=14405; Dirk Johnson, “Quality Of City Schools Tested in Trial On Residency: Equity of Schools Tested in Arrests,” New York Times: Connecticut Weekly, May 12, 1985, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/111304566?accountid=14405; Mendoza, “Jumping the Line”.↩︎ “Residency Rule Called Good, If Done by Book: Bloomfield,” Hartford Courant, July 18, 1976, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/544588627/1D33A73396B64DADPQ/1?accountid=14405; Chauncey Bailey, “Non-Resident Students Again Attending Bloomfield Schools,” Hartford Courant: City/Town, September 16, 1976, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/544716872?accountid=14405. Dorothy Billington, the only Black member of the Bloomfield Board of Education in 1985, disputed the estimate of 100 non-resident students, in Drury, “Bloomfield Cracking Down on Non-Residents in Schools”.↩︎ Bloomfield, Town of Bloomfield Annual Report. (Bloomfield, Conn.: Bloomfield Town Clerk, 1888–89AD), https://cscu-csl-primo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/f/148en6t/01CSCU_NETWORK_ALMA991001105679703452, p. 20, Connecticut State Library; “Kicks on Schools in Wethersfield: Dissatisfaction Expressed at Parents’ Meeting: City Gets Sons of Board Members,” Hartford Courant, April 11, 1917, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/556458859?accountid=14405; “Schools Jump Tuition Fees For Out-Of-Town Residents,” Hartford Courant, January 4, 1952, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/561696118/6D35FCF5D55B4EACPQ/1?accountid=14405; “Couple Ask Tuition-Free Schooling For Girl But Residency Is Disputed,” Hartford Courant, February 6, 1959, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/553011819/18F2091DEB304451PQ/1?accountid=14405.↩︎ Wayne Porter, “Non-Resident Students Long a Problem,” Hartford Courant: B, May 21, 1985, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/758689031/fulltextPDF/2FA3B34AF5BD4A2EPQ/1?accountid=14405.↩︎ CT State Department of Education, Fall 1967, 1977-1984, with data interpolated for missing years. TODO: Link to raw data.↩︎ Connecticut State Department of Education, The Distribution of Negroes in the Public Schools of Connecticut, 1967-68 (Hartford, 1967); Connecticut State Department of Education, “School and Grade Enrollment by Race, 1977-1984,” n.d.↩︎ Jack Dougherty, Jesse Wanzer, and Christina Ramsay, “Missing the Goal: A Visual Guide to Sheff v. O’Neill School Desegregation: June 2007” (Hartford, Connecticut and Storrs, Connecticut: The Cities, Suburbs and Schools research project at Trinity College and the University of Connecticut Center for Education Policy Analysis, 2007), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/6/.↩︎ Bixby et al., “Some Real Estate Agents Discriminate Against Black Home Buyers”.↩︎ Dave Drury, “’Line Jumping’ Is Issue Statewide, Officials Say,” Hartford Courant: B, April 7, 1985, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/758695451?accountid=14405.↩︎ Education, “School and Grade Enrollment by Race, 1977-1984” for Hall and Conard High Schools, respectively, October 1984↩︎ Drury, “Bloomfield Cracking Down on Non-Residents in Schools”; Drury, “2 City Parents Are Charged in Residence Case”. Dollar amounts were reported by the press in spring 1985. A year later, educational cost reports for the 1984-85 academic year became available and were higher. Net current expenses per pupil were $4,522 in Bloomfield, and $4,216 in Hartford. Connecticut Public Expenditure Council, Local Public School Expenses and State Aid in Connecticut (Hartford: CPEC, n.d.), http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/3498569, 1986.↩︎ Drury, “2 City Parents Are Charged in Residence Case”.↩︎ Drury, “Bloomfield Cracking Down on Non-Residents in Schools”.↩︎ Bob Englehart, “Editorial Cartoon: Bloomfield High School,” Hartford Courant: C, April 5, 1985, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/755822125?accountid=14405.↩︎ Drury, “2 City Parents Are Charged in Residence Case”; Johnson, “Quality Of City Schools Tested in Trial On Residency”; Mendoza, “Jumping the Line”.↩︎ US Census, Table 57a: Summary of Economic Characteristics for Towns, 1980.↩︎ Mendoza, “Jumping the Line”.↩︎ Bass, “Case on Residency and Schools Halted”.↩︎ Dave Drury, “Bloomfield Alters Its Policy For School Residence Cases,” Hartford Courant, August 16, 1985, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/758752577?accountid=14405.↩︎ Jane Latus Jones, “Schools Will Accept Tuition Non-Residents,” The Bloomfield Journal, August 16, 1985.↩︎ “Residency Officer’s Job Is in Full Swing,” The Bloomfield Journal, November 1, 1985; Jon Elsen, “Bloomfield Officials Laud School Officer’s Work,” The Hartford Courant (1923-1991): SECTION B, April 12, 1986, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/899845262?accountid=14405; Rick Green, “Not In His Town: If You Don’t Live in Bloomfield, William Mahoney’s Job Is to Make Sure You Don’t Go to School There,” Hartford Courant, February 23, 1992, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/1976803002?accountid=14405; Linda B Hirsh, “Schools To Use New Policies to Exclude Out-Of-Town Residents,” Hartford Courant, July 9, 1992, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/1984955026?accountid=14405.↩︎ "],["choosing.html", "Chapter 6 Choosing to Cross the Lines", " Chapter 6 Choosing to Cross the Lines This chapter describes the present-day political compromises that have emerged from battles over schooling and housing boundaries. When civil rights activists finally pressured Connecticut leaders to deliver on the promise of integration with the Sheff remedies, beginning in 2003, the agreement hinged on voluntary public school choice that did not require participation by any individual, or initially, any suburban district. Instead, state leaders agreed to expand interdistrict magnet schools, with highly-desirable curricular offerings in the arts, sciences, and other specialties to attract white suburban families to voluntarily enroll their children in the same school as urban students of color. The Sheff remedy signals a tangible civil rights victory. As of 2015, state funding for 48 interdistrict magnet schools and the Open Choice city-suburban transfer program enrolls about 12,000 Hartford minority students (or 45 percent of the total) in racially integrated settings. But compromises come at a cost. Interdistrict schools merely blur the boundary lines, rather than erase the root causes of inequality. Furthermore, this voluntary integration plan protects suburban white privilege, and our data analysis shows how it favors more privileged Hartford families. The Sheff remedy has attracted critics from all sides, but the suburban-dominated state government has resisted change and threatened to unilaterally drop all support, despite the judge’s order. At present, the Sheff schooling compromise—and related housing voucher policies that promise greater choice—are caught in a standoff, with suburban interests holding the upper hand. MORE TO COME… This chapter will expand on themes that previously appeared in: Jack Dougherty, Jesse Wanzer, and Christina Ramsay, “Sheff v. O’Neill: Weak Desegregation Remedies and Strong Disincentives in Connecticut, 1996-2008,” in From the Courtroom to the Classroom: The Shifting Landscape of School Desegregation, ed. Claire Smrekar and Ellen Goldring (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press, 2009), 103–27, http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/3/. Jack Dougherty, Jesse Wanzer, and Christina Ramsay, “Missing the Goal: A Visual Guide to Sheff v. O’Neill School Desegregation: June 2007” (Hartford, Connecticut and Storrs, Connecticut: The Cities, Suburbs and Schools research project at Trinity College and the University of Connecticut Center for Education Policy Analysis, 2007), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/6/. Dana Banks and Jack Dougherty, “City-Suburban Desegregation and Forced Choices: Review Essay of ‘The Other Boston Busing Story’ by Susan Eaton,” Teachers College Record 105 (2004): 985–98, http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/facpub/21/. Jack Dougherty et al., “School Information, Parental Decisions, and the Digital Divide: The SmartChoices Project in Hartford, Connecticut,” in Educational Delusions? Why Choice Can Deepen Inequality and How to Make Schools Fair, ed. Gary Orfield and Erica Frankenberg (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013), 219–37, https://books.google.com/books?id=x9AlDQAAQBAJ&lpg=PR1&pg=PA219. "],["conclusions.html", "Chapter 7 Where Do We Draw the Line?", " Chapter 7 Where Do We Draw the Line? Next Steps TO COME "],["teaching-researching.html", "Chapter 8 Teaching and Researching On The Line", " Chapter 8 Teaching and Researching On The Line This chapter describes how the book emerged through working with liberal arts undergraduates and Hartford-area community partners in the Cities Suburbs and Schools seminar at Trinity College. For educators, this chapter offers lesson ideas to help students of all ages explore key questions about past and present topics raised in the book. For historical researchers, this chapter describes some of the methods and source materials consulted in creating this book, and some questions that remain unresolved. By making our work process more transparent, we hope to inspire people to educate others and engage in further research on topics in this book. "],["investigating.html", "Investigating Spatial Inequality with the Cities Suburbs and Schools Project", " Investigating Spatial Inequality with the Cities Suburbs and Schools Project I wrote this essay as an introductory overview to Hartford-area education and housing research, featuring studies conducted with students and faculty involved in the Cities, Suburbs, and Schools Project at Trinity College. It originally appeared in the 2011-12 preview edition of On The Line, and was later published in Xiangming Chen and Nicholas Bacon’s 2013 edited volume on Hartford. This version has been revised and expanded to include more recent works and digital features.163 For over a decade, Trinity College students, colleagues, and I have worked together on the Cities, Suburbs, and Schools Project to better understand the past and present relationship between public education and private housing in metropolitan Hartford, Connecticut.164 The CSS Project refers to the collective work done by undergraduates in the interdisciplinary seminar I teach, as well as independent studies, summer research assistantships, and other presentations and papers with student and faculty co-authors. Together, we formulate research questions from provocative readings from literature in history and the social sciences, and design studies using historical, qualitative, and/or quantitative methods to test these ideas in the Hartford region. Several leading scholars have kindly provided guidance and critical feedback via conference calls and professional meetings. Inspired by Trinity’s broader Community Learning Initiative, we also have conducted several research projects in collaboration with local partner organizations, which help us to frame questions, identify sources, and interpret our findings.165 In its broadest sense, our work explores spatial inequalities arising from the increasingly tightening bonds between schooling and housing in the city-suburban Hartford region over the last century. Looking back, our past has been shaped by the lines we have drawn to separate ourselves. Real estate agents maintained the color line. Mortgage lenders engaged in discriminatory redlining. Locally elected officials drew exclusionary residential zoning lines. Suburban homebuyers shopped for better opportunities on the other side of public school attendance lines. As these boundaries became more powerful over time, civil rights activists fought to cross over, redraw, or erase these lines. The story of schooling and racial inequality in Greater Hartford has attracted many scholars and journalists, most notably Christopher Collier’s encyclopedic history, Connecticut’s Public Schools, and Susan Eaton’s close examination of one classroom amid the Sheff v O’Neill segregation case in The Children in Room E4.166 The work of the CSS Project expands upon this literature by analyzing how the relationship between schooling and housing became more influential from the late nineteenth century to the present, generating the contemporary policy challenges of voluntary desegregation remedies and public school choice. Specifically, this chapter highlights and synthesizes research conducted by Trinity students who have worked with me to answer two questions. First, when and how did the most desirable schools shift from the city to selected suburbs, and what role did the real estate industry play in this transformation? Second, under growing pressure from civil rights activists, state and local government have implemented voluntary desegregation remedies and public school choice. Whose interests have been served by these policies—and whose have not? To answer those questions, we need to understand the historical evolution of the marketplace commonly known today as “shopping for schools,” and recent policy reforms that have attempted to decouple public education and private housing. Follow the Money from City to Suburbs Trinity students encountering this topic for the first time are astounded to learn about the stark economic disparity surrounding their campus. According to 2009 estimates from the US Census Bureau shown in the tables below, Hartford ranks as the 4th poorest city among those with populations over 100,000 in the United States (excluding Puerto Rico), with an average family income of only $42,775 in 2009. Nearly three out of ten families in Hartford live below the current federal poverty line, currently around $22,000 for a family of four. But what is most striking is that this impoverished city is located inside the 13th richest metropolitan statistical area, ranked by more than 350 such areas across the United States. In the Hartford metropolitan region (currently defined by the Census as Hartford, Middlesex, and Tolland counties), the average family income reached $99,597 in 2009. When comparing the two columns in the table below, an income gap of over $56,000 separates the average family living inside the Hartford city boundary from those residing in the Hartford metropolitan area.167 Table: Lowest Average Family Income in US Cities over 100,000 (excluding Puerto Rico), 2009 Rank City Avg Fam Income 2009 1 Flint city, Michigan $40,368 2 Cleveland city, Ohio $40,600 3 Detroit city, Michigan $41,443 4 Hartford city, Connecticut $42,775 5 Dayton city, Ohio $43,406 6 Hialeah city, Florida $45,010 7 East Los Angeles CDP, California $45,320 8 Brownsville city, Texas $45,507 9 Paterson city, New Jersey $46,954 10 Toledo city, Ohio $48,846 11 Rochester city, New York $49,072 12 South Bend city, Indiana $49,691 13 Allentown city, Pennsylvania $50,105 14 Syracuse city, New York $50,220 15 Laredo city, Texas $51,152 Table: Highest Average Family Income in US Metropolitan Statistical Areas, 2009 Rank Metro Statistical Area Avg Fam Income 2009 1 Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk, CT Metro Area $150,336 2 Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV Metro Area $127,167 3 San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA Metro Area $120,407 4 Trenton-Ewing, NJ Metro Area $119,590 5 San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA Metro Area $118,713 6 Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA-NH Metro Area $113,192 7 Boulder, CO Metro Area $110,988 8 Napa, CA Metro Area $106,579 9 NY-Northern NJ-Long Island, NY-NJ-PA Metro Area $105,680 10 Baltimore-Towson, MD Metro Area $101,836 11 Oxnard-Thousand Oaks-Ventura, CA Metro Area $100,854 12 Naples-Marco Island, FL Metro Area $100,466 13 Hartford-West Hartford-East Hartford, CT Metro Area $99,597 14 Santa Cruz-Watsonville, CA Metro Area $98,712 15 Anchorage, AK Metro Area $98,290 But the region did not always look this way. In 1876, national headlines declared Hartford to be “the richest city in the United States,” relative to its number of inhabitants, as shown in 8.1. When tabulating the value of all bank deposits, insurance company assets, and taxable property of homes and businesses, Connecticut’s capital city outperformed more famous competitors such as New York and Chicago. To be clear, this claim defined “richest” based on corporate (rather than individual) wealth. By 1903, scholars such as Hartford Seminary sociologist Alexander Merriam pointed out that local wealth varied widely in Hartford, between residences of “wealthier citizens…scattered in different parts of the city” and “a slum of almost the first magnitude” along the Connecticut river. Nevertheless, the central city of Hartford served as an economic engine for the capital region well into the first few decades of the twentieth century.168 Figure 8.1: Scroll the full-screen document from Scribner’s Monthly in 1876, which declared Hartford as “the richest city in the United States,” relative to its population. Digitized by Google Books. Where did the money go? One way to visualize the spatial redistribution of wealth from the City of Hartford to its suburbs is to track home values by town during the twentieth century. For each decade in the map below, the average dwelling or single-family home value is indexed to the region to correct for historical price inflation, with higher values represented by darker shades of green. While not a precise measure, the rough differences over time are striking. In 1910, the region’s highest home values were located in the City of Hartford and its neighboring suburb of West Hartford, as shown in 8.2. In second place were inner-ring suburbs with manufacturing jobs (such as East Hartford, Manchester, Windsor, and New Britain), followed by outlying farming towns to the west and southeast. In 1910, the average home value in Hartford was nearly $5,000, four times more than the average $1,200 home value in the agricultural community of Avon.169 A century later, that relationship had reversed, as home values in the city fell to nearly the lowest in the region, while some outlying farm towns—known today as elite suburbs—climbed to the top. In 2010, the average sales price for a single-family home in Avon climbed to $536,000, more than three times the average $178,000 sales price in Hartford. In some eyes, the once-powerful city-based economic powerhouse had become a doughnut—a fiscally depressed center surrounded by an affluent suburban ring—though with wide variation in the middle. A closer look at recent data reveals wider variation across suburbs than most assume. The Connecticut Metropatterns report dispelled “the myth of the affluent suburban monolith” by illustrating how some suburbs face high levels of fiscal stress, based on the cost of educating their population of needy children relative to their local capacity to raise tax revenues.170 Figure 8.2: Explore the full-screen interactive map of home values in Hartford County, 1910-2010. The most valuable single-family homes (in dark green) shifted from the capital city to selected suburbs over time. Click the tabs or use arrow keys to advance years. Hover over towns for details. Home values have been indexed (where county average = 1.0) to adjust for rising prices over time. Missing values appear in gray. Sources: 1910-1980 from Connecticut Tax Commissioner, author’s calculation of average dwelling value from equalized assessments; 1990 from Capital Region Council of Governments, median single-family home sales price; 2000-10 from State of Connecticut, Office of Policy and Management, average single-family home sales price (2000-2010). Learn more in “Calculating Wealth and Poverty in Past and Present” chapter, TO COME in this book. View historical sources and code for this map, developed by Ilya Ilyankou and Jack Dougherty, based on an earlier version with UConn MAGIC. The Rise of “Shopping for Schools” The status of Hartford’s city and suburban school districts also reversed trajectories during this same period. A century ago, Hartford Public High School, shown in 8.3, offered what nearly all agreed to be the best secondary education in the entire region, attracting students into the city. According to HPHS student records, one out of five students resided outside of Hartford, many in bordering towns, and paid tuition to enroll. Emerging suburbs typically had no high school or one that some viewed as substandard. In nearby Wethersfield in 1917, parents strongly objected to plans to eliminate Latin in their fledgling high school, while four members of the local school board sent their children to Hartford city schools. Two decades later, a prominent survey by Columbia University Teachers College praised Hartford’s public high schools for “maintaining the ‘gold standard’ of its college preparatory students,” with a reputation “widely and favorably known through eastern collegiate circles.” As late as 1958, surveys of Hartford teachers reported it to be “common knowledge in education circles that the city of Hartford and its school system have enjoyed an excellent reputation as a good place in which to live and work over the past 20 years,” according to Trinity researcher Eric Lawrence. At the same time, ten miles west of the city, the rural town of Avon ceased busing its older students to a neighboring district and began constructing their own high school building. By the late 1990s, after decades of urban decline nearly caused Hartford Public High School to lose its accreditation, Avon High School claimed title to the most prestigious public secondary education in the Hartford region.171 Figure 8.3: Scroll down this interactive storymap to view images of Hartford Public High School as it moved to different locations over time. View historical sources and code for this map, developed by Ilya Ilyankou and Jack Dougherty. What attracted white middle-class families to move from the cities to the suburbs? Ken Jackson’s Crabgrass Frontier, which paved a way of thinking for a generation of suburban historians, boiled down the causes of post-war mass suburbanization to “two necessary conditions…the suburban ideal and population growth—and two fundamental causes—racial prejudice and cheap housing.” Indeed, there is supporting evidence for Jackson’s thesis in the Hartford region, particularly the influence of discriminatory public policy decisions on private housing markets. For instance, my colleagues at the University of Connecticut Libraries MAGIC Center and I reconstructed Hartford area maps, originally created by the federal Home Owners’ Loan Corporation and private lenders in 1937 to assess mortgage risks by neighborhoods, as shown in 8.4.172 Officials coded the best investments in green, and the worst in red, which led them to be known in later years as “redlining” maps. But rather than evaluate only the physical property conditions, field agents were instructed to record the racial, ethnic, and social composition of current residents, based on the prevailing White standards of the time. The reports discouraged lenders from offering mortgages to neighborhoods with an “infiltration” of “Negro,” “Foreign-born,” and “Relief families,” thereby favoring mortgage lending to White middle-class areas. Similarly, during the early 1940s, suburban West Hartford officials blocked African-Americans from moving into federally subsidized wartime public housing.173 Figure 8.4: Click on color-coded areas in this interactive map to view neighborhood appraisals by the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) in the Hartford area, 1937. HOLC prioritized neighborhoods to receive mortgage lending from the highest level (A, in green) to the lowest (D, in red). This federal agency worked with local banks and lenders to evaluate Hartford and over 200 other cities during the Great Depression. They measured not only physical conditions, but also the “social status of the population,” and downgraded neighborhoods with non-white, immigrant, and poor residents. In later decades, activists labeled these discriminatory lending practices as “redlining.” View historical sources and code for this map, developed by Ilya Ilyankou and Jack Dougherty, based on an earlier version with UConn MAGIC and the Kirwin Institute. Around the same time, some West Hartford real estate developers wrote racially restrictive covenants into deeds that prohibited residents “other than the white race” from renting or buying property, which remained legally enforceable until 1948. Based on the research of Trinity alumna Tracey Wilson and student researcher Katie Campbell, we uncovered the hidden history of these racist covenants, as shown in 8.5.174 These and other hidden chapters of Northern racial injustice, as well as activists’ efforts to overturn them, have been recounted by Trinity researchers in a special section of ConnectictHistory.org. See also Writing Greater Hartford’s Civil Rights Past with ConnecticutHistory.org with Elaina Rollins and Clarissa Ceglio, and Restricting with Property Covenants with Tracey Wilson and Vianna Iorio, both in this book.175 Figure 8.5: Click on colored rectangles in the full-screen interactive map of restrictive covenants in the Hartford area in the 1940s. Real estate developers wrote restrictions into property deeds that prohibited occupants “other than the Caucasian race.” The U.S. Supreme Court approved these restrictions in the 1926 Corrigan v. Buckley ruling, but later declared them unenforceable in the 1948 Shelley v. Kraemer decision. Yet these restrictions still exist in official property records. To date, we have found 5 race restrictive covenants in West Hartford. If you know of similar restrictions, by race or religion, anywhere in Connecticut, contact the author. View historical sources and the code for this map, developed by Ilya Ilyankou and Jack Dougherty, based on an earlier version created with UConn MAGIC. But Jackson does not explain how public schools fit into his equation, because their role shifted over time. During the immediate post-war years, doubts about the quality of schools in new suburbs meant that they did not serve as a primary motivator for leaving Hartford. Yet by the late 1950s and 1960s, suburban schools became powerful magnets that, on their own, began to attract White middle-class families. How do we explain this shift? The story of post-war metropolitan history needs to address how real estate interests, suburban homebuyers, and government officials contributed to the rise of a relatively new practice known as Selling and Shopping for Schools, as described in more detail elsewhere in this book.”176 Migration out of Hartford was not driven by a perception of higher-quality suburban schools in the late 1940s and early 1950s. In several oral history interviews that Trinity researcher Jacqueline Katz conducted with former Hartford residents who moved to suburbs in the immediate post-war era, none mentioned educational quality as a deciding factor. Clifford Floyd, a Hartford insurance accountant who moved to Avon in 1952 with his spouse and three young children, gave a typical response. “We didn’t come to Avon because of the schools,” he explained. “We just thought it would be better to have a lot more land for the kids to play around in.” Even in West Hartford, where suburbanization began decades before the war, local newspaper editor Bice Clemow found low standards in school facilities, curriculum, and teacher salaries when using a survey drawn from Life magazine. “If we lived in a mill town, where the income level was modest, it would not be startling to find that we could not afford the best in public education,” wrote Clemow. “To document that we have grade B- secondary education available in West Hartford is a shock of another order.”177 The rise of suburban schools can be attributed partly to the actions of real estate firms, which promoted selected private suburban homes by marketing their access to more desirable public schools. In West Hartford, as school enrollments grew with the post-war baby boom, a heated controversy arose at a 1954 school board meeting over a proposal to address overcrowding by redistricting neighborhoods to less crowded schools. Parents who objected based their views on the real estate market. “Whenever real estate men sell property, they tell their clients that they are in the Sedgwick, Webster Hill, or Bugbee areas,” attendance zones on the newly-constructed western side of town. Superintendent Edmund Thorne responded by blaming real estate agents for creating “social class consciousness” in the suburb, and asked, “Doesn’t it boil down to some people thinking there is more prestige to going to one school than another?” But what Thorne perceived as an imaginary distinction was becoming very real for suburban homebuyers.178 Newspaper advertisements reflect the rise of “branding” marketing by real estate firms during the 1950s and 1960s, as shown in 8.6.179 Trinity researcher Kelli Perkins and other students compiled a sample of real estate ads in the Hartford Courant Sunday edition from 1920 to 1990. We tabulated the proportion of ads that mentioned a specific school by name, rather than a generic description such as “near school.” Compared to other suburbs, West Hartford had the highest proportion of school-specific ads, peaking at 38 percent of all residential ads in the town in 1965. Through marketing, real estate firms sought to increase the dollar value of a private home by signaling its location within what homebuyers perceived as a more desirable public school attendance zone. Simply moving into the suburb of West Hartford was no longer sufficient: success also entailed buying into the “right” neighborhood” to attend a “good” public school.180 Figure 8.6: Three West Hartford private real estate ads in 1960, with public schools highlighted in red. Copyrighted by the Hartford Courant, reprinted here under Fair Use guidelines. But real estate firms did not treat all suburbs equally. Most agents refused to sell homes to Blacks in any suburb in the region during the 1950s, but they eventually shifted their stance on one town, Bloomfield, located on the northern border of Hartford and West Hartford. Middle-class African Americans such as Spencer Shaw, a librarian from the city of Hartford, reported having had “several refusals before from real estate people,” yet finally succeeded in purchasing a home through an agent in the early 1960s, from a Greek couple in Bloomfield. The sale sparked a racial transition. “I think within about two months, four or five of the other families moved out,” Shaw told Trinity interviewer Jacqueline Katz.181 Figure 8.7: Spencer Shaw, a Black Hartford resident, successfully purchased a home in a White neighborhood in Bloomfield in the early 1960s. Photo by Jacqueline Katz. Real estate firms engaged in two discriminatory practices—block-busting and racial steering—that shaped the composition of Bloomfield and neighboring suburbs during the late 1960s and 1970s. In block-busting, a real estate agent introduced Black homebuyers into a White neighborhood to scare owners into selling their homes below market value to the agent, who immediately resold them above market value to Black buyers. This sales technique played on White racial fears to make a quick profit. Trinity researcher Aleesha Young compared city directory listings for selected streets where block-busting occurred in Bloomfield, and found some, such as Alexander Road, experienced a residential turnover rate of 41 percent from 1970 to 1975. In the related practice of racial steering, real estate firms diverted Black buyers to home sales in areas such as Bloomfield, while redirecting White buyers to places such as Avon and West Hartford. According to witnesses such as John Keever, a White homebuyer who asked to view homes in Bloomfield, real estate agents “made innuendos about the school system” there and warned about racial attacks against his daughter, but spoke about White suburban school districts in “glowing terms.” Together, busting and steering contributed to the racial population of the Bloomfield school district changing at a much faster rate than the town at large, illustrating a strengthening bond between public schools and private real estate, in the opposite direction.182 Local organizations, with assistance from National Neighbors, a multi-racial advocacy group, led different challenges against real estate firms in the Hartford region. Adelle Wright, chairwoman of Bloomfield’s Human Relations Committee, recalled the “snowstorm of signs” on streets visited by block-busting real estate agents. The signs “reminded the people going into that neighborhood, every day of their lives [that], ‘My neighborhood is turning. I might be the last one here’,” she recalled in an interview with Trinity researchers. In 1973, Wright’s committee persuaded the Bloomfield town council to pass an ordinance against door-to-door and telephone solicitation by real estate agents, and a ban against “for sale” and “sold” signs being posted in front of private homes.183 Figure 8.8: Adelle Wright organized Bloomfield residents against real estate block-busting in the early 1970s. Meanwhile, a Hartford-based organization known as Education/Instrucción, led by a trio of activists —– Ben Dixon, Boyd Hinds, and Julia Ramos — mounted a broader challenge against discriminatory practices across the entire real estate and lending industry, as shown in 8.9.184 In 1973, they organized teams of testers to visit real estate firms and pose as buyers to document racial steering, which was a violation of the 1968 Fair Housing Act. As Ramos explained in an oral history interview with Trinity researcher Jasmin Agosto, she and a Latino male “posed as a couple that barely spoke English, you know, our English was supposedly very minimal to a West Hartford real estate company. We walked in and basically made known through gestures and a little bit of English that we wanted to buy a house in West Hartford.” After some back and forth with the real estate office staff, “we were steered to the North End of Hartford and the South End of Hartford, shown houses and given listings in these two locations. All of this we taped.” With dozens of detailed accounts like this, activists built a legal case against eight large real estate firms in the Hartford area, and persuaded the US Justice Department to prosecute them for racial steering. In addition, Education/Instrucción published a series of reports, Fair Housing at its Worst, which extended charges of discrimination to mortgage lenders, downtown insurance corporations, and complicit government regulators. Although the court case resulted in a settlement against the real estate firms, they denied all wrongdoing and received a relatively mild penalty: monitoring and mandatory training on fair housing law. See also Mobilizing Against Racial Steering and Redlining with Jasmin Agosto and Vianna Iorio, also in this book.185 Figure 8.9: Education/Instrucción Co-Directors Boyd Hinds, Julia Ramos McKay, Ben Dixon, circa 1974. The only large realty firm not to be charged with discriminatory practices was The R. W. Barrows Company. Former co-owner Larry Barrows spoke about real estate sales during this period during oral history interviews with Trinity researcher Cintli Sanchez. Barrows never used racial scare tactics nor had first-hand knowledge of those who did, but he conceded that, “We said some stuff we couldn’t say now.” He openly discussed racial, religious, and other qualities of neighborhoods and schools with clients. “I’m an old time liberal Democrat, so I would tell them, ‘Mixed neighborhood, mixed schools,’ and so forth,” Barrows explained, to help his clients identify the social composition of the neighborhood they desired. Sometimes he had candid discussions with Jewish homebuyers, to help them break into neighborhoods that had previously excluded them. Barrows acknowledged that when real estate agents talked about schools, “we were making judgments on the teachers and principals, which we had no business doing.” Still, Barrows emphasized that agents needed to be responsive to the needs of clients, especially Hartford’s large insurance corporation employees, who transferred into the region and “were brainwashed before they even looked at houses,” by co-workers who coached them to buy into a particular neighborhood. ” As he remembered, “People used to call an agent, and they would say, ‘I want to be in a certain school district’… They wanted somebody who really knew quite a bit about the schools and the districts and so forth. So that was how you got business.”186 By the late 1980s, real estate firms had discovered how to respond to clients’ requests about neighborhood school quality without violating fair housing laws. Rather than voicing their opinions, agents began distributing packets of school data, which became more widely available after Connecticut passed a 1985 law to create standardized student achievement tests (such as the Connecticut Mastery Test (CMT) and the Connecticut Academic Performance Test (CAPT), and subsequent requirements for uniform reporting of district data (the Strategic School Profiles). “Agents get so many questions from buyers about schools, and they are very conscious and concerned about giving out misleading information,” Lynda Wilson, President of the Greater Hartford Association of Realtors, told a reporter in 1993. “They are afraid if they give wrong information, they can be accused of steering.” Margaret O’Keefe, who had previously served as PTO president of two West Hartford schools, added that she understood new federal restrictions to mean it was permissible to share objective education data with clients, but not her own subjective judgments about the quality of individual schools. “You’re treading on very dangerous ground,” she concluded, “unless you have facts.”187 The politics of the school accountability movement, combined with growing access to the Internet, fueled this data-driven wave of “shopping for schools” in the suburban housing market. In 1995, the Prudential Connecticut Realty Company opened its first experimental “computerized library,” located at their West Hartford office, for potential buyers to browse photographs of homes and “information on communities’ demographics and school systems.” The Connecticut Department of Education launched its own website in 1996, and began to include test score data for individual schools for the first generation of web surfers in 1997. By the year 2000, homebuyers with computer access could easily and instantly view details about local schools, whether located around the corner or across the country. Part of the data revolution was driven by state education agencies, to comply with the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. But private real estate firms and non-profit education advocates also harnessed the Web to deliver school-level test scores and demographics to millions of families who eagerly consumed it.188 How much money were families willing to pay to purchase a private home on the more desirable side of a public school boundary line? Trinity Professor Diane Zannoni and her team of econometrics students collaborated with me to answer this question. We compiled public records for single-family home sales in the West Hartford Public School district (to avoid differences between suburbs), and mapped them inside the eleven elementary school attendance zones, which varied by test scores and racial composition. We limited our study to a ten-year period (1996 to 2005) where test formats and attendance zones remained relatively stable, which we split into two halves to gauge the growing influence of school data available via the Internet. Furthermore, we controlled for characteristics of the house (such as interior square footage and lot size), and also the neighborhood, by identifying sales within a very close distance of boundary lines that were drawn through the middle of residential areas, rather than along major roads or parks. Overall, we found that the test-price relationship was positive and significant: a one standard deviation in elementary school test scores produced a 2 percent increase (about $3,800) in the price of an average home during this decade. But we also discovered the increasing significance of race in this predominantly White suburb. During the latter half of our time period (2002-05), the racial composition of the school became much more influential: a one standard deviation in the percentage of minority students led to a 4 percent decrease (about $7,500) in the cost of an average home. In other words, as homebuyers in this predominantly White suburb make decisions about where to live, the sales data suggest that they are becoming more sensitive to the racial composition of their children’s future classmates than their test scores.189 Figure 8.10: Our study compared home prices on opposite sides of public school attendance zones in West Hartford over time. In this suburb, how do we explain why test scores mattered, but the school’s racial composition became more influential on single-family home prices over time? Part of the answer comes from a parallel qualitative study conducted by Trinity researcher Christina Ramsay and co-authors in the CSS seminar, based on door-to-door interviews conducted with 89 recent homebuyers in West Hartford. Fewer than 35 percent of those homeowners with (or expecting) children reported directly “researching” schools by searching for school information online or visiting schools in person. By contrast, over 50 percent found information about school quality through indirect means: their social networks of family, friends, and co-workers. Another part of the answer appears in a Washington DC study, which monitored how users actually conduct searches with an online school information site. They found that users were strongly biased toward checking demographic data on schools, and when making comparisons, tended to reject those with higher percentages of Black students. Together, these three studies suggest that while not all homebuyers directly access school information online, the expansion of the Internet may amplify the power of racial and test data as it travels through their social networks.190 Challenges of Desegregation and Choice For nearly half a century, school desegregation advocates have pushed for a metropolitan Hartford solution to lift urban minority students up to the same quality of education as white suburban students. Advocates lobbied for voluntary interdistrict busing in the 1960s, then pressed for stronger desegregation mandates across the entire metropolitan region in the 1989 Sheff v O’Neill lawsuit. Victory finally arrived for the Sheff plaintiffs in the Connecticut supreme court’s 1996 decision, by a 4-3 vote, that racial and socioeconomic isolation deprived Hartford schoolchildren of their state constitutional right to an equal education opportunity. Yet the court did not specify any remedy or timetable to address this injustice, handing the responsibility over to the executive and legislative branches, where neither the Republican Governor nor the Democrat-led General Assembly desired to alter the boundary lines that divided city and suburban districts. Although Sheff allies proposed a metropolitan school district to unite students across the Hartford region, this bold plan never gained sufficient political traction among local education officials in the suburbs, nor the city, as Trinity researcher Jennifer Williams documented in her interviews with key actors. At present, the limited school desegregation remedies that exist in the Hartford region are based primarily on voluntary measures, under the popular slogan of “choice,” that effectively protect the interests of privileged suburban families while delivering only partial justice to the intended urban beneficiaries.191 Figure 8.11: View the oral history video interview and transcript with Elizabeth Horton Sheff in 2011. In 1966, when representatives of the Project Concern interdistrict busing program attempted to persuade suburban districts to enroll small numbers of Hartford minority students in their districts, they encountered intense resistance from white residents determined to defend their boundary lines. Trinity researcher Grace Beckett discovered that even in West Hartford, one of the few districts that eventually agreed to start up Project Concern, the controversy generated the largest crowd (estimated at 1,200) at a board of education meeting, including many residents who booed religious leaders speaking in support of the plan. After the initial controversy faded, more suburban districts agreed to participate in Project Concern and accept the state subsidy that came with it. In its peak year in 1979, the program enabled approximately 1,175 Hartford students to enroll in suburban districts. Based on 24 interviews that students conducted with Project Concern alumni, Trinity researcher Dana Banks and I found a mix of support and ambivalence about the program. More than half suggested that daily bus rides of an hour (or more) represented a “forced choice,” with less autonomy than the suburbs that voluntarily decided to accept them.192 A second wave of voluntary metropolitan desegregation arose with interdistrict magnet schools, designed to attract families from city and suburban towns with specialized curricula. While three magnets emerged in Hartford during the 1980s, the largest expansion occurred in the aftermath of the Sheff ruling, when the state legislature agreed to fund most construction costs for selected proposals. Magnet schools became a politically popular response to segregation because they allowed individual suburban districts and families to “choose” whether or not to participate in a policy solution.193 Magnet schools also served multiple interests, and not exclusively those of Hartford students. In the early 1990s, Trinity College faced increasing urban poverty and declining admissions statistics, and its Board of Trustees “even began to explore the feasibility of moving the College out of the city,” according to former vice president Kevin Sullivan. Incoming Trinity President Evan Dobelle leveraged private endowment funds to gain state support for the Learning Corridor, a $110 million magnet school complex built on an abandoned field adjacent to the campus in 2000. But Trinity researcher Nivia Nieves and I found that Sheff magnet school funding diverted earlier plans for a Hartford neighborhood school, and reduced the number of seats available to city youth from the Latino community around campus. Although interdistrict magnets were more racially diverse than most city or suburban schools, the relatively low percentage of Hartford students able to attend them led Trinity researcher Sarah Kaminski to question their effectiveness in addressing overall segregation levels.194 Years after the Sheff ruling, plaintiffs and state officials finally agreed to a legal settlement in 2003, with a four-year goal of placing 30 percent of Hartford minority students in “reduced isolation” settings, generally defined as schools with under 75 percent minority students. Together with Trinity researchers Jesse Wanzer and Christina Ramsay, our Missing the Goal report illustrated the limited success of voluntary remedies in meeting that objective, followed by a more detailed analysis of overlapping policy obstacles. We also detected spatial inequalities in how desegregation was implemented. For instance, suburban districts enrolling the highest proportion of Hartford minority students through the Open Choice transfer program (previously known as Project Concern) were more likely to be located farther away from the city, requiring longer bus rides. Also, suburban districts with the highest magnet school participation rates were more likely to have fewer White students (such as Bloomfield), making racial balance more difficult than desegregation planners had anticipated. In 2008, plaintiffs and state officials agreed to a second Sheff settlement, featuring a more comprehensive management plan and a more ambitious desegregation goal to be reached by 2013.195 Public school choice became more prevalent in the Hartford area in 2008, as the new Regional School Choice Office recruited suburban applicants for interdistrict desegregation, and the Hartford Public Schools launched its own district-wide choice initiative to increase school accountability. For many Hartford parents, the opportunity to go “shopping for schools” as suburban parents had done felt empowering, yet the confusion caused by competing choice programs (with similar names but separate application processes) was overwhelming. To address this concern, Trinity students and community partners and I collaborated with Academic Computing staff Jean-Pierre Haeberly and David Tatem, and Social Science Center Coordinator Rachael Barlow. In January 2009, we launched SmartChoices, a parent-friendly digital guide that lists all eligible public school options across the metropolitan region, with an interactive map and tools to sort schools by distance, racial balance, and student achievement. With funding from a local education foundation, Trinity students conducted parent outreach workshops with hands-on guidance on using the tool, while interviewing parents in English or Spanish about their decision-making process. Based on our sample of 93 workshop participants, we found that providing richer information makes a difference: two-thirds either changed or clarified their top-ranked school after the hands-on workshop, and many found options with higher test scores or greater racial balance located closer to their neighborhood. But we also observed some Black and Latino parents using the tool to avoid schools with high concentrations of students from racial groups other than their own.196 Figure 8.12: View this silent video clip of the SmartChoices public school choice search tool, produced by the Cities Suburbs and Schools Project from 2008-2014. Figure 8.13: Trinity student researchers Ada Avila ’11 (left) and Courtney Coyne ’10 (right) interview Hartford parents as they explore SmartChoices during a workshop focus group in 2009. To better understand the “shopping for schools” market, the CSS Project expanded our research agenda to analyze which types of families do (and do not) participate in public school choice programs in the Hartford region, and how they vary by student characteristics, school composition, and neighborhood demographics. Our work builds on prior studies by Trinity researchers who statistically analyzed magnet school application data, conducted door-to-door interviews with parents in selected Hartford neighborhoods with very high or low application rates, and used geographic information systems (GIS) to display results through maps to understand how different stakeholders interpret their meaning.197 Our most recent “Who Chooses?” report, co-authored with Professor Diane Zannoni and her econometrics students, examines Hartford-resident grade 3-7 students enrolled in Hartford Public Schools and whether they applied to an inter-district magnet school or Open Choice suburban transfer program through the Regional School Choice Office lottery in Spring 2012. Overall, we found that lottery participation was not random, but linked to student socioeconomic characteristics that often showed higher rates by more privileged families. In this particular sample, we found statistically lower levels of lottery participation among English Language Learners and students with special needs, and generally higher levels by students with high standardized test scores, and those who live in census areas with higher median household incomes and higher percentages of owner-occupied housing. Our analysis does not reveal the cause of this disparity. Plausibly, it could be driven by school “creaming” (recruitment or discouragement of selected students) and/or family “climbing” (using their social capital for upward mobility). In any case, uneven lottery participation raises a troubling question: can Connecticut’s educational inequality be remedied by a voluntary school choice plan that burdens the most marginalized families to achieve their own justice?198 More research remains to be done in several related areas that Trinity students and faculty have begun to study. Our understanding of magnet schools would improve with further examination of student-to-student relationships and attitudes toward other races. We also would benefit from more cultural comparisons between suburban school districts, and analysis of achievement gaps within suburban districts. The role played by Catholic and private schools in educational markets deserves closer study, as does the legislative history of funding school districts and interdistrict programs. Of course, fruitful ideas for researching schooling and housing in metropolitan Hartford can be found in publications by scholars at other institutions, and in works on other regions.199 Conclusion While our society values equal opportunity for all, our CSS Project research has challenged my students to recognize how the powerful relationship between schooling and housing often blocks us from achieving that goal. Although we call them “public” schools, we buy and sell access to most as “private” commodities, based on the underlying real estate and governmental boundary lines that restrict entry. Access to more desirable elementary and secondary schooling became more valuable in the post-World War II labor market, with rising economic returns for students attaining higher education degrees, which fueled the practice of “shopping for schools” in suburbs today. As civil rights activists have battled against barriers to equal access over the years, state lawmakers have gradually begun to decouple housing and schooling by offering interdistrict transfers and magnet schools, which do not require families to rent or buy a home in a suburban district. In essence, Connecticut’s voluntary desegregation policy has created a second “shopping” marketplace, called public school choice, in our attempt to remedy the ills of the existing market based on private housing. Yet desirable public school options remain scarce. Moreover, this second government-run choice market relies on individual families (with varying levels of literacy) to sort through glossy brochures and competing advertising campaigns to identify the “best” schools for their children, without fully considering the aggregated effects of these decisions on who gets ahead, and who is left behind. By itself, research will not eliminate the disparities that divide us. But it is an essential step in the process. Uncovering the underlying causes of inequalities, and understanding the success and limitations of past reform efforts, helps us come to terms with the depth and scope of the real issues facing us. Learning about the evolution of cities, suburbs, and schools—particularly in the company of reflective community partners, with perspectives broader than our own—can teach us important lessons about privilege and power, and strengthen our collective capacity. Reconstructing a roadmap of how we arrived at our present-day policy dilemmas does not provide us with a detailed reform agenda. But the process can suggest possible avenues and future directions for moving all of us a few steps forward. Jack Dougherty, “Investigating Spatial Inequality with the Cities, Suburbs, and Schools Project,” in Confronting Urban Legacy: Rediscovering Hartford and New England’s Forgotten Cities, ed. Xiangming Chen and Nicholas Bacon (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 2013), 110–26, https://books.google.com/books?id=qeB_AQAAQBAJ.↩︎ Cities Suburbs and Schools Project at Trinity College, http://commons.trincoll.edu/cssp.↩︎ Community Learning at Trinity College, http://cher.trincoll.edu.↩︎ Christopher Collier, Connecticut’s Public Schools: A History, 1650-2000 (Orange, CT: Clearwater Press, 2009), http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1004930998; Susan Eaton, The Children in Room E4: American Education on Trial (Chapel Hill NC: Algonquin Books, 2007).↩︎ “Average Family Income in the Past 12 Months in 2009 Inflation-Adjusted Dollars, Table SE:T:59” (American Community Survey 1-year estimates via Social Explorer, 2009), in author’s Google Spreadsheet, https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AtmGKybdRLlZdDJEcDRxSXN1ZS1oZkNISmFEOE9jUEE.↩︎ Clark, “The Charter Oak City”; Merriam, The Social Significance of the Smaller City, reprinted as Merriam, “The Social Conditions of the Smaller City”.↩︎ Ilyankou and Dougherty, “Map,” 2017.↩︎ Myron Orfield and Thomas Luce, Connecticut Metropatterns: A Regional Agenda for Community and Prosperity in Connecticut (Minneapolis, MN: Ameregis, 2003), http://www.law.umn.edu/metro/metro-area-studies/metropolitan-area-studies-by-region.html; See home value data sources in “Calculating Wealth and Poverty in Past and Present” chapter, TO COME in this book.↩︎ Hartford Public High School, “Student Records” (HPHS Museum and Archive, 1882); “Kicks on Schools in Wethersfield”, p. 11; George D Strayer and N. L. Engelhardt, The Hartford Public Schools in 1936-37: A Comprehensive Report of the Survey of the Public Schools of Hartford, Connecticut: Survey Pamphlet (New York: Division of Field Studies, Institute of Educational Research, Teachers College, Columbia University, 1937), http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/11136338, pamphlet X, p. 13; “Personnel Policies: A Report Submitted to the Hartford Board of Education” (Pamphlet Collection, Hartford History Center, Hartford Public Library, 1958), cited in Eric Lawrence, “Teacher Suburbanization & The Diverging Discourse on Hartford Public School Quality, 1950-1970” (American Studies senior research project, Trinity College, 2002), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/35/; see HPHS historical photos in Ilya Ilyankou and Jack Dougherty, “Map: Hartford Public High School Locations, 1847-Present” (On The Line, 2017), https://ontheline.github.io/otl-hphs/.↩︎ Ilyankou and Dougherty, “Map,” 2017; University of Connecticut Libraries Map and Geographic Information Center, “Federal HOLC \"Redlining\" Map, Hartford Area, 1937”.↩︎ Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier, p. 287; See Federal Lending and Redlining, with Sean McGann and Racial Barriers to Public Housing, with Emily Meehan, both in this book.↩︎ Ilyankou and Dougherty, “Map,” 2017; University of Connecticut Libraries Map and Geographic Information Center, “Race Restrictive Covenants in Property Deeds, Hartford Area, 1940s”.↩︎ Connecticut History, “Trinity College Students Call Attention to Histories of Inequality” (ConnecticutHistory.org, May 2013), http://connecticuthistory.org/trinity-college-students-call-attention-to-histories-of-inequality/.↩︎ Jack Dougherty, “Shopping for Schools: How Public Education and Private Housing Shaped Suburban Connecticut,” Journal of Urban History 38, no. 2 (March 2012): 205–24, https://doi.org/https://doi-org.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/10.1177/0096144211427112.↩︎ Clifford Floyd, “Oral History Interview on Avon, CT” (Cities, Suburbs, Schools Project, Trinity College Digital Repository, June 2003), cited in Jacqueline Katz, “Historical Memory and the Transformation of City and Suburban Schools” (Educational Studies Senior Research Project, Trinity College, 2004), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/27/; Bice Clemow, A Layman Looks at Schools in West Hartford: A Series Reprinted from the West Hartford News from January 25 Through February 15, 1951, Based on the Life Magazine Questionnaire (West Hartford, CT: West Hartford News, 1951), https://history.westhartfordlibrary.org/items/show/506.↩︎ “New School Lines Offered by Thorne,” Hartford Times, April 8, 1954.↩︎ “Display Ad (West Hartford Homes for Sale, Featuring Schools),” The Hartford Courant (1923-1993); Hartford, Conn., May 1, 1960, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/hnphartfordcourant/docview/551999874?accountid=14405.↩︎ Dougherty, “Shopping for Schools”.↩︎ Spencer Shaw, “Oral History Interview on Bloomfield, CT” (Cities, Suburbs, Schools Project, Trinity College Digital Repository, July 2, 2003), cited in Katz, “Historical Memory and the Transformation of City and Suburban Schools”.↩︎ Aleesha Young, “Real Estate, Racial Change, and Bloomfield Schools in the 1960s and ’70s” (Educational Studies Senior Research Project, Trinity College, 2005), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/18/; Keever quoted in James Ross, “Realty Bypassing Told by Resident,” Hartford Courant, June 21, 1973, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/551637521?accountid=14405, p.52↩︎ Adelle Wright, “Oral History Interview on Bloomfield, CT, Part One” (Cities, Suburbs, Schools Project, Trinity College Digital Repository, April 11, 2005), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_ohistory/5.↩︎ Education/Instruccion, “Co-Directors Boyd Hinds, Julia Ramos McKay, Ben Dixon”.↩︎ Grenier, “Oral History Interview on Education/Instruccion, Part 1”, cited in Agosto, “Fighting Segregation, Teaching Multiculturalism”; Education/Instruccion, Fair Housing At Its Worst, 1974.↩︎ Larry Barrows, “Oral History Interview on West Hartford Real Estate, Parts 1 and 2” (Cities, Suburbs, Schools Project, Trinity College Digital Repository, June 27, 2007).↩︎ William Hathaway, “After the Price, the Next Question Is: How Are the Schools?” Hartford Courant, September 26, 1993, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/2123811530/?accountid=14405.↩︎ Dougherty, “Shopping for Schools”.↩︎ Jack Dougherty et al., “School Choice in Suburbia: Test Scores, Race, and Housing Markets,” American Journal of Education 115, no. 4 (August 2009): 523–48, http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/1.↩︎ Christina Ramsay, Cintli Sanchez, and Jesse Wanzer, “Shopping for Homes and Schools: A Qualitative Study of West Hartford, Connecticut” (Hartford, Connecticut: Trinity College, December 2006), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/25/; On the Washington DC study, see Jack Buckley and Mark Schneider, Charter Schools: Hope or Hype (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007).↩︎ Jennifer Williams, “The Unthinkable Remedy: The Proposed Metropolitan Hartford School District” (Presentation slides, Cities Suburbs and Schools Project at Trinity College, July 2004), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/19/.↩︎ Grace Beckett, “Suburban Participation in Hartford’s Project Concern School Desegregation Program, 1966-1998” (Educational Studies Senior Research Project, Trinity College, 2004), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/11/; Dana Banks and Jack Dougherty, “City-Suburban Desegregation and Forced Choices: Review Essay of ’The Other Boston Busing Story’ by Susan Eaton,” Teachers College Record 105 (2004): 985–98, http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/facpub/21/. See also Laurie Gutmann, “Whose Concern Matters?: Student Support and Project Concern” (Educational Studies Senior Research Project, Trinity College, 2003), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/17/.↩︎ See Connecticut’s early magnet school history in Thomas C. Reynolds, “Magnet Schools and the Connecticut Experience” (Master’s thesis, Trinity College, 1994), http://ctwweb.wesleyan.edu:7002/vwebv/holdingsInfo?bibId=114767.↩︎ Kevin B. Sullivan and James A. Trostle, “Trinity College and the Learning Corridor: A Small, Urban Liberal Arts College Launches a Public Magnet School Campus,” Metropolitan Universities 15, no. 3 (2004): 15–34, https://journals.iupui.edu/index.php/muj/article/view/20176/19787; Peter J. Knapp and Anne H. Knapp, Trinity College in the Twentieth Century: A History (Hartford Conn.: Trinity College, 2000), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/w_books/2/; Nivia Nieves and Jack Dougherty, “Latino Politicians, Activists, and Parents: The Challenge of Implementing City-Suburban Magnet Schools” (American Educational Research Association conference paper, April 10, 2006), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/30/; Sarah Kaminski, “Magnet Schools: An Effective Solution to Sheff v. O’Neill?” The Trinity Papers 21 (2002): 63–71, http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/9/.↩︎ Dougherty, Wanzer, and Ramsay, “Missing the Goal”; Jack Dougherty, Jesse Wanzer, and Christina Ramsay, “Sheff v. O’Neill: Weak Desegregation Remedies and Strong Disincentives in Connecticut, 1996-2008,” in From the Courtroom to the Classroom: The Shifting Landscape of School Desegregation, ed. Claire Smrekar and Ellen Goldring (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press, 2009), 103–27, http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/3/.↩︎ Learn about the SmartChoices public school search tool, which the Cities Suburbs & Schools Project ran from 2008 to 2014, at https://commons.trincoll.edu/cssp/smartchoices/; Devlin Hughes, Designing Effective Google Maps for Social Change: A Case Study of SmartChoices (Hartford, Connecticut, 2009), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/8/; Jack Dougherty et al., “School Information, Parental Decisions, and the Digital Divide: The SmartChoices Project in Hartford, Connecticut,” in Educational Delusions? Why Choice Can Deepen Inequality and How to Make Schools Fair, ed. Gary Orfield and Erica Frankenberg (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013), 219–37, https://books.google.com/books?id=x9AlDQAAQBAJ&lpg=PR1&pg=PA219; Jack Dougherty, “SmartChoices Screencast (2008-14)” (Cities Suburbs & Schools Project, Trinity College, November 7, 2014), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0su0t0PFNdk&feature=youtube_gdata_player.↩︎ Naralys Estevez and Jack Dougherty, “Do Magnet Schools Attract All Families Equally? A GIS Mapping Analysis of Latinos” (American Education Research Association conference paper, April 10, 2006), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/16/; Jesse Wanzer, Heather Moore, and Jack Dougherty, “Race and Magnet School Choice: A Mixed-Methods Neighborhood Study in Urban Connecticut” (American Educational Research Association conference paper, March 28, 2008), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/22/; Brittany Price, “The Usage of Maps in Facilitating Conversations with Stakeholders about Educational Desegregation in Hartford” (Educational Studies Senior Research Project, Trinity College, 2009), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/26/; Matthew DelConte et al., “Who Chooses? A Preliminary Analysis of Hartford Public Schools” (Cities Suburbs and Schools Project presentation slides, January 2012), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/37.↩︎ Jack Dougherty et al., “Who Chooses in Hartford? Report 1: Statistical Analysis of Regional School Choice Office Applicants and Non-Applicants Among Hartford-resident HPS Students in Grades 3-7, Spring 2012” (Hartford, CT: Cities Suburbs Schools Project at Trinity College, May 12, 2014), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/46; Jack Dougherty et al., “Who Chooses in the Hartford Region? Report 2: A Statistical Analysis of Regional School Choice Office Applicants and Non-Applicants Among Hartford and Suburban-Resident Students in the Spring 2013 Lottery” (Hartford, CT: Cities Suburbs Schools Project at Trinity College, October 17, 2015), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/48/.↩︎ On student relations and attitudes, see Molly Schofield, “Increasing Interracial Relationships” (Educational Studies Senior Research Project, Trinity College, 2002), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/24/; Nicola Blacklaw, “The Presence of Contact Conditions in a Magnet School” (Educational Studies Senior Research Project, Trinity College, 2002), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/12/; David Reuman, “Effects of An Inter-District Magnet Program On Inter-Racial Attitudes At School” (American Educational Research Association conference paper, April 25, 2003), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/32/. On suburban districts, see Antonio DePina, “Comparing Suburban School Culture in Metropolitan Hartford: How Does the Formal and Hidden Curriculum Vary Across Two High Schools?” (Educational Studies Senior Research Project, Trinity College, 2003), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/15/; Rebecca Wetzler, “The Effects of Health, Mobility, and Socio-Economic Status Factors on the Race Gap in Achievement” (Psychology senior thesis, Trinity College, 2006), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/20/. On parochial and private schools, see Carmen Green, “Catholic Schools, Racial Change, and Suburbanization, 1930-2000” (History of Education Society conference paper, November 5, 2004), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/13/; Heather Moore, “Private School Choice and Educational Outcomes in Metropolitan Hartford” (Cities Suburbs and Schools Project presentation slides, July 2005), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/36. On school finance, see Lis Pennington, Emily Steele, and Jack Dougherty, “A Political History of School Finance Reform in Metropolitan Hartford, Connecticut, 1945-2005” (American Educational Research Association conference paper, April 2007), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/29/; David MacDonald, “The Funding of Interdistrict Magnet Schools in Connecticut: A Failed Approach to Addressing the Sheff Vs. O’Neill Connecticut Supreme Court Ruling?” (Public Policy graduate course paper, Trinity College, 2005), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/34/.↩︎ "],["writing.html", "Writing Greater Hartford’s Civil Rights Past with ConnecticutHistory.org", " Writing Greater Hartford’s Civil Rights Past with ConnecticutHistory.org by Elaina Rollins, Clarissa Ceglio, and Jack Dougherty This chapter originally appeared in Connecticut History Review, whose editor granted permission to republish here with digital links and images.200 Several Trinity students’ ConnecticutHistory.org essays have been expanded into chapters in this book. Through a campus-community partnership, Trinity College undergraduates have published essays under the guidance of http://ConnecticutHistory.org editors that enrich our understanding of twentieth-century civil rights history. Two years ago, Dougherty, a Trinity faculty member, and Ceglio, an editor for the Connecticut Humanities’ project, developed a public history writing assignment. Based on primary source research, students in the Cities, Suburbs, and Schools seminar have authored nearly a dozen short articles on too-often-forgotten histories of Northern injustice, focusing on housing discrimination, segregated education, and efforts to combat inequality in metropolitan Hartford. This assignment challenges undergraduates to accurately and clearly interpret past controversies for contemporary audiences, while instilling an appreciation for writing as an iterative process of reflection and refinement. Newer web-based tools enable drafts to be collaboratively reviewed by peers and the editor and also allow digital evidence–from archival documents, images, and interviews–to be incorporated directly into the essays. Overall, students’ reflections on this process emphasize the intrinsic value of actively contributing to the reshaping of Connecticut’s civil rights history on the public web, rather than simply earning a grade within the confined walls of the classroom. ConnecticutHistory.org is an award-winning digital re-imagining of the traditional state encyclopedia that takes into account the ways in which information seekers use the internet not only for topic-specific searches but also for serendipitous discovery and, through Facebook, Twitter, and other social media, for sharing.201 Connecticut Humanities (CTH), the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, developed this online resource in partnership with the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University and the Digital Media Center of the University of Connecticut’s Digital Media & Design Department. Built using WordPress, a free, open-source content management system suited to the needs of web-based publishing, ConnecticutHistory.org debuted in 2012.202 Since then, by adding new material on a weekly basis, the site has grown to encompass more than 1,300 entries, 3,784 bibliographic records, more than 2,893 connections to digitized primary sources residing elsewhere on the web, and 258 resource pages–one for each of the state’s 169 towns and others on an expanding list of topics and people.203 Those who read and make regular use of the site include history buffs, educators and students (chiefly grades 7 through 12), and other repeat visitors with a sustained interest in state history. Of the roughly 16,700 visits to the site each month, many are the result of specific search queries as well as “click-throughs” from linked citations in other online publications, such as those of the National Geographic Society and Smithsonian Institution.204 Entries include lighter fare, such as the “Today in History” and “Who Knew?” series, which appeals to casual readers. But even short pieces encourage self-guided exploration, through tags as well as links to related ConnecticutHistory.org articles of greater depth. These more substantive entries are produced in collaboration with scholars and authors in the state’s museums, libraries, archives, historical societies, and universities.205 Such partnerships are essential to a sustainable, nonprofit publishing model built on collaborative content acquisition rather than commissioning. Editorial staff hold advanced degrees in public history, primary contributors are experts in their subject matter, and, unlike an academic journal, content does not undergo external peer review. The intent is to maintain a nimble publishing schedule, mindful of the public’s media consumption habits and responsive to topical interests created by contemporary concerns. Importantly, the partnership model provides collaborators with an additional platform for disseminating scholarship produced in support of exhibitions, lectures, and other public fora that do not remain in the public eye. Scholars who publish in peer review journals and for academic presses also work with ConnecticutHistory.org to present this research in public-friendly form and thereby reach different audiences.206 Content, including essays written by Connecticut State Historian Walter W. Woodward, also comes from ConnecticutHistory.org partner Connecticut Explored magazine, which is co-published by Connecticut Humanities. Lastly, ConnecticutHistory.org structures its entries so that information seekers will be directed out to the institutions and repositories that hold and interpret primary source materials related to that particular slice of history. In other words, entries function as connectors by providing links to related institutions, primary source documents, online databases, digitized finding aids, places to visit, books to read, and other means of digging deeper into a given subject. This supports CTH’s mission to encourage the state’s communities to “explore new ideas and historical perspectives, and experience the cultural richness around them.”207 Helping to increase access to heritage resources is only one facet of the project’s commitment to public history. It also undertakes a range of collaborations designed to introduce students to the work of public history or dedicated to bringing lesser known histories of the state to wider general audiences.208 An example of the latter is a long-term effort to rethink how state encyclopedias can be more inclusive with regard to Native histories, particularly by including indigenous knowledge and voices. The Trinity College collaboration detailed here works toward both goals; its iterative writing assignment engages students in our shared criteria for sound historical methodology, clarity of expression, and use of multi-media documentation to educate non-specialist public audiences about historical patterns of racial discrimination in education and housing. This collaboration has inspired similar work with Wesleyan University, Central Connecticut State University, and Capital Community College. For the past two years, Dougherty and Ceglio have collaborated on this ConnecticutHistory.org public history writing assignment during a three-week unit in his Cities, Suburbs, and Schools interdisciplinary seminar at Trinity.209 Students enrolled in the seminar investigate historical and contemporary relationships between schooling and housing in metropolitan Hartford, and this unit is only one example of student learning through community research with a partner organization. Dougherty and Ceglio co-designed the public history writing assignment which requires each student to compose a digital essay, not to exceed 1,000 words, on a designated topic of interest to readers of ConnecticutHistory.org.210 Since the undergraduates are not necessarily history majors, Dougherty generates an online “organizer” page: a list of prospective topics with links to relevant primary source materials, including oral history interviews prior students have recorded, print items he has scanned, and digital holdings from online repositories. Together, Dougherty and Ceglio tailor the list to highlight specific episodes in Greater Hartford’s past that lend themselves to a short essay, with an eye toward expanding civil rights history coverage on ConnecticutHistory.org. Figure 8.14: Clarissa Ceglio teaches Trinity students Emily Meehan and Sean McGann how to write for ConnecticutHistory.org. Unlike typical college papers, which are seen only by the student and the instructor, this public history writing assignment is designed for broader audiences, and its key stages occur on the public web. Ceglio visits the seminar to co-introduce the assignment and the editorial standards of ConnecticutHistory.org. Over the next two weeks, students select a topic from the list that interests them, then analyze and translate historical sources into engaging and accessible stories for diverse online audiences. They author their first drafts in a Google Document, a web-based tool that allows individuals to word-process their own text while simultaneously benefiting from online peer review by classmates, the instructor, and the editor, based on our common evaluation criteria.211 Does the essay open with a compelling argument or story that explains the significance of the topic to Connecticut history? Does it inspire readers to think in new ways? Are the claims supported with appropriate evidence and reasoning? Is the historical research accurate and balanced, with full source citations? Does the writing style engage broad audiences, and provide sufficient background for those unfamiliar with the topic? Is the text well organized and grammatically correct? [For second draft only:] Are digital elements (such as links, images, and videos) thoughtfully integrated into the web essay, and properly credited? After students revise their second drafts and embed links and images to relevant digital sources, all are required to post their work on the seminar’s public WordPress site. In accordance with the assignment guidelines, the editor and the instructor encourage selected students to revise and submit a third draft to ConnecticutHistory.org, with no guarantee that submissions will be accepted for publication. To date, about one-third of the students have eventually met the editorial standards for publication, which usually requires them to do additional work beyond the end of the semester. Multiple rounds of peer review and editing make the assignment much more real-world than the typical college essay, and students are challenged to raise their writing skills to contribute to an education larger than their own. Figure 8.15: Students and mentors comment on draft essays using Google Documents. Trinity student essays published on ConnecticutHistory.org cover a variety of topics, from discriminatory housing practices to efforts to combat educational inequality. These true tales of Northern injustice come as a shock to those who assume historical racial discrimination was limited to the South. By collaborating with ConnecticutHistory.org, Trinity students are able to spread awareness of this forgotten history. In his essay “The Effects of ‘Redlining’ on the Hartford Metropolitan Region,” student Shaun McGann discusses how current racial isolation in Hartford was shaped by past discriminatory housing practices. McGann writes that in 1937, the newly established Home Owner’s Loan Corporation (HOLC) created maps that color-coded neighborhoods based on investment opportunities in those areas; however, HOLC ratings were not always objective. Rather than simply relying on physical property conditions, HOLC frequently assigned poor investment values to neighborhoods with proportionally larger populations of blacks, immigrants, or members of the economic underclass–a process known as “redlining.” Another student essay by Mary Daly, “Race Restrictive Covenants in Property Deeds,” elaborates on discriminatory practices designed to maintain the racial homogeneity of white suburbs in the 1940s. Some housing developers inserted restrictions into property deeds that prohibited “persons of any race except the white race” from owning or occupying selected homes in Greater Hartford, language that the United States Supreme Court deemed “unenforceable” in 1948 but was not made illegal until the 1960s. Furthermore, Emily Meehan’s essay, “The Debate Over Who Could Occupy World War II Public Housing in West Hartford,” recounts how white suburban residents and locally elected leaders effectively blocked African American workers from residing in federally subsidized wartime housing. Together, these pieces illuminate moments of Northern history that may have been forgotten over the years but have undoubtedly contributed to the racial housing patterns that still exist today in Greater Hartford.212 Other Trinity student essays highlight challenges against other forms of inequality by Connecticut activists, including the creation of the state’s education amendment and other more recent school desegregation programs. In “Five Minutes that Changed Connecticut: Simon Bernstein and the 1965 Education Amendment,” Elaina Rollins tells the story of Simon Bernstein, a Hartford lawyer and author of Connecticut’s education amendment, which guarantees free elementary and secondary schooling for children across the state. Bernstein not only lobbied against racially restrictive covenants, such as those described in Daly’s essay, he also advanced the amendment on his own accord, despite significant obstacles from his political superiors. Connecticut’s education amendment later served as the basis for school inequality lawsuits such as the 1989 Sheff v. O’Neill case, which charged that Greater Hartford’s racially isolated schools were unconstitutional. Trinity student Brigit Rioual discusses the aftermath of this landmark case in her essay “Sheff v. O’Neill Settlements Target Educational Segregation in Hartford.” The Connecticut Supreme Court ruled in 1996 that the state must provide equal educational opportunities for Hartford students, but Rioual’s piece explains how Connecticut initially failed to follow through on the court’s order. While the state had agreed to enroll at least 30 percent of Hartford minority children in “reduced isolation” settings (i.e., schools where minorities made up less than three-quarters of the student body), only 17 percent had been achieved by 2007. Rioual’s essay tells a relatively recent story, but the roots of the Sheff case date back to historical patterns of racial segregation and educational advocacy efforts. By collaborating with ConnecticutHistory.org, Trinity students are helping to make public important connections between past injustices and present reforms. Their contributions illustrate in an engaging, informative manner how historical knowledge can help us understand present-day circumstances.213 Students who complete additional rounds of editing with ConnecticutHistory.org experience memorable transitions when they become published authors. College students frequently spend hours on assignments that are ultimately read only by their professor, so to see one’s name in the byline on a respected public website validates seminar participants’ research and writing in a way that a grade alone cannot. Several students have commented that before working with ConnecticutHistory.org, they doubted their own skills as writers. Victoria Smith-Ellison, a sophomore at the time, said that although she struggled with composing essays before beginning college, this collaborative public history project “allowed me to be comfortable with my writing skills that I have learned thus far.” Other students noted how the collaborative nature of the project inspired them to improve their essays even after handing in the required drafts. “After I got the comments [from Dougherty, Ceglio, and classmates], I was at first very overwhelmed,” said Mary Daly. “But I actually really enjoyed polishing my work. I think that [the editing process] helped me, because in the future, I can actually tackle a process and finish it through all the way to the end.” Collaborating with ConnecticutHistory.org also encouraged undergraduate students to recognize themselves as authors contributing to a broader public history, as shown in the video clip in 8.16. Nicole Sagullo, a science student who did not have much experience with humanities writing before Dougherty’s course, said that after her article was published, she discovered that another student on campus had cited her essay in an assignment. “It was just a really good feeling to think that someone had looked at it and read it who wasn’t in that particular class with us,” Sagullo explained. Another seminar participant described how collaborating with a community partner elevated her own view and expectations of herself. “You felt more like a contributor or colleague rather than just a student handing in an assignment,” explained Amanda Gurren. “We felt like we were working with people rather than for them… We felt very respected.” Through several rounds of feedback and revisions, collaborative writing not only incentivizes students to seek improvement in their own work, but also view themselves and their peers as published contributors to Connecticut’s online history.214 Figure 8.16: Watch the video clip on Trinity students reflecting on their writing process with ConnecticutHistory.org in 2013. What are the essential ingredients behind successful public history writing collaborations such as this? First, all participants–students, faculty, and editors–must be motivated to devote additional time and energy to work together on a common goal, with support from their respective institutions. In our partnership, everyone wins. Undergraduate learning benefits from the talent and attention provided by an additional guest writing instructor and evaluator, and in return, high-quality essays on forgotten aspects of civil rights history enrich Connecticut’s understanding of its past. Second, our collaboration became easier with advances in web-based writing tools and online publications. Nowadays, students can write and quickly receive multiple peer reviews from readers, both on and off-campus. Since ConnecticutHistory.org favors shorter essays written for broad audiences, this public history assignment works for a wide array of undergraduates, and its entirely online publication means a speedier turnaround for student contributors who meet their standards. Third, because all of the essays can easily be found on the public web–rather than locked behind a paywall or available only in selected libraries–our contributions to state’s civil rights history are widely accessible and more valuable to readers both inside and outside of Connecticut. We take pride that Tom Sugrue, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and the nation’s leading scholar of Northern civil rights history, took a brief moment to publicly recognize the students’ essays during his April 2014 keynote address to the Association for the Study of Connecticut History.215 For many historians, the digital era raises fears about the future of our profession. What does it mean when anyone can instantly publish their historical interpretation, whether good or bad, on the Internet? How do newer technologies change–and perhaps challenge–what it means to do history? Rather than avoiding the digital turn, we believe that it also provides an ideal opportunity–if wisely exercised–to bring a younger generation to the table and to fully engage them in doing what historians have always done: telling true and meaningful stories about the past for audiences broader than ourselves.216 Trinity College Student Contributions to ConnecticutHistory.org See link to all essays.217 Race Restrictive Covenants in Property Deeds, by Mary Daly ’15. “No persons of any race except the white race shall use or occupy any building on any lot… .” Language such as this still appears in Hartford-area housing covenants today.218 Connecticut Takes the Wheel on Education Reform: Project Concern, by Amanda Gurren ’15. As one of the earliest voluntary busing programs in the US, Project Concern sought to address educational inequalities.219 The Effects of “Redlining” on the Hartford Metropolitan Region, by Shaun McGann ’14. Historical data reveals long-term patterns of inequality that can be traced back to now-illegal practices adopted by federal and private lenders in the 1930s.220 The Debate Over Who Could Occupy World War II Public Housing in West Hartford, by Emily Meehan ’16. In the 1940s, African American war workers eligible for government-funded housing found access restricted to some properties despite vacancies.221 Sheff v. O’Neill Settlements Target Educational Segregation In Hartford, by Brigit Rioual ’14. This landmark case not only drew attention to inequalities in area school systems, it focused efforts on reform.222 Five Minutes that Changed Connecticut: Simon Bernstein and the 1965 Connecticut Education Amendment, by Elaina Rollins ’16. “There shall always be free public elementary and secondary schools in the state. The general assembly shall implement this principle by appropriate legislation.”223 How Real Estate Practices Influenced the Hartford Region’s Demographic Makeup, by Nicole Sagullo ’14. Persistent segregation is the historic legacy of steering and blockbusting, two discriminatory tactics that played a role in shaping suburban neighborhoods.224 Hartford’s Great Migration through Charles S. Johnson’s Eyes, by Victoria Smith Ellison ’15. During the Great Migration of the early 1900s, African Americans from the rural South relocated to Hartford and other Northern cities in search of better prospects.225 Education/Instrucción Combats Housing Discrimination, by Savahna Reuben ’15. This group’s bilingual name reflected its educational mission as well as its dedication to unified, multicultural cooperation for the common good.226 About the authors: Elaina Rollins (Trinity 2016), Clarissa Ceglio, and Jack Dougherty co-wrote this essay based on their collaboration in the Cities Suburbs and Schools seminar. Elaina Rollins, Clarissa Ceglio, and Jack Dougherty, “Writing Greater Hartford’s Civil Rights Past with ConnecticutHistory.org,” Connecticut History Review 53, no. 2 (2014): 220–26, https://ontheline.trincoll.edu/writing.html.↩︎ The website’s permanent web address is http://connecticuthistory.org/. ConnecticutHistory.org received the 2013 New England Museum Association First-place Publication Award for excellence in design, production, and effective communication in websites for organizations with institutional budgets over $500,000.↩︎ Clarissa Ceglio, “ConnecticutHistory.org Opens a New Gateway to Our State’s Past” (ConnecticutHistory.org, May 22, 2012), https://connecticuthistory.org/connecticuthistory-org-opens-a-new-gateway-to-our-states-past/.↩︎ ConnecticutHistory.org site statistics as of June 2014; data on file Connecticut Humanities.↩︎ Total site visits in fiscal year 2013-14 were 200,748, a 226% increase over fiscal year 2012-13 visitation (88,483); data on file Connecticut Humanities.↩︎ Clarissa Ceglio, “The Dos, Don’ts and Dividends of Digital Collaboration.” NEMA News, Winter 2013, https://www.academia.edu/3223779/The_Dos_Don_ts_and_Dividends_of_Digital_Collaboration.↩︎ Ben Railton, “Yung Wing, the Chinese Educational Mission, and Transnational Connecticut” (ConnecticutHistory.org), accessed June 19, 2019, https://connecticuthistory.org/yung-wing-the-chinese-educational-mission-and-transnational-connecticut/.↩︎ Connecticut Humanities, “Mission,” accessed July 11, 2014, http://cthumanities.org/about/mission.↩︎ An additional example of how ConnecticutHistory.org supports student scholarship is its ongoing partnership with the state’s National History Day program. See Rebecca Taber-Conover, “History Day in Connecticut,” Connecticut History 51, no. 2 (Autumn 2012): 261–64.↩︎ Educational Studies 308: Cities, Suburbs, and Schools syllabi, Fall 2012 and Fall 2013, Trinity College, http://commons.trincoll.edu/cssp/seminar/prior-syllabi/↩︎ Dougherty and Ceglio, “Compose Web Essay for ConnecticutHistory.org,” Cities Suburbs and Schools seminar, Trinity College, October 13, 2013, http://commons.trincoll.edu/cssp/seminar/assignments/connecticut-history-entry/↩︎ Jack Dougherty, “Co-Writing, Peer Editing, and Publishing in the Cloud,” in Web Writing: Why and How for Liberal Arts Teaching and Learning, ed. Jack Dougherty and Tennyson O’Donnell (University of Michigan Press, 2015), http://epress.trincoll.edu/webwriting/chapter/dougherty-cowriting.↩︎ McGann, “The Effects of ‘Redlining’ on the Hartford Metropolitan Region”; Mary Daly, “Race Restrictive Covenants in Property Deeds” (ConnecticutHistory.org, January 2013), http://connecticuthistory.org/race-restrictive-covenants-in-property-deeds/; Meehan, “The Debate Over Who Could Occupy World War II Public Housing in West Hartford”.↩︎ Elaina Rollins, “Five Minutes That Changed Connecticut: Simon Bernstein and the 1965 Connecticut Education Amendment” (ConnecticutHistory.org, January 2014), http://connecticuthistory.org/five-minutes-that-changed-connecticut-simon-bernstein-and-the-1965-connecticut-education-amendment/; Brigit Rioual, “Sheff v. O’Neill Settlements Target Educational Segregation In Hartford” (ConnecticutHistory.org, April 2013), http://connecticuthistory.org/sheff-v-oneill-settlements-target-educational-segregation-in-hartford.↩︎ Student quotations excerpted from CTHprograms, “Make Life Collaborative” (YouTube video, April 8, 2013), http://youtu.be/NuWg9Jrkrpw.↩︎ Thomas Sugrue, Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North (New York: Random House, 2009), http://books.google.com/books?isbn=0812970381; See also Twitter post at ASCH meeting, April 5, 2014, https://twitter.com/DoughertyJack/status/452440673942536192↩︎ Jack Dougherty and Kristen Nawrotzki, eds., Writing History in the Digital Age (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2013), https://doi.org/10.3998/dh.12230987.0001.001.↩︎ Connecticut History, “Trinity College Students Call Attention to Histories of Inequality”.↩︎ Daly, “Race Restrictive Covenants in Property Deeds”.↩︎ Amanda Gurren, “Connecticut Takes the Wheel on Education Reform: Project Concern” (ConnecticutHistory.org, April 2013), http://connecticuthistory.org/connecticut-takes-the-wheel-on-education-reform-project-concern/.↩︎ McGann, “The Effects of ‘Redlining’ on the Hartford Metropolitan Region”.↩︎ Meehan, “The Debate Over Who Could Occupy World War II Public Housing in West Hartford”.↩︎ Rioual, “Sheff v. O’Neill Settlements Target Educational Segregation In Hartford”.↩︎ Rollins, “Five Minutes That Changed Connecticut”.↩︎ Nicole Sagullo, “How Real Estate Practices Influenced the Hartford Region’s Demographic Makeup” (ConnecticutHistory.org, February 2013), http://connecticuthistory.org/how-real-estate-practices-influenced-the-hartford-regions-demographic-makeup/.↩︎ Victoria Smith-Ellison, “Hartford’s Great Migration Through Charles S. Johnson’s Eyes” (ConnecticutHistory.org, February 2013), http://connecticuthistory.org/hartfords-great-migration-through-charles-s-johnsons-eyes/.↩︎ Savahna Reuben, “Education/Instrucción Combats Housing Discrimination” (ConnecticutHistory.org, December 2014), http://connecticuthistory.org/educationinstruccion-combats-housing-discrimination/.↩︎ "],["uncovering-unwritten.html", "Uncovering Unwritten Rules Against Jewish and Black Students at Trinity College", " Uncovering Unwritten Rules Against Jewish and Black Students at Trinity College This section supplements the prior chapter on A Jewish Grocer and the Origins of Zoning in this book. It sheds more light on anti-Jewish and anti-Black views and policies implemented by Trinity College leaders during the 1910s and ’20s, which were largely hidden from public view until recent years. Today at Trinity, the Primus Project “aspires to tell a truer and fuller story of Trinity’s history” by exploring how the institution and key individuals “engaged with systems of slavery and white supremacy.” Also, President Joanne Berger-Sweeney announced that Trinity will relaunch its Committee on Named Facilities and Commemoratives to evaluate how spaces are named.227 Although “unwritten rules” against Jews typically did not appear in public documents in this period, in certain cases we can find them in private documents that their creators believed would remain secret. At Trinity College, Hartford’s preeminent institution of higher education, administrative and student leaders expressed explicitly anti-Semitic views from 1915 to at least 1922, and implemented strategies to reduce the number of Jewish students—and to reject all Black applicants—according to Board of Trustees meeting minutes that were long hidden from public view. For decades, Trinity Board Minutes were guarded as “confidential” and “not available for research use,” even by Trinity faculty members like me. Trinity archivist Peter Knapp wrote a book in 2000 that acknowledged the College’s anti-Jewish policies and quoted from Board minutes. But these source documents were not made publicly available until the Trinity Archives changed its policy in 2017 to release materials after a 50-year period, and began to upload them to the digital repository in 2019. Since Trinity’s anti-Jewish rules did not appear in any standard College publications or newspaper accounts from this period, they would have remained invisible today if Trinity’s archivists had not made this history public. Furthermore, anti-Semitism at Trinity is noteworthy because the Episcopalians who established the College in 1823 directly challenged the lack of religious tolerance in the Congregational Church that dominated state government at that time, and adopted a charter that promised Trinity would “not make the religious tenets of any person a condition of admission.”228 Rev. Flavel S. Luther served as President of Trinity College from 1904 to 1919. In public, he was a well-respected mathematician, engineer, and ordained minister in the Episcopalian Church. Hartford voters also elected him to the Connecticut State Senate from 1907 to 1911, where his key accomplishment was to consolidate rural school districts and solidify town-level governance. Luther was a Progressive-era Republican who identified with (and bore some resemblance to) former US President Theodore Roosevelt, who accepted his invitation to deliver Trinity’s commencement address in 1918. To this day, a Trinity student tradition is to wait until graduation day before stepping on the Luther-Roosevelt commemorative stone on the Long Walk.229 Figure 8.17: Former US President Theodore Roosevelt (left) delivered the 1918 commencement address at the invitation of his friend, Trinity President Flavel S. Luther (left), an event commemorated by the “TR-FSL” plaque that students traditionally avoid stepping on prior to graduation day. Images from Weaver, History of Trinity College and “Traditions” web page at Trinity. But behind closed doors, Luther and his contemporaries spoke candidly against Jews. Luther first raised the topic with Trinity’s Board of Trustees in 1915, when he warned them about “the problem presented by the slow, but unmistakable, increase of the number of Jews at the College,” as shown in Figure 8.18. At that time, probably about 10 percent of the 250 students on campus were Jewish, and most of these students resided in the city of Hartford rather than on campus. “Their presence is resented by the other students and has occasioned many protests by the alumni,” Luther observed, and cautioned that “if they increase, the matter may easily become serious.” Luther expressed his conviction that Trinity “should do its share in educating these aliens, whatever their race or religion… [because] it is only by education that they can ever be assimilated and Americanized.” Nevertheless, he believed that Jewish student enrollment should be limited in some way because “we cannot afford to sacrifice any of the really higher interests of the college for the sake of a special class.” No objections were recorded among the other fourteen board members in attendance, including distinguished clergymen, bankers, judges, and businessmen. No one mentioned that Trinity’s founders originally established their college on the principles of religious tolerance.230 Figure 8.18: Scrolling version: Explore excerpts of anti-Jewish and anti-Black views and policies by Trinity College leaders in the Board of Trustees meeting minutes from 1915 to 1922, or view the entire document in the Trinity Digital Repository. Although some Jewish students were admitted, Trinity leaders refused to accept Black students in this era. During the same closed-door meeting in 1915, President Luther confided to Board members that he had received several applications from “colored boys who wished to enter Trinity College,” but reported that he found ways to reject all of them. “In each case so far I have been able to avoid an issue by methods which savor somewhat, I fear, of insincerity; but which have been effective.” Perhaps Luther lied to Black applicants about their qualifications, or the finances that would be required, or invented some other reasons why they could not attend Trinity. Looking into the future, he predicted that “the time will come when this matter must be faced and definitely decided.” But that day was in the distant future, because Trinity only admitted a few Black students in the 1950s, and did not begin to address racism in its admissions practices until the late 1960s.231 Luther accurately predicted that the rising number of Jewish students would soon become a “serious” problem at Trinity College. In April 1918, the Board of Trustees heard from a Student Senate committee, appointed by the faculty “as the result of undergraduate expression of feeling against the Jews.” Five Student Senators, two of whom also led the Trinity Tripod campus newspaper, claimed that the “alarmingly” high rate of Jewish enrollment was approaching 25 percent (although the actual figure was closer to 15 percent). Student Senators’ objections to Jews reflected their negative views of Hartford residents and recent Eastern European immigrants. “The Jews come up to the College from the city, get all they can from from the College, and give nothing to the College,” they wrote. Although Student Senators praised the high scholastic standing of their Jewish peers, they criticized their lack of support for college athletics as well as the war effort. “Speaking in general terms, the Jews have not enlisted in military service while the Gentiles have,” they claimed. Furthermore, the Student Senators complained that “most of the Jews at Trinity are Russian,” which they believed meant that every classroom “has a Russian socialistic expression of opinion.” As a consequence, they told the Board that their classmates “hesitate about showing friends around the College, when they are sure to be greeted frequently by Jews.” Board members asked President Luther to address this problem.232 President Luther presented more data and observations about Jewish students at the June 1918 Board meeting, He understood Trinity’s larger problem was that World War I caused total enrollment to fall from around 250 to only 158 students in 1917-18, when many men left college to enlist in military service or join the workforce. The actual number of Jewish students remained relatively stable at 25 that year, but the proportion of Jews on campus had risen to 15 percent. Drawing on his personal observations of student life, Luther pointed to “a few of the Jews in College who, by reason of exceptional personal qualities, are cordially accepted as good fellows. The other students call them ‘White Jews’.” Luther’s comment revealed how Trinity’s dominant White Protestant culture considered most Jews to be non-White in this era, and assigned them to a lower position in the racial hierarchy. While Luther described Jews as “good scholars… who pay their bills,” he concluded that “they are a definite hindrance to the growth of the College,” and suggested ways that Trinity might deter their future enrollment, perhaps by mandatory Christian chapel services.233 One year later, Trinity student leaders continued to demand that the College reduce Jewish enrollments, but now cloaked their anti-Semitism in more publicly acceptable language of the era. The “Student Movement for Americanization at Trinity” submitted its resolutions to the Board of Trustees in April 1919, and demanded a reduction in “the undesirable element,” a slightly coded phrase that replaced direct references to “Jews” or “Hebrews.” While Americanization proponents recognized that Trinity’s charter promised equality of opportunity regardless of religion, they argued that “90% of the undesirable element lives in Hartford,” and that the College needed to discourage local Jews from attending Trinity. They proposed a policy of “compulsory residence” in college dormitories “to influence and Americanize all students which cannot be done to some of the students while living at their homes.” Their proposal echoed former President Theodore Roosevelt’s warning against the nation becoming “a polyglot boarding house,” and aligned with Connecticut Governor Marcus Holcomb’s agenda for the newly-launched Department of Americanization.234 Trinity leaders embraced the Americanization strategy by enacting an alien-residence policy. To address what some discreetly called “the particularly undesirable element which so seriously lowers the standing of the College,” the Board voted to require on-campus dormitory residence for all freshmen and sophomore students “of alien birth, and… whose fathers were of alien birth,” effective in Fall 1919. This alien-residence policy was designed to discourage Hartford Jews from attending (since they would have to pay additional residence fees rather than live at home), and to assimilate those who did enroll. The College focused only on students’ first two formative years, in part because they lacked sufficient dormitories to mandate it for all students. Board members also discussed whether the alien-residence rule should appear in official College publications, and finally granted President Luther permission to do so. The outcome was a one-page supplement to the 1918-19 Trinity Catalogue, as shown in Figure 8.19, published at the end of the academic year in June 1919 so that hardly anyone would actually see it in print. The alien-residence rule did not appear in future editions of the Catalogue, nor the Student Handbook, nor the Trinity Tripod student newspaper, nor the Hartford Courant daily newspaper. This cleverly allowed Trinity leaders to hide the policy away from public view, yet still enforce a rule that was “on the books.” 235 Figure 8.19: Explore the alien-residence rule in a June 1919 one-page supplement, added nearly a year after the publication of the 1918-19 Trinity College Catalogue. This effectively hid the rule from public view, but still allowed Trinity officials to enforce it. View the full document in the Trinity Digital Repository. Trinity leaders definitely enforced their alien-residence policy. Officials reported to the Board in October 1919 that the rule was applied to 16 students, but “only three of these cases were Hebrews.” This may have signaled that the policy began to meet its goal by deterring some Hartford Jews from applying and assimilating others who chose to enroll, or that other immigrant groups were finding their way to Trinity. To avoid burdening non-Jewish immigrants, the Board refined its policy to exempt “students of alien parentage residing in other towns than Hartford” from the dormitory residence requirement, at the discretion of administrators. In other words, the son of a Swedish immigrant in West Hartford could attend Trinity while continuing to live at home, but the son of a Jewish or Italian immigrant in Hartford could not.236 Two years later, new Trinity President Remsen Ogilby asked the Board to grant him greater discretion over the College’s alien-residence policy, while continuing to quietly limit the number of Jewish students. In June 1921, Ogilby asked the Board “for a reconsideration of the rule requiring sons of foreign born to live on the campus,” and noted that the rule “has caused bitter feelings in some quarters.” Initially, Ogilby seemed to take a stand against treating Jewish students differently. “If the rule is intended to keep out the members of one single race,” he warned, “it is not honest and rules out too many good students who would otherwise be with us.” The Board voted to grant him the power to waive the alien-residence rule on a case-by-case basis. Yet one year later, Ogilby reported on Trinity’s success in reducing its Jewish population. “The number of Jewish students has been a matter of interest to many of us and has concerned two or three,” Ogilby told the Board in 1922, attempting to minimize and put past controversies behind him. He proudly announced that “the percentage of Hebrews in the student body” had declined from 10.5 percent in 1921 to 9 percent in 1922. Interestingly, his presentation did not emphasize that the actual number of Jewish students had remained stable at around 25 (roughly the same number as in 1918), a fact that was disguised because the proportion of Jewish students declined after World War I, when Trinity’s total enrollment rebounded to 268 men. Furthermore, Ogilby backed off his initial stance against treating Jewish students differently. In 1922 he presented additional suggestions on “limiting the number of Hebrew students” to the Board’s Executive Committee, which they discussed, without acting upon, at least on record. Unlike other institutions such as Harvard and Yale, there is no direct evidence that Trinity overtly or covertly invoked an admissions quota to reduce Jewish student enrollment. Instead, Trinity relied on its alien-residence policy to discourage Hartford Jews from attending, and to assimilate those who persisted. Since this rule was hidden from public view, and did not surface again in confidential Board minutes, we do not know when Trinity stopped enforcing it.237 In the following decades, scarcely any mention about Jewish or Black students appears in the Trinity Board of Trustee minutes that are currently digitized and publicly available, which at this moment stops in 1967. We do not know whether these topics were not discussed during Board meetings, or if they were discussed in ways to avoid mentioning them in the official minutes. Furthermore, what do the Trustee minutes reveal about being “locked-in” their April 22, 1968 Board meeting by more than 160 Trinity students protesting for increased financial aid for Black students and the expansion of Black studies in the curriculum? What do the official documents tell us about the aftermath of this protest, when the Trustees and the Faculty conflicted over the question of punishing student activists? We do not yet know much more than what appears in the pages of former archivist Peter Knapp’s history of Trinity College. But the current Trinity College Archives policy states that Board of Trustee records are sealed “for a period of 50 years from the date of creation.” According to current archivist Eric Stoykovich, while the Trustees’ Minutes for this period of controversy are officially open to researchers, the 9th volume (dated April 15, 1967 to May 27, 1972) is not yet available in digitized form, but could become fully available in May 2022.238 “The Primus Project: Slavery, Race, and Reconstruction at Trinity College” (Trinity College, 2021), https://www.trincoll.edu/primus-project/; Joanne Berger-Sweeney, “Naming Buildings at Trinity [Email to the College Community]” (Trinity College, March 31, 2021).↩︎ Knapp and Knapp, Trinity College in the Twentieth Century, pp. 57-61; Eric Stoykovich, “Availability of Trinity Board of Trustee Minutes [Email to Dougherty],” March 29, 2021. See 1823 College Charter reprinted in Trinity College, Bulletin (Catalogue) (Hartford CT, 1919), https://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/bulletin/73, p. 12.↩︎ Norris Galpin Osborn, “Flavel Sweeten Luther, Jr.” in Men of Mark in Connecticut: Ideals of American Life Told in Biographies and Autobiographies of Eminent Living Americans (W.R. Goodspeed, 1906), 125–29, https://books.google.com/books?id=ARFh_Sbpg84C&pg=PA125; “Commencement [Photo],” Trinity Tripod, June 22, 1918, https://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3071&context=tripod; “Dr. F.S. Luther, Educator, Is Dead,” New York Times, January 5, 1928, http://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1928/01/05/91673229.html; Glenn Weaver, The History of Trinity College (Hartford CT: Trinity College Press, 1967), https://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/w_books/4/, pp. 264-68; “Traditions: The Luther-Roosevelt Long Walk Inscription” (Trinity College, 2020), https://www.trincoll.edu/abouttrinity/history-traditions/traditions/.↩︎ 18 June 1915 Report by President Luther, read aloud at 21 June 1915 meeting, Trinity College, Board of Trustees Minutes, Volume 3 (1908-1926), p. 169. Other Board members attending were Rev. Francis Goodwin (Hartford parks architect), Rev. William Vibbert (New York City rector), P. Henry Woodward (Hartford banker), Rev. Chauncey Brewster (New Haven rector), William C. Skinner (President of Colt’s Manufacturing), Ambrose Spencer Murray Jr., Hon. Frank L. Wilcox (Connecticut banker), Rev. Henry Ferguson, Edgar Waterman (Trinity treasurer), Edward B. Hatch (Hartford manufacturer), George D. Howell, Hon. Joseph Buffington (US Circuit Court judge), Robert Thorne, Rev. Samuel Hart (Divinity School dean). The 10 percent Jewish student estimate is based on 23 Jewish students in 1914-15 (p. 277) and a total enrollment of 257 students in 1913-14 (p. 297). “Dr. F.S. Luther, Educator, Is Dead”.↩︎ 21 June 1915 meeting, Trinity College, Board of Trustees Minutes, Volume 3 (1908-1926), p. 169. On the small number of Black and Asian students at Trinity prior to the 1920s, see Knapp and Knapp, Trinity College in the Twentieth Century, pp. 337-341.↩︎ “Tripod Elections,” Trinity Tripod [Newspaper], May 7, 1918, https://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3076&context=tripod.↩︎ President Luther report to Board of Trustees, 28 May 1918, read aloud at Board meeting, 14 June 1918 Trinity College, Board of Trustees Minutes, Volume 3 (1908-1926), pp. 276-278. On “White Jews,” see Karen Brodkin, How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says About Race in America (Rutgers University Press, 1998), https://books.google.com/books?id=itdBdt8OvMwC. Trinity re-instated compulsory chapel services on weekdays and Sundays in January 1919, “unless men are excused to attend church in town,” “Compulsory Chapel at Trinity Again,” Hartford Courant, January 4, 1919, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/556660353/abstract/35FB0E56F7734710PQ/1.↩︎ Student Movement for Americanization at Trinity resolutions, presented at 26 April 1919 Board meeting, Trinity College, Board of Trustees Minutes, Volume 3 (1908-1926), pp. 320-321; “Good Luck Says Governor”; “Americanization Is Urged by Roosevelt in His Last Message”.↩︎ Report of the Special Committee, presented at 20 June 1919 Board meeting, p. 329-330; Motion voted on at 20 June 1919 Board meeting, p. 333-334; 20 June 1919 Board of Fellows report, p. 335, Trinity College, Board of Trustees Minutes, Volume 3 (1908-1926); Trinity College, “Supplement to the Catalogue for Trinity College,” in Trinity College Bulletin, 1918 - 1919 (Hartford CT, 1918), https://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/bulletin/74/; Davarian L. Baldwin, In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower: How Universities Are Plundering Our Cities (Bold Type Books, 2021), https://www.google.com/books/edition/_/i0mkzQEACAAJ, pp. 26-27. No mention of the alien-residence policy appeared in the Trinity College Bulletin (Catalogue) from 1919 to 1923, the Trinity Student Handbook for 1922-1923 (no issues available prior to 1916-17), the Trinity Tripod student newspaper for 1919, or the Hartford Courant daily newspaper.↩︎ Report of the Special Committee, presented at 20 June 1919 Board meeting, p. 329-330; Motion voted on at 20 June 1919 Board meeting, p. 333-334; 20 June 1919 Board of Fellows report, p. 335; 24 October 1919 Report of the Executive Committee to the Board, p. 341, Trinity College, Board of Trustees Minutes, Volume 3 (1908-1926).↩︎ 17 June 1921 President Ogilby report to Board, p. 396; 18 June 1941 Board vote, p. 408; 28 October 1922, President Ogilby report to the Board, p. 439; 28 October 1922 Report of the Executive Committee, Trinity College, p. 441. For comparisons with other academic institutions, see Marcia Synnott, The Half-Opened Door: Discrimination and Admissions at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, 1900-1970 (Routledge, 2017), https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Half_Opened_Door/oRwuDwAAQBAJ; Jerome Karabel, The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005), https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Chosen/1Nf3FxMIEB8C; Wendy H. Bergoffen, “Jewish Experience at Amherst College,” in Amherst in the World, ed. Martha Saxton (Amherst College, 2020), https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11873533.↩︎ Knapp and Knapp, Trinity College in the Twentieth Century, chapter 6; Stoykovich, “Availability of Trinity Board of Trustee Minutes [Email to Dougherty]”.↩︎ "],["teaching-oral-history.html", "Teaching Oral History", " Teaching Oral History This chapter-in-progress was prepared for the “Panel Discussion on Oral History and African American Educational History,” with Nicholas Kryczka, Dionti Davis, Jackie Blount, and Dionne Danns at the History of Education Society meeting in November 2019. The need for a chapter on ways of teaching oral history was inspired by a conversation a year earlier with Pamela Grundy, Jake Hardesty, and Kevin Zayed at the History of Education Society meeting in November 2018. Organizations such as the Oral History Association and other authors have published many helpful guides, including the OHA Principles and Best Practices. Most of these guides emphasize the logistics and legalities of collecting and curating interviews, primarily for directors of oral history centers, archivists, and scholars. But relatively few focus on the pedagogical planning for teaching students how to prepare and interpret oral histories, particularly in the context of a college-level course. This DRAFT chapter seeks to offer both strategic and pragmatic advice. Historians can learn a great deal from ethnographers, journalists, podcasters, and others who have been trained or gained valuable experience in interviewing people and listening carefully to how they tell their stories …. and we can add to their work by emphasizing what historians do best: listening to how people tell stories about the past as a way to analyze change and continuity over time, and linking individual testimonies to the broader context. Overall, start small – teaching with oral history will become much easier the second and third time, when you will have sample interview guides, transcripts, and essays to share with future classes Integrating oral history into your course This chapter is written primarily for history educators who wish to incorporate oral history into their courses, with examples drawn from college-level courses. But before we leap too far ahead in the planning process, it’s important for instructors to gain first-hand experience in the steps we ask of our students – such as interviewing, transcribing, and analyzing – before creating an oral history assignment for an entire class. If these steps are new to you, then perhaps the best way to start is to assign yourself some oral history homework, and consider inviting a colleague or a small number of students to accompany you in the process. Over the years I’ve coached several faculty who are ready to take the next step of integrating oral history into their class, most often for a history and/or education class, but also for courses in sociology, anthropology, economics, and religion. Most of these faculty faced an important curricular decision: How might an oral history project fit into my existing course? Or, how should I reorganize my course to fit better with an oral history project? Either way, a common goal is to deepen student learning about the past by engaging with people whose lived experiences may differ from our own, and/or whose perspectives may challenge us to reconsider previously published accounts. At least five conceptual models for integrating oral history into courses stand out in my mind (and I encourage readers to email me with others that I have overlooked). The class analyzes pre-recorded interviews: While interviewing a real person has intrinsic value, there’s also much to be learned from reading transcripts, listening to audio, or watching video of interviews that have already been conducted, especially as oral history collections become more widely accessible on the web. This model may be most appropriate for courses on topics that have no living narrators, or no local access to topics in different parts of the world. It also may work best in courses that focus primarily on analyzing oral histories, as described further below. Each student conducts an individualized interview: In this model, each student is assigned to conduct an interview with a narrator, often a person of their choice, on a topic related to the class, then compare this oral account to conventional published sources. This model can work in a class regardless of its size, because the work is individualized, with no collaboration between students. For example, in a large US history survey course that relies on a textbook, the instructor can assign students to conduct an interview with a family member to compare their memories of an event or time period to its portrayal in the text. The class conducts and observes a group interview: In this model, the entire class observes a group interview with one narrator, typically through pre-planned questions asked by a series of students. This approach only works if the narrator is comfortable with being interviewed in a large-group setting (and see more about this further below). One benefit is that the oral history typically is conducted during class time with everyone listening, and can be set up to model good interviewing skills. Individual students conduct similar interviews and share transcripts: In this model, the class must be assigned or agree on a common set of interview questions, designed for people who have a common experience or time period. Each student conducts an interview with a narrator, either of their choice or assigned by the instructor. Next, students share transcripts, either in small groups or the entire class, either on paper or through a shared digital folder. The instructor can assign students to analyze patterns across interviews, and/or compare narrators’ experiences with conventionally published sources. Students conduct similar interviews at a community event and share transcripts: This resembles the “History Harvest” model developed by historians Will Thomas and Patrick Jones at the University of Nebraska. [Add cites] The class participates a public history event, perhaps co-hosted with a community organization, to bring together narrators to sit for interviews with individual students. This approach requires more coordination and time commitment than others above, but also has potential to expand the community of learners far beyond the classroom. Since these are conceptual models, educators can mix and match to suit their learning goals. For example, I have arranged for my class to conduct a group interview as a practice session with a dual-role narrator, prior to their individual interviews using a common questionnaire. A dual-role narrator belongs to the community our class seeks to interview, but also is familiar with our academic mission and need to teach novice interviewers. One dual-role narrator who partnered with my Cities Suburbs and Schools seminar was Renita Satchell. During the 1970s, she was a young African-American student enrolled in the Project Concern city-suburb interdistrict busing program for racial integration. Decades later, she worked as a staff member in Open Choice, the successor program to Project Concern. In 2002, she agreed to partner with my seminar on our Project Concern Alumni oral history project. To help my students improve their interview questionnaire and skills, she agreed to participate in a group practice interview during our class. During the practice portion, a series of students each asked Renita a question that their class had prepared in advance, with the recorder running and everyone listening. Immediately afterwards, during the talk-back portion, Renita reflect with us on what worked well, and what we needed to improve. Typical reflection questions include: Did the interview questions make sense? Or use words or terms that narrators may not understand? Did interviewers follow-up when appropriate, and refrain from interrupting? Did the interview encourage storytelling by the narrator? Even when only a small number of students ask interview questions during our practice session, the entire class learns by listening closely and imagining what they would have done if they were in their classmates’ shoes. Several years later, my Cities Suburbs and Schools seminar and I co-hosted a “Civil Rights History Harvest” event with the Sheff Movement for school integration on their 25th anniversary public celebration. Describe more from this link Decide who will be interviewed, and why Think carefully about how and why you are selecting interview participants. There is nothing wrong with a selected sample or even a snowball sample, as long as you recognize and write out limitations. Preparing students to interview and listen Previously I searched for the “best oral history” article or chapter to assign to my students, thinking that knowledge would help them become better interviewers. But I now believe that interviewing is best taught as experiential learning, where students engage in the process and reflect on their successes and mistakes. Check privilege at the door. Describe more about crafting interview question about race, perspective, and power. The best interviewers are the best listeners, not the best talkers, which typically is the opposite behavior of what we instructors encourage in our discussion-based classrooms. Assign the class to listen to a pre-recorded interview (read a sample interview transcript, Read a sample interview transcript (and recording): In what portions did the interviewer do well, and how? Where could the interviewer have improved? Point out places where participants were encouraged to elaborate or redirected to the core question, or interrupted, allowed to ramble – include CSS samples Read up on the people you’re interviewing… one of the best ways that historians can build rapport with interview participants, and show respect for their lives, is to bring them copies of photographs, newspaper clippings, or archival documents that we have found in our historical research. These tangible pieces of the past also can spark memories, “How do you feel when looking back at this photograph?” and also prompt some comparative interview questions, such as “Is there anything that the newspapers back then left out of the story?” Craft a common interview guide. Closed-ended survey-style questions versus open-ended questions that encourage participants to tell stories. Inserting prompts: “tell me more about…” and “how did you feel?” (not just how did you think or do) – include CSS samples. (focusing on a select number of essential questions, rather than a long list of questions) When my colleague Mira Debs, a sociologist of education at Yale University, visited one of my Trinity College classes in 2016, we crafted what we jokingly called the Debs-Dougherty Interviewing Principles, to encapsulate the advice we found ourselves repeating to our undergraduate research students: Design interview questions to obtain responses that you can analyze to answer your research question. Ask open-ended questions that encourage participants to tell their stories. Listen attentively as participants respond and avoid interrupting, unless they go way off track and you need to bring them back. Follow up with prompts (“Tell me more about….”) as needed to focus their responses or delve deeper. Perhaps Mira and I were mistaken to “jokingly” label these guidelines, because in all seriousness, it’s exactly what our students — and perhaps yours — need to hear. Ethical questions: Who owns oral history? Whether or not “individualized” oral history interviews are subject to IRB review has been debated for decades, and in 2015, the US federal government effectively made oral history interviewing exempt, DESCRIBE more from https://www.oralhistory.org/information-about-irbs/. But even if your oral history class project is not subject to IRB review, oral historians still contend that there are ethical obligations for participants to voluntarily consent and know what will become of their interview recordings and transcripts, particularly with vulnerable populations. One of the most important and overlooked questions is “who owns the oral history interview?” See this chapter in this volume https://ontheline.trincoll.edu/who-owns-oral-history.html Recording and transcribing oral history Everything I taught has now been replaced by http://Trint.com Teaching students to analyze and write about oral history Here’s where reading helps greatly, compared to the experience of interviewing Review key concepts from Jack Dougherty, “From Anecdote to Analysis: Oral Interviews and New Scholarship in Educational History,” The Journal of American History 86, no. 2 (1999): 712–23, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2567055. Preserving oral history in collaboration with libraries, archives, museums more to come, see CTDA https://collections.ctdigitalarchive.org/islandora/object/120002:otl "],["who-owns-oral-history.html", "Who Owns Oral History? A Creative Commons Solution", " Who Owns Oral History? A Creative Commons Solution by Jack Dougherty and Candace Simpson This is an updated version of an essay that was previously published in 2012 in an open-access book, Oral History in the Digital Age.239 Who “owns” oral history? When an oral history narrator shares her story in response to questions posed by an interviewer, and the recording and transcript are deposited in an archive, who holds the rights to these historical source materials? Who decides whether or not they may be shared with the public, quoted in a publication, or uploaded to the web? Who decides whether someone has the right to earn money from including an interview in a commercially distributed book, video, or website? Furthermore, does Creative Commons, a licensing tool developed by the open access movement to protect copyright while increasing public distribution, offer a better solution to these questions than existing oral history protocols?[http://creativecommons.org] Oral historians have begun to ask these types of questions as we confront new challenges of doing our work in the Internet era. At a November 2010 planning symposium for the Oral History in the Digital Age project, law and technology professor Sheldon Halpern posed the provocative question: “What do you think you own?” One of the symposium participants, Troy Reeves, reflected on its broad implications for the field. Over a decade ago, when narrators granted an oral history interview and signed a release form, they could assume that the audio/video recording and transcript “would remain under the care and control” of an archive or library, which would hold ownership rights and grant access to the public as it deemed appropriate. But the Web is dramatically revising these assumptions. Many oral history repositories have begun to share the content of their holdings online and, in the words of one archivist, believe “it is worth giving up some control for the greater good of having more people use the materials.”240 We elaborate on our thinking about how the Internet has transformed the historical profession in our open-access edited volume, Writing History in the Digital Age.241 As an alternative to traditional protocols, Jack and his student researchers began to incorporate Creative Commons language in oral history consent forms while conducting interviews in the metropolitan region of Hartford, Connecticut for the Cities Suburbs and Schools Project at Trinity College. Several interviews are featured in our freely accessible, public history web book, On the Line: How Schooling Housing, and Civil Rights Shaped Hartford and its Suburbs, and many are hosted by the Trinity College Digital Repository.242 By blending interpretive text with oral interviews and other interactive features, this web-book tells the story of how real estate firms maintained the color line, mortgage lenders engaged in red-lining, families sought homes on the more desirable side of school attendance lines, and activists fought to cross, redraw, or erase these lines. We initially presented this essay as part of a broader discussion on “Whose Civil Rights Stories on the Web?” at the 2012 joint meeting of the Organization of American Historians/National Council on Public History.243 Jack: In the mid-1990s, I began to conduct oral history interviews for my dissertation research on African-American school reform activists in Milwaukee. I recorded interviews, followed standard protocols for consent forms and institutional review, and made good on my promise to transcribe and return a free copy of the tape and transcript to each of the sixty participants who kindly shared their history.244 But the “best practices” in the field left me feeling unsatisfied. Originally, I had been drawn toward oral history and public history as means of community empowerment on civil rights history, but the standard guidelines required me to ask people who freely offered their stories to sign away some of their rights. At that time, my reference guide for consent forms was the Oral History Association’s pamphlet by John Neuenschwander, Oral History and the Law, which has since been expanded into a book.245 On the legal question of ownership, as soon as the interview is recorded, the oral history narrator initially holds the copyright, but standard practice is to prepare a consent form to transfer away those rights. As Neuenschwander explains, “The vast majority of oral historians and programs at some point secure the transfer of the interviewee’s copyright interests by means of a legal release agreement,” and offers sample language in the appendix.246 Similarly, the Oral History Association’s 2009 statement on “Principles and Best Practices” fully expects oral history participants to sign over their rights as part of the standard procedure for conducting interviews: “The interviewer should secure a release form, by which the narrator transfers his or her rights to the interview to the repository or designated body, signed after each recording session or at the end of the last interview with the narrator.”247 As I understood copyright law, since I wished to create a transcript of the interview and freely quote from it in my scholarly writing, the transfer of copyright away from the narrator was in my best interest. But here was the ugly irony: as a white scholar of the civil rights movement, my consent form required African American activists to “sign over” rights to their oral history interview. At that time, the best arrangement I could negotiate was a two-step process, because I was working with two different repositories. First, my consent form asked oral history narrators to transfer their copyrights directly to me, which in turn, I donated with the tapes and transcripts to two institutions: the Wisconsin Black Historical Society/Museum (a local public history organization that was best positioned to share these stories with the African-American community) and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Library archives (a better-funded, predominantly white institution that was better equipped to share this history more widely on the emerging Internet). I intentionally partnered with both repositories, and kept my promise to give tapes and transcripts back to all parties, to counter prior generations of white academics and journalists who had come into Milwaukee’s black community to “scoop” up stories, while leaving nothing behind. The 1995 version of my oral history consent form included this key language, paraphrased from Neuenschwander’s 1993 pamphlet: I agree to be interviewed and tape recorded by Jack Dougherty, as part of his dissertation research on the recent history of African-American education in Milwaukee. At the end of the research project, the original tapes and edited transcripts will be donated to the Milwaukee Urban Archives at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the Wisconsin Black Historical Society/Museum. These materials will be identified by my name and made available to the public for scholarly and educational purposes, unless exceptions are listed below… I also grant to Jack Dougherty any title to copyright, property right, or literary rights in the recording(s) and their use in publication, as well as to any reproductions, transcripts, indexes, or finding aids produced from the recording(s). My participation in this project is entirely voluntary, and I may withdraw at any time prior to its conclusion and the donation of the materials to the Archives. Check here to receive a free copy of the tape. Check here to receive a free copy of any transcriptions (whole or partial) for the opportunity to proofread or clarify your spoken words. Yet I was frustrated with this language about copyright transfer. In my eyes, the wording was a necessary evil to preserve these valuable oral histories in a university archive (whose staff at that time coached me on the consent form) and to allow me to quote extensively from them in my eventual book (as required by my publisher’s copyright permissions process). Understandably, many Black Milwaukeeans were highly skeptical or hesitant when I explained the terms of the consent form. Several expressed deep concern that it asked them to sign away their life stories, which I assured them was not the case. A few agreed to be interviewed but did not sign the form. A few others refused to be interviewed at all. One persuaded me, after our interview, to write up a special consent form that preserved her copyright and granted me permission to quote specified passages in my writing, but did not extend any rights to others, such as the archives. Eventually, over sixty oral history participants did agree to sign my consent form, for which I was grateful. Some signed in exchange for a free copy of the recording and transcript as a contribution to their own family histories. Others were motivated by the public good of preserving and sharing their civil rights stories through one or both of my archival partner organizations. Together, all of these conversations challenged me to think more deeply about who benefited from this contractual arrangement. If activists freely shared their civil rights stories with me, did I have the right to profit as a professional historian? The process expanded my thinking about oral history and the public good, and upon receiving an academic book contract, I returned my share of royalties (and later, prize money and speaking fees) back to the Wisconsin Black Historical Society/Museum to continue their public history work. Given my understanding of oral history and copyright law as a graduate student in the mid-1990s, this was the best user-friendly consent form I could envision. Looking back, there were some alternatives that deserved more consideration. For instance, I could have expanded on the copyright transfer language by adding a line that retained the narrators’ rights to utilize their own interviews during their lifetimes.248 But adding this clause fails to address the underlying issue of transfer of copyright ownership away from the narrator, and out of their family’s hands at the end of their lifetime. Another alternative I could have explored further was to ask narrators to make their interviews part of the public domain. But this option would have gone to the extreme of eliminating all of their rights under copyright law, and furthermore, at that time I could not find useful examples of this approach by oral historians.249 Under these circumstances, this mid-1990s consent form was the best I could do at the time, yet it left a bitter taste and a strong desire to find a better model in the future. Candace: When I began working with the On The Line public history web-book project in the summer of 2011, one of my tasks was to conduct oral history interviews with Hartford civil rights activists. At this point, our research team had stopped using conventional consent forms (which asked participants to “sign over” all rights to their interviews) and had begun using a new form that Jack developed with Creative Commons language. Basically, Creative Commons (CC) is a standardized license that maintains the original copyright for the creator of a work, and allows it to be shared more widely with the public, with certain restrictions if desired. Initially released in 2002 with support from the Center for the Public Domain, there are now six types of CC licenses that offer different combinations of licensing terms for source attribution (BY), no derivative works (ND), share alike (SA), and non-commercial (NC) use.250 Figure 8.20: Six types of Creative Commons licenses. Figure source, 2012. At present, our standard oral history consent form uses the CC By Attribution—NonCommercial license, with this key language: I voluntarily agree to participate in an oral history video interview about [insert topic.] I can choose to pause, stop, or erase the recording at any time during the interview. Afterwards, I grant permission for the oral history video recording, with my name and a summary or transcript, to be distributed to the public for educational purposes, including formats such as print, public programming, and the Internet. Under this agreement, I keep the copyright to my interview, but agree to share it under a Creative Commons Attribution—NonCommercial 4.0 International license (BY-NC). This allows the public to freely copy, remix, and build on my interview, but only if they credit the original source and use it for non-commercial purposes. In return, the interviewer will send one free copy of the interview recording, and summary or transcript, to my address below. See the full oral history consent form in this book. We prefer the Creative Commons (CC) consent form because it clearly keeps the copyright in the hands of the oral history interview participant, but allows us to freely share the recording and transcript on our open-access public history book and library repository, where individuals and organizations may copy and circulate it, as long as they credit the original source and do not charge any fees. This NonCommercial restriction assures participants that other people cannot profit by selling their interviews, unless the participant wishes to do so under a separate agreement. As the Creative Commons “Frequently Asked Questions” section clarifies, once a CC license is applied to a work, it cannot be revoked, but all CC licenses are non-exclusive, meaning that the holder of the copyright (in this case, the interview participant) may grant additional licenses to other parties (such as a for-profit book or movie, if desired). Also, CC licenses do not limit “fair use” provisions of existing U.S. copyright law, meaning that commentators have the same rights to report on or quote from the original work.251 Furthermore, CC licenses are increasingly used by leading knowledge-based institutions such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) OpenCourseWare project and the Public Library of Science (PLOS). Overall, we believe that this combination of intellectual property tools—traditional copyright with Creative Commons licensing—–fits better with our primary goal of historical preservation and public education than does traditional copyright alone. In Hartford, a specific oral history interview we conducted with school integration activist Elizabeth Horton Sheff deserves mention, as shown in 8.21. She took our Creative Commons consent form one step further by renegotiating its terms, just before we began our video recording. Sheff agreed with our goal of preserving her oral history for the public good, but her primary concern was to avoid being quoted out of context, as she had experienced with journalists in the past. She wanted her oral history interview to be made available in its totality on the web, but not to allow others to create a modified or excerpted version. Fortunately, Sheff was familiar with Creative Commons because her son is in the independent music business. She asked for a “no derivatives” restriction, and on the spot, we modified the consent form license to the ByAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives CC license. As a result, her video recorded interview and transcript both appear in the Trinity College library digital repository, but to respect her restriction, we blocked users from downloading a copy of the video, to make it harder for them to create an edited version. Yet anyone can move the video time slider on their web browser to watch only a certain portion if desired (such as minutes 28 to 32). Furthermore, anyone may download the transcript of the interview, and quote from the text under “fair use” guidelines.252 Figure 8.21: View the oral history video interview and transcript with Elizabeth Horton Sheff in 2011. We do not contend that Creative Commons has resolved all of our questions about who “owns” oral history, nor do we claim expertise in intellectual property law. But as oral historians seeking alternatives, we believe that this combination—–traditional copyright with Creative Commons licensing—–fulfills our dual needs to maintain the rights of individual participants while sharing history with the public. About the authors: Jack Dougherty and Candace Simpson (Trinity 2012) developed these ideas while conducting oral history interviews for this book, and co-presented at the 2012 joint meeting of the Organization of American Historians/National Council on Public History. Jack later expanded the essay for publication. Jack Dougherty and Candace Simpson, “Who Owns Oral History? A Creative Commons Solution,” in Oral History in the Digital Age, ed. Doug Boyd et al. (Washington, DC: Institute of Library and Museum Services, 2012), http://ohda.matrix.msu.edu/2012/06/a-creative-commons-solution/.↩︎ Troy Reeves, “What Do You Think You Own,” in Oral History in the Digital Age, 2012, http://ohda.matrix.msu.edu/2012/06/what-do-you-think-you-own/.↩︎ Dougherty and Nawrotzki, Writing History in the Digital Age.↩︎ Trinity College Library, “Digital Repository, Cities, Suburbs, and Schools Project,” n.d., https://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp/.↩︎ Jack Dougherty and Candace Simpson, “Whose Civil Rights Stories on the Web? Authorship, Ownership, Access and Content in Digital History” (Presentation at Organization of American Historians & National Council on Public History, April 20, 2012), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/40/.↩︎ Jack Dougherty, More Than One Struggle: The Evolution of Black School Reform in Milwaukee (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), https://uncpress.org/book/9780807855249/more-than-one-struggle/ with interviews archived at Jack Dougherty, “More Than One Struggle Oral History Project Records” (University of Wisconsin Milwaukee Libraries, 2004), http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi/f/findaid/findaid-idx?c=wiarchives;view=reslist;subview=standard;didno=uw-mil-uwmmss0217, and some digitized at “March on Milwaukee” (University of Wisconsin Milwaukee Libraries), accessed November 23, 2018, https://uwm.edu/marchonmilwaukee/.↩︎ John Neuenschwander, Oral History and the Law, Revised Edition, Oral History Association Pamphlet Series No. 1 (Albuquerque: Oral History Association, 1993), originally published in 1985, has been updated and retitled as John A Neuenschwander, A Guide to Oral History and the Law (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).↩︎ Neuenschwander, A Guide to Oral History and the Law, p. 64. He also cites case law that the copyright may be jointly held by the interviewee and interviewer.↩︎ Oral History Association, “Principles and Best Practices,” 2009, http://www.oralhistory.org/do-oral-history/principles-and-practices/.↩︎ As I recall, one reason I did not include this clause in the consent form was because, in my mind at that time, I feared that the suggested language from the 1993 Oral History Association pamphlet (p. 46) and its emphasis on death might have scared away some of my elderly participants: “Allow me to copy, use and publish my oral memoir in part or in full until the earlier of my death or [insert date].” By contrast, Neuenschwander’s 2009 edition (p. 116) includes more life-affirming language: “[In return for transferring copyright], the Center grants me a nonexclusive license to utilize my interview/s during my lifetime.”↩︎ Neuenschwander’s 2009 edition now includes this sample language: “In making this gift I fully understand that my interview/s will not be copyrighted by me or the Oral History Program but will be immediately placed in the public domain. This decision is intended to provide maximum usage by future researchers” (p. 85).↩︎ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/↩︎ https://creativecommons.org/faq/#how-do-cc-licenses-operate↩︎ Elizabeth Horton Sheff, “Oral History Interview on Sheff Vs. O’Neill” (Cities, Suburbs, Schools Project, Trinity College Digital Repository, July 28, 2011), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_ohistory/16; See additional oral histories with participants in the Sheff v O’Neill school desegregation lawsuit in Trinity College Library, “Digital Repository, Cities, Suburbs, and Schools Project”; On The Line Digital Archives, “Connecticut Digital Archive Collection,” n.d., http://hdl.handle.net/11134/120002:otl.↩︎ "],["oral-history-consent.html", "Oral History Consent Form", " Oral History Consent Form This sample oral history consent form emerged from our thinking about “Who Owns Oral History? A Creative Commons Solution” in this book. Readers are welcome to be adapt and modify this form for their own purposes. [Insert title of] Oral History Project Informed consent and copyright permission form I voluntarily agree to participate in an oral history video interview about [insert general topic, such as: my memories and experiences about schooling, housing, and civil rights in the Hartford region.] I can choose to pause, stop, or erase the recording at any time during the interview. Afterwards, I grant permission for the oral history video recording, with my name and a summary or transcript, to be distributed to the public for educational purposes, including formats such as print, public programming, and the Internet. Under this agreement, I keep the copyright to my interview, but agree to share it under a Creative Commons Attribution—NonCommercial 4.0 International license (BY-NC). This allows the public to freely copy, remix, and build on my interview, but only if they credit the original source and use it for non-commercial purposes. In return, the interviewer will send one free copy of the interview recording, and summary or transcript, to my address below. Name: Mailing address: Phone and/or email: Signature: Date: If younger than 18, parent/guardian signature: Interviewer’s signature (to agree with copyright ownership by interviewee, with CC license): Questions? [Insert project director(s) name and contact info, plus project website] Keep one signed copy for project files and offer one copy to participant for their records "],["teaching-segregation-ct.html", "Teaching Segregation in Connecticut", " Teaching Segregation in Connecticut This chapter was prepared for the “Separate by Design: Teaching the History of Residential Segregation in Connecticut” educator workshop, sponsored by the Gilder Lehrman Center at Yale University, with Anthony Roy, Tom Thurston, Rashanda McCollum, and me on May 13th, 2021. Figure 8.22: Learn more about this event from the Gilder Lehrman Center at Yale, and view the video recording. While researching and writing this On The Line book-in-progress with undergraduate students at Trinity College, our primary goal has been to make visible the hidden boundary lines that have divided metropolitan Hartford from the past to the present, in order to engage wider audiences with our troubled history and pathways to changing our future. Rather than waiting until the full manuscript is finished, my contributors and I created this open-access book and uploaded chapters as we completed them to make this history more findable and useful. Also, we strived to write introductory-level chapters—since that’s where all of us begin—and to offer clear explanations instead of complex jargon. Pictures also play an important role in the book, and we’ve added interactive maps, charts, and other illustrations to help communicate concepts that can be difficult to grasp with words alone. The racial and economic segregation we see today did not happen overnight, nor was it caused by nature. The segregated patterns today were created by decisions made by prior generations of elected leaders, real estate interests, and homebuyers. Making sense of how cities and suburbs evolved over time is not simple. But if we really want to dismantle systemic racism and related power structures that shape our present-day reality, then we need to understand how these systems actually work. Teaching historical thinking is one part of the solution. In my prior work as a secondary school teacher, I learned the power of posing thoughtful questions—and providing accessible primary sources—to guide students to think like historians. Sam Wineburg and colleagues have created several valuable resources to assist K-12 teachers in this process, which build on the field of inquiry-based learning.253 In our state, Rebecca Furer has led the development of the TeachItConnecticut at CT Humanities, a growing collection of inquiry-based lesson plans to help elementary and secondary educators guide students to “think like historians” with Connecticut primary sources. To be clear, more work remains to be done. In particular, we need to fulfill the promise of CT Public Act 19-12 to include Black and Latino Studies in the public school curriculum. We also need to continually rethink the mainstream curriculum, and ways to connect White students and communities with the Connecticut’s history of segregation, and how to speaks to all of us. In this spirit, this chapter suggests ways to pair historical questions and source materials from the On The Line book that educators are welcome to freely borrow and adapt for their classrooms. While my current teaching context is at the college level, I’ve always been impressed by K-12 educators who find creative ways to integrate complex topics into the K-12 curriculum. If you have inquiry-based Connecticut history lesson plans you wish to share with other educators, consider sharing it with TeachItCT, or if you teaching ideas that are directly relevant to On The Line, please contact the authors. Neighborhood Change Question: How have neighborhoods changed in Connecticut from 1934 to today? Source: Map of Neighborhood Change in Connecticut, 1934-present. Figure 8.23: Explore the full-screen interactive map of neighborhood change in Connecticut, which displays side-by-side aerial imagery from 1934 to the present for the entire state. Search for an address and zoom into a specific location. Click the “Permalink” button in the bottom-left corner to save a specific view to share with others. For example, view how 1960s interstate highways carved up cities such as the I-84 exchange in Hartford’s Parkville neighborhood, or how suburban commercial and residential development altered rural farmland such as the WestFarms Mall area in West Hartford/Farmington. Open-source map developed by Ilya Ilyankou and Jack Dougherty for On The Line at Trinity College, with MAGIC UConn Libraries. Activity: Enter your school address. What looks different between then and now? What looks similar? Enter your home address. What looks different between then and now? What looks similar? Follow the path from your home to school. What differences or similarities do you notice? What might have caused the changes you see in the photos? What kinds of things can you not see in the aerial photos? Thanks to teacher Josh Blanchfield for sharing his ideas and experiences on using the neighborhood change map with his students. Read more: Connecticut State Library, “Aerial Photographs of Connecticut [1934-present], http://libguides.ctstatelibrary.org/hg/aerialphotos/home. Teacher Tip: Most On The Line maps can be display with or without the explanatory caption by truncating the last portion of the web link. This allows educators to choose which format works best for their students. With caption: https://ontheline.github.io/otl-neighborhood-change/index-caption.html Without caption: https://ontheline.github.io/otl-neighborhood-change/ Redlining Neighborhoods Question: During the 1930s Depression, federal government officials and local bankers created maps and documents showing neighborhoods where they recommended giving loans to home owners. Years later, we call these “redlining” maps. What factors influenced their neighborhood ratings? Sources: Map of Federal Home Owner’s Loan Corporation (HOLC) “Redlining” in Hartford Area, CT, 1937. Figure 8.24: Click on color-coded areas in the full-screen interactive map to view one-page HOLC appraisals for each neighborhood in 1937, and the factors that field agents and local banks and lenders considered. They rated not only the physical condition of property, but also the “social status of the population,” and downgraded neighborhoods with Black, immigrant, and lower-income residents. Decades later, activists labeled these discriminatory lending practices as “redlining.” View open-source code and historical data, developed by Ilya Ilyankou and Jack Dougherty, with UConn MAGIC and the Kirwin Institute. For HOLC maps elsewhere in CT and the US, see Robert K. Nelson et al., Mapping Inequality: Redlining in New Deal America, American Panorama, Digital Scholarship Lab, University of Richmond, 2018. See also the “Downloads” page for specific areas. Figure 8.25: Zoom in and click on HOLC maps and appraisals for cities across the US in the full-screen interactive version of Mapping Inequality: Redlining in New Deal America by Robert K. Nelson, LaDale Winling, Richard Marciano, Nathan Connolly, et. al. Their collection includes HOLC materials for several regions in Connecticut: the Hartford area, New Britain, New Haven, Stamford, Waterbury, Darien, and New Canaan. According to the National Archives, HOLC materials also exist for Bridgeport and New London, Connecticut, but have not yet been digitized. Activity: Explore the interactive map and documents, or download them for your area. Assign student teams to focus on different neighborhoods and pool their findings. How did the mapmakers rate and describe different neighborhoods? What factors influenced their recommendations about who should receive home loans? Warning: The 1930s redlining maps and documents contain harmful words that reflect the racial, ethnic, and economic prejudices of the people who created them. Don’t allow your lesson to reinforce stereotypes. Teach students to recognize and disrupt inequalities. Read more: Shaun McGann and Jack Dougherty, “Federal Lending and Redlining,” On The Line book-in-progress, https://ontheline.trincoll.edu/lending.html. Robert K. Nelson et al., “Mapping Inequality: Redlining in New Deal America,” American Panorama, Digital Scholarship Lab, University of Richmond, 2018, https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining/. See “Introduction” for historical background. See more interactive maps Explore all of the On The Line interactive maps we’ve created so far—and watch for new ones to come—at the top of the Mapping and Publishing chapter in this book. Who Lived Here? Questions: Who lived in a specific house or street long ago? Which residents stayed, and which ones moved? How do different streets or neighborhoods compare on stability or turnover? What factors might have influenced people’s decisions? What do these patterns tell us about neighborhood change? Activity: Access the subscription-only Ancestry database, “US City Directories, 1822-1995,” https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/2469/, and download pages for specific streets if needed. Many CT public libraries provide access to Ancestry.com when using the library network. Some public libraries also provide access to the HeritageQuest database when using your library card, https://www.heritagequestonline.com/. Where Can You Afford to Live? Teaching the history of segregation can be challenging if learners do not have personal experience with searching for an apartment or house to rent or buy. See the Home School Shopping simulation in this book. Oral History Build stronger inter-generational communication and understanding with oral history interviews. See activities in the Teaching Oral History section of this book. Recent News on Residential Segregation in Connecticut Emily DiSalvo, “Hamden Confronts Legacy Of Segregation,” New Haven Independent, April 27, 2021, http://www.newhavenindependent.org/index.php/archives/entry/hamdensegregation_/. Eliza Fawcett, “A Fight Over Building Apartments in Mainly White Woodbridge Has Become a Flashpoint in the Debate Over Racial Equity in Connecticut. Here’s Why.,” Hartford Courant, April 30, 2021, https://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-news-woodbridge-zoning-debate-20210430-x7vda5qdhfegdahtzhd64tbeiq-story.html. Alex Putterman, “West Hartford Is Mostly White, While Bloomfield Is Largely Black; How That Came to Be Tells the Story of Racism and Segregation in American Suburbs,” Hartford Courant, February 21, 2021, https://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-news-west-hartford-bloomfield-housing-segregation-discrimination-20210214-eoobsguoybguznkoa4n2ravwli-story.html. Jacqueline Rabe Thomas, “Separated by Design Archives,” The CT Mirror, May 22, 2019, https://ctmirror.org/category/all-news/investigations/separated-by-design/. Sam Wineburg, Daisy Martin, and Chauncey Monte-Sano, Reading Like a Historian: Teaching Literacy in Middle and High School History Classrooms (Teachers College Press, 2011), https://www.google.com/books/edition/Reading_Like_a_Historian/hJwbAgAAQBAJ; Kathleen Thompson and Hilary Austin, Examining the Evidence: Seven Strategies for Teaching with Primary Sources (Capstone Classroom, 2014), https://www.google.com/books/edition/Examining_the_Evidence/uQ9XBAAAQBAJ.↩︎ "],["home-school-shopping.html", "Home and School Shopping Simulation", " Home and School Shopping Simulation Learning exercise developed for Ed 308: Cities, Suburbs & Schools by Jack Dougherty Goal: Given a demographic profile of a Hartford family, where can you afford to rent or buy a home in the surrounding suburbs, and what kind of public school access would this residence provide? This simplified role-playing scenario is designed to simulate the experience of home and school shopping, in order to deepen our understanding of the relationship between education and housing policy in the metropolitan US. Scenario: the parent(s) currently work and rent an apartment (or live with relatives) in Hartford each family has two children (grades 3 & 6), currently in Hartford Public Schools you have heard that “life will be better if you move to the suburbs” Google Sheet – Random Assignment of Family Economic Profiles: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1yq5lw2uJcZ3FpPZ5oKor_TdCxbmphocHk1EvYzD_W7U/edit#gid=0 How much housing can you afford to rent or buy? Explore this CNN Money home affordability calculator: http://money.cnn.com/calculator/real_estate/home-afford/index.html In what suburban towns does your monthly housing costs allow you to rent or buy? Remember that the space must house you (the parent), plus two children, which means 2 bedrooms minimum. Search for actual properties using tools such as http://Zillow.com. Write your top 2 choices in the Google Sheet Extra: Learn more about 30-year conventional mortgage payment schedule of payments http://www.bankrate.com/calculators/mortgages/amortization-calculator.aspx Given your housing choices, what is the average public school performance level? Explore interactive chart on this web page https://handsondataviz.org/scatter-chart-tableau.html Or download the spreadsheet to find your district https://handsondataviz.org/data/ct-districts-income-grades-2009-13.xlsx Write the percent of students performing at test goal in the Google Sheet If you moved to a suburban residence, what additional challenges might you face? Who wins and who loses under current US housing policies and practices? "],["covenants.html", "How We Found Restrictive Covenants", " How We Found Restrictive Covenants by Katie Campbell Levasseur, David K. Ware, June Gold, and Jack Dougherty Our Restricting with Property Covenants chapter in this book was inspired by several public history and advocacy projects across the U.S, including several now organized as the National Covenants Research Coalition. One of the earliest to launch online was the Segregated Seattle project in 2005, where researchers found White-only and anti-Jewish covenants in tens of thousands of properties across King County and Washington State. Their public history work pushed state legislators to approve a 2006 law to encourage homeowners to strike out racist covenants in the public record, and a 2023 law to provide compensation for victims.254 This chapter outlines different strategies for finding race restrictive covenants in Connecticut. Our methods vary by the type of land records available in each town clerk’s office, and our methods also changed over time as more (but not all) documents from the past have gradually been digitized. When possible, we recommend consulting with local experts who have more experience, such as property lawyers and professional title searchers, and to learn from methods advanced by members of the National Covenants Research Coalition. We share our experiences to encourage readers to search their own local property records, build public awareness of how racism shaped our communities, act on Connecticut’s 2021 legislation for property owners to renounce race-based covenants, and to advocate for policies that promote justice in housing. Help us continue the work to strike out Connecticut’s racist covenants. In early 2024 we created the https://myCTdeed.com site to build public awareness and simplify the process for current owners to find and remove unlawful covenants from their property. From Oral Interviews to Printed Records One method to finding racial covenants is to start with oral interviews and trace leads back through printed property records. When Katie Campbell and Jack Dougherty began searching in West Hartford in 2010, we began with anecdotal accounts by long-term residents that we attempted to confirm in the Town Clerk’s property records. But we faced several obstacles. First, the town clerk’s land records room contained over 4,000 print volumes of land transaction documents, with partially organized paper indexes but few digitized records at that time. Second, we had no legal training nor experience with title searching, so we read accounts of what other researchers had done elsewhere and tried to apply it to our local context. Third, no one in our small circle of Hartford-area civil rights activists, attorneys, or town officials had ever seen a restrictive covenant in the Hartford region, so we didn’t know exactly what to look for or whether we would actually find one. Due to the overwhelming size of the task at that time, we limited our search to property records in West Hartford, the largest suburb bordering the City of Hartford, and did not attempt to look elsewhere. Tracey Wilson, the West Hartford town historian and history teacher, gave us leads for possible covenants from anecdotal accounts by long-term residents while writing her monthly history column in the West Hartford Life periodical. Our most specific lead came from Mary Everett, who described in our history interview how she bought a home at 30 Ledgewood Road around 1970, when her lawyer mentioned that the property included a racially restrictive covenant from the 1940s that was no longer enforceable.255 Working backwards with property records, we traced the real estate transaction from the 1970s to the original deed in the 1940s. When conducting our research in 2010, the Town of West Hartford had recently made available a public online property assessment database, which allowed searches by name or address, but with transactions only into the 1970s. Our search for Mary Everett (or her spouse, Ronald) pointed us to a 1970 warranty deed in book 474, page 185, available only in print volumes in the property records room. This 1970 deed referred to the printed book and page numbers for prior transactions. By tracing the trail backwards in time, we finally found the original 1940 deed for the High Ledge Homes subdivision, which included this race restriction: “No persons of any race except the white race shall use or occupy any building on any lot except that this covenant shall not prevent occupancy by domestic servants of a different race employed by an owner or tenant.” Also, the entire High Ledge Homes subdivision appeared on a wall map in the property room, which referenced a 1938 subdivision surveyor’s map number 222, stored separately on microfilm in the town clerk’s office. By matching up past and present maps, we geographically confirmed that 30 Ledgewood Road was constructed on building lot #78, one of the 84 parcels of land specifically restricted by the racial covenant in the original 1940 subdivision deed, described in the video in Figure 8.26.256 Figure 8.26: In this 2011 video, Katie Campbell Levasseur describes how we traced restrictive covenants in paper property records in the Town of West Hartford town clerk’s office. We also tried to widen our search by skimming paper indexes of real estate transactions in the Town of West Hartford’s property records room. For example, a print volume called the Grantor Index Corporate Pages listed transactions by grantor (seller) to grantee (buyer) in partially alphabetical order by years during the racial covenant period (roughly 1920s through 1940s). The “Corporate” element of this title held some promise that we might find deeds where the developer was doing business as a corporation, rather than an individual. We searched for listings labeled as “agreements” and inspected those by volume and page to see if the deed between parties included any restrictions. Using this approach, we identified about 200 documents listed as “agreements,” and among those we found 22 “agreements” that included some type of restriction, all between 1933 and 1949. (We determined that before 1933, searching for “agreements” was not a productive way to look for restrictions, because we found restrictions in deeds that were not listed as “agreements.”) As a result, we found two types of restrictions in the records between 1915 and 1950, which we labeled value and race. Value restrictions were more common than race restrictions. Value restrictions typically stated that the owner could not build a home below a certain square footage, or below a minimum price (such as $5,000 in the 1920s), in an effort to maintain higher property values. But race restrictions stated that the land could not be occupied by non-White people, except for domestic servants. In some cases, deeds or agreements combined the two types. In either case, individuals or developers used these restrictions to control the social class and/or racial composition of a neighborhood, and its relative price in the minds of prospective wealthy White buyers. Looking back, over the past decade the partial digitization of West Hartford records makes the job somewhat easier today, but still requires searching print volumes to reliably trace sales back into the 1940s. First, the Town of West Hartford Online Assessment Database offers name and address search, but ownership history is currently incomplete prior to the 1970s. Second, the Town of West Hartford Land Records portal offers search by name, date, and book-page number (not consistently by address or parcel number), but many document images are still not available online, and lands records are incomplete prior to 1963. Third, even if West Hartford’s Land Records portal included document images for the 1940s, the tool currently lacks full-text search for keywords related to restrictive covenants, such as “the white race.” Searching by paper is still necessary for land records in this town at this point in time. In sum, while our 2010 study of West Hartford was not exhaustive, we located race restrictive covenants in 5 subdivisions that included about 190 parcels of land in the early 1940s. We estimate about 6 percent of West Hartford homes built during this period had restrictive covenants, given around 3,020 buildings were constructed in town during the 1940s. We count the entire decade because developers did not successfully sell homes on every parcel during the Depression and World War. In 2012 we placed scanned PDFs of all historical documents and digitized subdivision boundaries in an interactive Google Map, hosted by the University of Connecticut Libraries Map and Geographic Information Center. In 2017, we migrated historical documents and geodata into our GitHub public repository and displayed them in our open-source Leaflet map.257 Starting with anecdotal accounts of restrictive covenants produced mixed results, which perhaps tells us something about historical memory and how people believe they remember the past. Both during and a decade after our research, we heard some White West Hartford residents describe their memories of anti-Jewish or anti-Catholic restrictive covenants on their homes, yet still have not found documents supporting claims about their specific properties, nor any religious-based covenants in West Hartford as of this writing. How do we explain this difference between historical memory versus documents? One interpretation is that homeowners might be confusing different tools of housing segregation. Rather than a formal restrictive covenant (which would appear in the land records), perhaps Jewish or Catholic homebuyers were excluded by: (a) a neighborhood association agreement (which might exist on paper, but which might not filed as a property record with the town government), or (b) perhaps more likely, by the real estate agents who collectively or individually refused to show property to outsiders (which may have been openly discussed, but not documented on paper).258 Search Full-Text Historical Newspapers Another strategy to locate racial covenants is to search for keywords in full-text historical newspaper databases, which may lead to news stories or real estate ads with clues to trace back in the property records. For example, in our 2010 research for racial covenants in West Hartford, we searched the full-text Hartford Courant historical newspaper, at that time a newer 2005-era technology available through our Trinity College library subscription to the ProQuest database, and now more widely available through the ResearchIT CT portal with any Connecticut public library card. By searching for “restrictive” and “covenant” and related terms, we found 1947 news accounts about Simon Bernstein, a Hartford lawyer and Democratic city council member, who wrote a public letter asking the state legislative Judiciary Committee to invalidate race- and religious-restrictive covenants. The Hartford Courant, a White-run daily newspaper, ran a short excerpt of Bernstein’s letter, which mentioned an unnamed nearby town where a property deed restricted its sale “to only non-semitic members of the Caucasian race.” Later our search of Library of Congress historical newspapers led us to the Hartford Chronicle, a Black-owned weekly newspaper, which published Bernstein’s full letter. Six decades after Bernstein wrote his letter, we were very fortunate to conduct an oral history interview with him at age 98. He clearly recalled a different racial covenant case he was involved in as an attorney, regarding the Mountain Road area of West Hartford, which was settled out of court. But without sufficient details, we never found any documentation about either covenant seen by Bernstein.259 More recently, we have had more success searching for clues about restrictive covenants in newspaper real estate ads from the early 20th century across Connecticut. Purchasing an individual subscription on the Newspapers.com platform allowed us to do full-text searching of multiple newspapers across the entire state, though many papers still have not yet been digitized. For example, by searching for key phrases — such as “wisely restricted” or “reasonable…” or “sensible…” or “proper restrictions” — we found several Connecticut real estate advertisements that openly publicized euphemistic prohibitions, as shown in Figure 8.27. These code words sometimes led us directly to anti-Black and anti-Jewish prohibitions in the town land records. Another advantage of searching the Newspapers.com database is its wider inclusion of Hartford Courant local and regional editions for suburban and rural towns, compared to the ProQuest database that sometimes includes only the city edition.260 Figure 8.27: Screenshot of search for “wisely restricted” coded phrase in Newspapers.com database. Search Subdivision Maps Another strategy to locate restrictive covenants in Connecticut focuses on how housing developers converted large landholdings into subdivisions for individual homes, and the maps they created in that process. When retired attorney David Ware searched for racial covenants in suburban Manchester in 2020, he went to the Town Clerk’s office and began looking at surveyor’s subdivision maps, submitted by developers for town approval from the 1910s through the 1950s. Depending on the town, original paper subdivision maps may be stored in large flat drawers, or they may have been microfilmed or digitized into an online database. Typically, these maps identify the seller of the property, the person or corporation subdividing it into smaller lots for home sales, perhaps a name they gave to the development, and the year, as shown in Figure 8.28.261 Figure 8.28: 1940 surveyor’s map of Greenway Park housing development, submitted by Greenway Incorporated and approved by the Town of Manchester, Connecticut. In Manchester during the early 1940s, Ware found that developers of larger housing subdivisions, meaning 30 or more residential lots, were more likely to add uniform restrictions in property deeds for sales to builders or homeowners to maintain consistency and property values across a neighborhood. A list of uniform restrictions might prohibit shacks, trailers, and nuisances to other neighbors, and it might also include racist covenants. While smaller subdivisions are not necessarily free from racial prohibitions, Ware decided that the more efficient way to identify the greatest number of race-restricted properties was to start with larger subdivisions. The next step is to search by name of the property seller in the “Grantor Index” for the years during and after the creation of the subdivision, and often there are multiple entries for owners or developers selling subdivided lots for individual homes. Grantor Index entries usually include a brief description of the property (such as the development name and lot number), the date, and most importantly, the town clerk’s record of the deed by volume (or book) and page number. If the developer added a racial covenant, it will appear (or be referred to, directly or indirectly) in the deed on this volume and page, and subsequent property transfers will refer back to this deed. For large subdivisions, it’s wise to check at least two or more individual lot sales to confirm the presence of racial covenants. Based on this research, Ware recommended that Connecticut create a simpler process for current homeowners to renounce racial covenants in their property records. Connecticut’s General Assembly and Governor responded in 2021 and unanimously approved Public Act 21-173, as described in the Restricting chapter in this book.262 Search Digitized Property Records When retired attorney and educator June Gold learned in 2023 about racial covenants in Hamden, a suburb of New Haven, she began investigating property records and free legal services to help current homeowners remove them, as described in the Restricting chapter in this book. Searching for covenants became easier when the Town of Hamden lands records from 1778 to date were hosted online. The Town Clerk contracted with a private company to digitize and publish their public land records, primarily for attorneys and title searchers working on present-day real estate transactions, but also for historical researchers.263 Searching digitized property records has several advantages, but it’s important to begin with key constraints. First, while Hamden’s online records are robust, there currently is no full-text search capability, meaning that ordinary users cannot yet easily search across thousands of scanned property deeds for keywords or phrases found in restrictive covenants, such as “the white race” or “non-semitic” persons. (But land record digitization services most likely have the technology to enable full-text searches, as described further below.) Second, digitized property records are typically organized to search by names of sellers and buyers (grantors and grantees), date, and volume and page number—but typically not by street address (or parcel number) for more than five decades ago. So searching for racial covenants still requires hunting backwards in time, from the current owner to prior owners, and skimming pages of original property deeds for any restrictions. When searching Hamden property records online, one strategy is to begin with the name and address of a current homeowner who recalled hearing about a racial covenant in their property deed when they purchased their home and signed closing paperwork with an attorney. Beginning with the buyer’s name, you can trace the transfer of ownership—sometimes multiple transactions over time—through volume and page references to the original property agreements with racist prohibitions, as shown in Figure 8.29. Figure 8.29: Search by name in Town of Hamden online land records, showing a racial covenant in a 1940 property agreement. After locating a racial covenant on one property, another strategy is to trace the paper trail of neighboring homes, especially those located in the same subdivision, since many developer’s maps also have been digitized in the town property records, as shown in Figure 8.30. For example, after finding the name of one developer with a racial covenant, search that name to check if they created other subdivisions with similar covenants. Sometimes Gold also searches for similar property documents (such as an “agreement” or “warranty deed”) in the same or adjacent volumes to where she has already located one racial covenant. In addition, she recommends exploring present-day maps of suburban neighborhoods to identify the geographic outlines of likely subdivisions from the relevant time period. Figure 8.30: Search by “Gilridge” development name in the Town of Hamden online land records, showing a 1940 subdivision map of homes with racial covenants. Another online tool Gold uses is Hamden’s online property assessment database (also called assessor records), primarily created to track current owners and the appraised value of their property for taxation. While online assessor records may only go back a few decades in Connecticut towns, most platforms allow searches by owner name and street address, which helps Gold inform present-day homeowners about racial covenants placed on their home in past. For example, if a 1940s subdivision developer added a racial covenant to all properties on Carmalt Road, the assessment database allows Gold to lookup current owners’ names and addresses to contact them about their opportunity to renounce an unlawful covenant, as shown in Figure 8.31.264 Figure 8.31: Search by name or street listing in the Town of Hamden online assessment database, showing current owners of homes with racial covenants. A growing number of Connecticut town governments have digitized some portion of their printed bound volumes of public land records, but details vary widely, as shown in Figure 8.32. Note that “Earliest year land records or index online” may refer to full digital images of individual land records (such as scans of property deeds or surveyor’s maps), or it may refer to an indexed list of transactions by names, date, and volume/page number (but no digital images of those pages). Also, while most town governments with online land records make them publicly searchable (often with a free guest login), most require payment to print official copies, and a few towns even require a paid subscription to view online public records. Regardless of the status of a town’s digital property records, all printed property records are publicly viewable at the town clerk’s office. As of this writing, the major digitization providers with links to Connecticut towns they serve are: Avenu Analytics & Insights; Cott Systems, Inc. RECORDhub and its older Town Clerk Portal; SearchIQS; and NewVision Systems (with no public list of links to town databases).265 Figure 8.32: Search the interactive table and view data sources Although Connecticut town clerks did not digitize property records with restrictive covenants in mind, these online resources offer a valuable opportunity for historical researchers and fair housing advocates. The four major digitization services scanned images of property records, which are public documents, and some of them contain evidence of unlawful covenants created decades ago. Even if the town clerk or the digitization service does not currently offer full-text searches of these scanned images, the technology exists to run optical character recognition (OCR) searches for key phrases such as “the white race” or “non-semitic” persons. Furthermore, the National Covenant Research Coalition observes, “If you have a committed group and are willing to negotiate with [local government] officials, you may be able to get access to the whole database.” We believe it is in Connecticut’s public interest to reveal our history of racism in order to make a better future together.266 About the authors: Katie Campbell Levasseur (Trinity 2011) co-authored the West Hartford portion, David K. Ware co-authored the Manchester portion, and June Gold co-authored the Hamden portion, all in collaboration with Jack Dougherty. “National Covenants Research Coalition”. The earliest digital history project on racial property deeds probably was Plotkin, “Racial and Religious Restrictive Covenants in the US and Canada”, which states that content was posted online prior to 1999. On Seattle and Washington State, see Gregory, “Segregated Seattle” and Civil Rights and Labor History Consortium, University of Washington, “Racial Restrictive Covenants Project Washington State”.↩︎ Mary Everett, “Oral History Interview on West Hartford” (Cities, Suburbs, Schools Project, Trinity College Digital Repository, July 21, 2011), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_ohistory/23.↩︎ Katie Campbell and Jack Dougherty, “How We Found Restrictive Covenants” (Video, Cities Suburbs and Schools Project, 2011), https://vimeo.com/220562166; High Ledge Homes Inc., “Agreement Concerning Building Restrictions”.↩︎ See table calculations, historical documents, and map code in Ilyankou and Dougherty, “Map,” 2017.↩︎ For more anecdotal accounts of anti-Jewish and anti-Catholic covenants that we could not confirm with documents, see Wilson, “Taking Stock of High Ledge Homes and Restricted Covenants”. Wilson wrote: “By word of mouth I had heard that in the 1930s and 1940s and into the 1950s, no Roman Catholics could live on Stoner Drive, the first street developed on ‘the mountain.’ No Catholics could buy on Wood Pond or Sunset Farms. According to another resident, the address of a house on the corner of Foxcroft Road and Fern Street was changed to Fern Street because no Jews were allowed on Foxcroft Road.” But we could not find property records to confirm any of those 2010 claims.↩︎ Compare the excerpt versus the full letter in “Bernstein Seeks End Of Restrictive Clauses”; Bernstein, “Letter to the Editor”, and see also Bernstein, “Oral History Interview on Connecticut Civil Rights”. Hartford Courant historical newspaper searches are now publicly available through Connecticut State Library, “researchIT CT,” accessed February 8, 2024, https://researchitct.org/. Learn more about Hartford Chronicle and related newspapers, publicly available through US Library of Congress, “Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers,” accessed January 31, 2024, https://www.loc.gov/collections/chronicling-america/.↩︎ Ancestry.com, “Newspapers.com,” accessed February 8, 2024, https://www.newspapers.com/.↩︎ See 1940 Greenway Park map from Town of Manchester CT property records, in Ilyankou and Dougherty, “Map,” 2017.↩︎ Ware, “The Black and White of Greenway”.↩︎ Hamden land records in Avenu Insights and Analytics, “Connecticut Land Records,” accessed January 15, 2024, https://www.uslandrecords.com/ctlr/, and see other towns in table below.↩︎ For many municipalities, see Vision Government Solutions, “Connecticut Assessor’s Online Databases,” accessed February 13, 2024, https://www.vgsi.com/connecticut-online-database/.↩︎ Table of CT land records online in Ilyankou and Dougherty, “Map,” 2017; Avenu Insights and Analytics, “Connecticut Land Records”; Cott Systems, Inc., “RECORDhub Land Records,” accessed January 15, 2024, https://recordhub.cottsystems.com; Cott Systems, Inc., “Connecticut Town Clerks Portal,” accessed January 16, 2024, https://connecticut-townclerks-records.com; Search IQS, “CT Land Records,” accessed January 15, 2024, http://searchiqs.com/; NewVision Systems, Inc., “Official Records,” accessed February 13, 2024, https://webhost01.newvisionsystems.com/officialrecords.aspx. See also CATIC, “Connecticut Town Land Records (Directory),” accessed February 13, 2024, https://catic.com/agents/resources/land-records/connecticut.↩︎ See “What is a Covenant” in “National Covenants Research Coalition”.↩︎ "],["mapping-publishing.html", "Chapter 9 Mapping and Publishing On The Line", " Chapter 9 Mapping and Publishing On The Line This chapter details our design process and web technologies we used to create this open-access digital book. Our interactive maps and charts, built with open-source code libraries such as Leaflet and Chart.js, help broader audiences to visualize spatial and historical change over time. The chapter also describes our publishing workflow, based on the open-source Bookdown package for RStudio, which produces both HTML web pages and PDF print pages. We share our knowledge about these tools so that others may innovate and build more digital books to tell their own stories. Maps by Year by Jack Dougherty and Ilya Ilyankou List of maps created for On The Line, listed by earliest year of data. Click links to explore the full-size interactive versions on the web, access the source data and code, and read in context in this book. Screenshot Description and Links Town Borders in Hartford County, CT, from 1600s to Present.Explore the full-size interactive map.View open-source code and historical data.Read in context in Carving Up Town Boundaries. Racial Change in Hartford County, CT, 1900-2018.Explore the full-size interactive map.View open-source code and historical data. Read in context in Segregating Along Color Lines. Year Built for Properties in West Hartford, CT, 1900s-2010s.Explore the full-size interactive map.View open-source code and historical data. Read in context in Expanding Zoning Across Suburbs. Home Value Index in Hartford County, CT, from 1910-2010.Explore the full-size interactive map.View open-source code and historical data.Read in context in Richest City in the Nation. Real Estate Development in West Hartford CT, 1920s.Explore the full-size interactive map.View open-source code and historical data.Read in context in A Jewish Grocer & the Origins of Zoning. Exclusionary Zoning in West Hartford, CT, 1924-present.Explore the full-size interactive map.View open-source code and historical data.Read in context in Bringing Zoning to Connecticut. Neighborhood Change in Connecticut, 1934-present.Explore the full-size interactive map.View open-source code and historical data. Read in context in Teaching Segregation in Connecticut. Federal Home Owners’ Loan Corporation “Redlining” in Hartford area, 1937.Explore the full-size interactive map.View the open-source code and historical data. Read in context in Federal Lending and Redlining. Race Restrictive Covenants in Connecticut, 1930s-40s. Explore the full-size interactive map.View open-source code and historical data. Read in context in Restricting with Racial Covenants. Zoning in Avon, Bloomfield, and West Hartford CT, 1950s.Explore the full-size interactive map.View open-source code and historical data. Read in context in Expanding Zoning Across Suburbs. Local Planning and Zoning Agencies in Connecticut, 1957.Explore the full-size interactive map.View open-source code and historical data. Read in context in Expanding Zoning Across Suburbs. Compare US Elementary School Districts at the Same Scale, with Student Poverty, 2017.Explore the full-size interactive map.View open-source code and data. Read in context TODO Old Schoolhouses in Connecticut, featuring photos by Johnna Kaplan. Explore the full-size interactive map.View the open-source code and data.Read in context in Consolidating Rural School Districts. TODO: Add more maps; add charts section "],["digital-history-dialogue.html", "A Digital History Dialogue", " A Digital History Dialogue by Jack Dougherty with editors of The Metropole blog of the Urban History Association The editors of the “Digital Summer School” series of The Metropole, the official blog of the Urban History Association, invited me to dialogue with them about the process of creating On The Line, and gave me permission to republish the essay and add footnotes.267 Digital Summer School: On The Line in Metropolitan Hartford, Connecticut This is the second installment in our annual Digital Summer School series which highlights digital humanities projects focusing on urban history… Featured Project: Jack Dougherty, On the Line: How Schooling, Housing, and Civil Rights Shaped Hartford and its Suburbs Why did you establish this digital project, meaning why a digital book rather than your more traditional academic text? Who do you see as its audience and why? Many historians have a bad habit of splitting our work into separate categories, such as “digital projects” versus “scholarly books.” Some institutional factors feed this division, such as revenue-driven publishers (who depend on book sales) and conventional tenure committees (who cannot imagine how to evaluate digital projects). But this false dichotomy between projects and books does not serve our broader interests as academic authors. In our field of history, as the average scholarly monograph sells only a few hundred copies, and the retail price tag approaches $50 per copy or higher, our audience is increasingly likely to search on the web for historical sources and interpretation, and to view these results in their browsers. In today’s digital context, dividing projects and books is not a viable path; we need options to merge them into one. Kristen Nawrotzki and I made this general argument in our introduction to Writing History in the Digital Age. Over twenty-five contributors and our publisher, the University of Michigan Press, agreed to share our peer-reviewed publication under an open-access license, where readers can discover and view the full-text book on the web (for free) or in print (for a reasonable price). Scholars holding full-time jobs in academic institutions operate primarily in a reputation-based economy. If readers can access our ideas with our names attached and determine them to be of high-quality, then our value goes up. By contrast, if our ideas are locked inside hard-to-access books or behind paywalls, regardless of their quality, our reputations among readers will suffer. My thinking about these issues continued to evolve, and I experimented further with blending web technology and book production, as I co-edited a second open-access book, with Tennyson O’Donnell, Web Writing, and launched an open-access textbook with Ilya Ilyankou, Hands-On Data Visualization (in-progress).268 These three works illustrate lessons I learned while working on my current book, On The Line: How Schooling, Housing, and Civil Rights Shaped Hartford and its Suburbs (in-progress, under contract with Amherst College Press). Set in Connecticut’s capital region, the book makes visible the hidden boundaries that have divided American cities and suburbs over the past century, as well as the civil rights struggles of families and activists who crossed over, redrew, or erased these powerful lines. As a work of history, On The Line blends textual narrative and digital sources into one book, with web and print editions. Perhaps it’s most appropriate to call it a digital-first book, because the richest edition is the one that appears on the open web. The narrative is wrapped around digital evidence—including interactive maps, oral history audio and video, and scanned documents—to make racial and class boundaries visible to broader audiences and to amplify the voices of people who challenged these lines. How did this project come to fruition? What obstacles did you have to overcome? Thanks to the wonderful Way Back Machine by the Internet Archive, I took another look at the first version of On The Line that I published on the public web in 2010. At that very early stage, I presented some dreams and demos to obtain grant funding and naively predicted to finish everything by 2012 (Ha!) This early version also reminded me that my previous publishing partner insisted I create two interconnected yet separate products—a digital repository (free) and a scholarly book (for sale)—each designed to stand alone, but to refer readers back and forth. Under this early model, readers would have to buy or borrow the book to read the text and go to the companion website to explore the interactive maps, videos, and other digital elements. Honestly, I’m glad that I didn’t finish on my initial deadline, under the restrictive terms of this proposed publishing arrangement, since the final product would have been disappointingly fragmented.269 The truth is that the origins of On The Line can be traced back to my personal frustration with the status quo of scholarly communication. “Why separate the digital project and the book?” I recall asking. “Why not create a better book that unifies text and sources into one product?” I began exploring open-source digital tools that merged web and PDF publishing into one workflow. First the Anthologize WordPress beta plugin (by the One Week One Tool team at the Center for History and New Media, George Mason University), then the Pressbooks/Open Textbook/WordPress plugin platform (by PressBooks and BC Campus), and now I use the Bookdown package (by RStudio). Each step has brought me closer to an improved workflow: composing easy-to-edit text that cleanly produces a web edition, with embedded interactive maps and videos, and a PDF edition, with static screenshots and links to interactive web content. Fortunately, I work with a supportive group of current and former students, librarians, and IT staff, because building an ambitious digital-first book like this one involves many steps: designing and coding interactive historical maps; transcribing and hosting oral history audio and video; managing citations and external links; future-proofing; and embedding all of this content into web and print formats. I’m not a speedy writer, and managing all of these steps has slowed me down even further. On a purely functional level, when considering the project’s internal structure, how did you think about incorporating aspects of On the Line such as its interactive maps, videos, and other features? As a historian, my job is to tell meaningful true stories about the past. For this book in particular, the goal is to help readers see the “invisible” race and class boundary lines that have increasingly divided city and suburban residents over time, and to draw attention to the ways that families and activists sought to cross over or erase lines, such as movements for school integration and inclusionary zoning. Showing how these people tell their own civil rights stories in oral history video clips is more powerful than merely retelling their stories in the text. While working on each chapter, often with student co-authors, we continually ask these types of questions: How can we tell stories that connect with our present-day readers? How can we persuade readers to explore and accept our interpretation of the evidence? And how can we guide both local and distant readers through spatial and historical change in our place-based narrative of a central city and its diverging suburbs? Creating this type of book requires traditional research and writing, but also dreaming up digital sources – interactive maps, video clips, and digitized documents – to embed into the narrative and illustrate our analysis. Some of my best teachers in this genre have been digital journalists (such as Alvin Chang, formerly at CTMirror.org, now at Vox.com). For example, consider how historians have published over time about “redlining,” or discrimination in financial services based on people’s residence, typically linked to their race or ethnicity. Ken Jackson’s book, Crabgrass Frontier (1985), introduced many readers to the 1930s Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) and their color-coded neighborhood appraisal maps, which he quoted from and included an image of to demonstrate their segregative intent. Subsequent scholars such as Amy Hillier (2003) analyzed archival records with spatial computing methods and questioned whether actual HOLC lending practices matched this intent. A decade later, historians Robert K. Nelson, LaDale Winling, Richard Marciano, Nathan Connolly and their colleagues released their Mapping Inequality digital history project (2016), with its impressive compilation of over 150 HOLC maps and appraisals, with commentary. In On The Line, former student Sean McGann and I co-authored a chapter that interprets this redlining history with a Hartford-area narrative. The chapter is illustrated with an interactive map of neighborhood appraisals created with the Map and Geographic Information Center (MAGIC) at University of Connecticut Libraries and the assistance of Trinity College graduate Ilya Ilyankou. The eye-catching redlining maps pull local readers further into the On The Line narrative, and allow them to explore archival documents for specific neighborhoods. But our book also argues that other federal programs, such as the Underwriting Manuals of the Federal Housing Administration, which are not as visually attractive as the HOLC maps, may have been more influential in segregating suburbs. Overall, this digital-first book delivers a hybrid combination of textual interpretation and interactive sources that, in my view, is vastly superior to the alternative: a separate book and web site. What role do digital projects like On the Line play in the field of history? Where do you see this project and others like it going in the future? Based on local feedback, I know that On The Line has already begun to achieve one of its primary goals for Hartford-area audiences: to educate residents on ways that housing and education barriers have shaped our city and suburbs, and about the strategies used by activists and families who fought back against them. Although it’s still a book-in-progress, my student co-authors and I are publishing chapters and sources, as we complete them, on the open web. Our analytics tell us that thousands of readers have discovered this history, and dozens of local organizations and schools have invited us to give public presentations. Not bad for a not-yet-finished book. As for the broader historical profession, another goal is for On The Line to help change the way we envision scholarly communication, by offering a reproducible example of blending textual narrative and digital sources into a book with both web and print editions. But I don’t have much evidence of progress to share. Look again at the wording of the question above, which refers to On The Line as a “digital project” rather than a “book.” It’s surprising to me how slowly the historical profession is creeping into the digital age, while keeping its traditional publishing paradigms intact. Relatively few historians appear to be writing digital-first books that genuinely blend textual narrative and digitized sources. I fully realize that these types of books require more work by collaborative teams, not just individual scholars; a wider range of skills not typically taught in history graduate schools; and sources of both start-up and sustainable funding. When I began work on this nearly a decade ago, I sincerely believed that more historians would be moving in this direction. Yet it still feels lonely to me. (While typing these words, I secretly hope to hear back from readers who will prove me wrong and share links to other digital-first books that blend text and evidence.) It seems over the past few years two aspects of urban history have arisen 1) greater emphasis placed on education as key factor in suburban development notably in the case of your work here and others such as Ansley Erickson and 2) efforts by more academic and popular historians (I’m thinking of perhaps Richard Rothstein’s The Color of Law which fundamentally synthesized a large body of work) to really grapple with how suburbs and their attendant segregation came to be. How do you explain these developments which in many ways are embodied by the project itself? Yes, I’ve been very impressed by recent works on the historical relationship between housing and education, such as Ansley Erickson’s Making the Unequal Metropolis (2016), Richard Rothstein’s The Color of Law (2017), and others. This may be a case where historians are just now catching up with our audiences. For several decades, privileged Americans and our politicians have understood the growing two-way equation between housing and schooling: where you live shapes your children’s education, and their level of education shapes their future income and where they can afford to live. So why has it taken historians so many decades to write about this? The “Bridging the History Gap” section of On The Line argues that we have not fully understood how this dynamic relationship between housing and schooling played a central role in shaping metropolitan America because a prior generation of historians split these topics into separate bodies of literature and essentially drew boundaries around these disciplinary subfields. On one side of this scholarly divide, urban and suburban historians, such as Arnold Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto, and Ken Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier, described how housing policies and racial discrimination fueled the post-World War II decline of cities and expansion of outlying suburbs, but schools did not play a meaningful role in their equation. On one side, educational historians who followed the lead of David Tyack (The One Best System) focused on the rise and fall of big-city school districts, yet paid little attention to their relationship with suburbs. Whereas most educational historians halted at the city line, urban and suburban historians generally stopped at the schoolhouse door. So it’s a refreshing development to see newer historical works by Ansley Erickson, Matthew Lassiter, and others blur these boundaries. So far, what moment or event related to your digital project comes to mind when I say greatest achievement or unique insight? Years ago, when teaching or presenting about the history of cities, suburbs, and schools, I used to “talk with my hands,” waving them around in the air in my feeble attempt to visually represent racial and economic change across neighborhoods over time. Now I teach and give talks with interactive historical maps. Seems to be a much better way to communicate about urban history, and less annoying for the audience. Jack Dougherty is Professor of Educational Studies and Director of the Center for Hartford Engagement and Research (CHER) at Trinity College. Since learning how to create interactive urban history maps, he spends less time talking with his hands. (Photo by Andy Hart) “Digital Summer School: On The Line in Metropolitan Hartford, Connecticut.” (The Metropole, July 17, 2019), https://themetropole.blog/2019/07/17/digital-summer-school-on-the-line-in-metropolitan-hartford-connecticut/.↩︎ Kristen Nawrotzki and Jack Dougherty, “Introduction,” in Writing History in the Digital Age (University of Michigan Press, 2013), 1–18, https://muse.jhu.edu/chapter/1030699, Jack Dougherty and Tennyson O’Donnell, eds., Web Writing: Why and How for Liberal Arts Teaching and Learning (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2015), https://doi.org/10.3998/dh.13396229.0001.001, Jack Dougherty and Ilya Ilyankou, Hands-On Data Visualization: Interactive Storytelling from Spreadsheets to Code (O’Reilly Media, Inc., 2021), https://HandsOnDataViz.org.↩︎ https://web.archive.org/web/20100614053219/http://ontheline.trincoll.edu/↩︎ "],["bookdown.html", "Bookdown, GitHub, and Zotero", " Bookdown, GitHub, and Zotero by Jack Dougherty and Ilya Ilyankou We built this book with free-to-use, open-source tools, primarily Bookdown, GitHub, and Zotero. This chapter explains why and how we combined these tools and developed our publishing workflow, so that others can build their own books and share their knowledge about how to improve the process. Why not just write the book in a conventional word processor? We desired an efficient workflow to co-author one manuscript that could continuously generate multiple book products for different purposes, as shown in Figure 9.1. HMTL web edition for the open-access book, with embedded iframes for interactive charts and maps PDF print edition with static images and book-style layout ePUB electronic publication edition for e-reader devices Microsoft Word edition with static images for editors who prefer to provide feedback this way Markdown file of the full-length book with pathnames to static images for easy conversion into the publisher’s platform A conventional word processor could not continuously generate all of these products, which likely would have resulted in creating entirely separate files and code for different editions. But with our unified Bookdown workflow, all of our writing is done in one manuscript. Whenever we make edits, we can push a couple of buttons to publish our updated book products in all formats: HTML, PDF, ePUB, MS Word, and Markdown formats. Figure 9.1: Simplified workflow to compose, compile, and publish in multiple formats with Bookdown. Images from Daniel Hendricks, RStudio, and Zotero. Bookdown Overview: Why and How? We based our solution around Bookdown, an open-source package for the R code project created by Yihui Xie at RStudio. Although many people use R for statistical analysis, the free RStudio desktop application also supports several innovative publishing solutions. Here’s an overview of our workflow: We set up the Bookdown files and composed the manuscript in R Markdown, the R-flavored version of the easy-to-write Markdown syntax. Each chapter consisted of one .Rmd file, with links to static images and interactive visualizations. We uploaded our files to a free GitHub repository, which allows multiple authors to work simultaneously on different chapters of the book and “push” revisions (called commits) to a shared online repository, where authors can view each other’s edits. Alternatively, you could simultaneously write and comment on the same chapter in Google Documents, and use the Docs to Markdown add-on to convert one-time into Markdown format, which is similar to R Markdown. We organized our sources using the free Zotero bibliography manager by the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. Also, we installed the free Better BibTeX extension by Emiliano Heynes to create Zotero citation keys that work smoothly with Bookdown. After each day’s writing, we used Bookdown to automatically “knit” and compile the book products. Behind the scenes, Bookdown builds the editions using the PanDoc universal document converter and the LaTeX document preparation software, without requiring you to learn these complex formats. Under our open-access agreement with the publisher, we made our book public as we wrote it to develop our audience and address reader feedback. With each day’s revisions, we rebuilt the book and published all of the editions to our public GitHub repository, and used its free GitHub Pages feature to host the open-access HTML web edition. (Alternatively, you can choose to keep your GitHub repo private.) We hosted our open-access web edition on GitHub using a custom domain name (https://ontheline.trincoll.edu), which we set up through Trinity College. Also, we can provide our editor and publisher with the text of the book in different formats: a Microsoft Word file for editing, a PDF file in a book-style layout, or a full-length Markdown file for conversion into other platforms. Screenshots of two variations of the basic workflow appear in Figure 9.2 and Figure 9.3. The first displays how to compose the book using the R Studio built-in editor, and the second shows a very similar process using the Atom text editor, which we prefer. Learn more about GitHub Desktop and Atom text editor in Hands-On Data Visualization. Figure 9.2: Workflow on a Mac desktop: Compose the text in RStudio and build books with Bookdown (top left), manage sources and insert citation keys with Zotero + BetterBibTex (bottom left), push book products to your GitHub repository to host online (right). Figure 9.3: Variation on the workflow above: Compose the text in your preferred editor (such as Atom), and use RStudio only to build the book products. Our Bookdown workflow met our goal to efficiently and continuously produce multiple book products. But it may not be ideal for everyone, especially novice computer users. Installation and setup requires several steps, as described in the following sections: Install and Set Up Bookdown File Structure and Headers Style Guide for On The Line Images and R Code-chunk Formatting Tables in Markdown Format Zotero and Better BibTeX for Notes and Biblio Before leaping into Bookdown or any related tool, see also this section on Alternative Book Publishing Tools. For more technical details about Bookdown, and examples of other publications built with this tool, see https://bookdown.org: Xie, Yihui. Bookdown: Authoring Books and Technical Documents with R Markdown. Chapman & Hall/CRC, 2018. https://bookdown.org/yihui/bookdown/. Xie, Yihui, J. J. Allaire, and Garrett Grolemund. R Markdown: The Definitive Guide. Chapman & Hall/CRC, 2020. https://bookdown.org/yihui/rmarkdown/. Xie, Yihui, Christophe Dervieux, and Emily Riederer. R Markdown Cookbook. Chapman & Hall/CRC, 2020. https://bookdown.org/yihui/rmarkdown-cookbook/. "],["install.html", "Install and Set Up Bookdown", " Install and Set Up Bookdown Below are steps we followed to set up the Bookdown publishing platform and related tools for this book, using our Macintosh OS 10.14 computers. The same general principles also should apply to Windows computers. No special knowledge is required, but these tools may not be ideal for novice computer users. Installation steps—and inevitable problems that pop up—will be easier if you are comfortable with exploring your computer, or already have some familiarity with text editors, GitHub, or R Studio. Install R Project statistical programming language https://www.r-project.org, which is required by Bookdown. See screenshot Install the free version of RStudio Desktop to make R easier to use with a visual editor. See screenshot. Some authors compose their books in RStudio, but you may use any text editor. Our personal preference is the Atom editor from GitHub. Inside RStudio, select the Packages tab, and select Install. See screenshot Inside RStudio, install the “bookdown” package to build your book, and select Install Dependencies. See screenshot Bookdown now should be successfully installed in RStudio. See screenshot For Bookdown to create a PDF edition of your book, you need to install a LaTeX engine to prepare your Markdown plain text, citations, and images into stylized pages. Since the full-sized LaTeX project is very large, Bookdown recommends the smaller TinyTeX package. Inside RStudio, select the Packages tab, select Install, and enter “tinytex” to find and upload the package. See screenshot To finish installing tinytex, in the RStudio console, type tinytex::install_tinytex() and press return. See screenshot Note: If a permissions error displays that /usr/local/bin not writable see solution at https://github.com/yihui/tinytex/issues/24 When you installed RStudio, it also should have installed its own version of Pandoc, the package that converts files from Markdown format to HMTL and other formats. To confirm the Pandoc installation and version number, in the RStudio console, type rmarkdown::pandoc_version() and press return. The resulting version number should be 2.3.1 or higher. To install a newer version of Pandoc, which is highly recommended, go to https://pandoc.org. In RStudio > Packages tab > System Library screen, be sure to check boxes for bookdown and tinytex packages. To display your platform and package settings in RStudio, type xfun::session_info() and it will display results similar to this: R version 4.1.0 (2021-05-18) Platform: aarch64-apple-darwin20 (64-bit) Running under: macOS Big Sur 11.3.1 Locale: en_US.UTF-8 / en_US.UTF-8 / en_US.UTF-8 / C / en_US.UTF-8 / en_US.UTF-8 Package version: base64enc_0.1.3 bookdown_0.22 compiler_4.1.0 digest_0.6.27 evaluate_0.14 glue_1.4.2 graphics_4.1.0 grDevices_4.1.0 highr_0.9 htmltools_0.5.1.1 jsonlite_1.7.2 knitr_1.33 magrittr_2.0.1 markdown_1.1 methods_4.1.0 mime_0.11 rlang_0.4.11 rmarkdown_2.9 stats_4.1.0 stringi_1.7.3 stringr_1.4.0 tinytex_0.32 tools_4.1.0 utils_4.1.0 xfun_0.24 yaml_2.2.1 Download, Build, and Host a Sample Bookdown Book While Bookdown does not require you to use GitHub, these steps show how to integrate these tools to make your own copy of a sample Bookdown book. Create a free GitHub account to simplify steps for the next two sections. While Bookdown does not require you to use GitHub, the workflow described below features GitHub to copy a sample Bookdown template and to host your own Bookdown editions online. To learn more about the basics of this tool, see Chapter 11: Edit and Host Code with GitHub. In your web browser, log into your GitHub account, go to the Bookdown developer’s bookdown-minimal repo https://github.com/yihui/bookdown-minimal, and fork a copy to your GitHub account. Install GitHub Desktop https://desktop.github.com to transfer files between your online GitHub repo and local computer. While software developers may prefer to access GitHub by typing commands in their terminal, GitHub Desktop provides easier point-and-click access for most users. In your web browser, go to your forked copy of bookdown-minimal, click the green Code button, and select Open in Desktop. This should automatically open the GitHub Desktop application, and you can navigate where you wish to store a copy of your code repo on a folder in your local computer. In RStudio in the upper-right corner, select Project > Open Project to open the bookdown-minimal folder on your local computer. See screenshot In RStudio, open the index.Rmd file and make some simple edits to the text of this minimal book. For example, remove the hashtag # comment symbol in line 8 to “uncomment” and activate the PDF book option. Save your edits. See screenshot Optional: If you wish, you can modify your bookdown-minimal files outside of RStudio, by using your preferred text editor, such as Atom editor https://atom.io. In RStudio, upper-right corner, select the Build tab, select Build Book, and choose All Formats to build both the gitbook-style static web edition and PDF edition. If RStudio successfully builds both editions of your minimal book, the output will be saved into your bookdown-minimal folder, in a subfolder named _book, because that’s how this sample is configured. The RStudio internal browser should automatically open your web edition (but it’s not a very good browser, so we typically close it and manually open the index.html file with our regular browser.) Also, open the subfolder and inspect the PDF edition of your book. If any errors were generated in the process, error messages will appear in red type in the RStudio Build viewer, which may require you to debug errors and delete temporary files as instructed. See screenshot. Tip: In future sessions with RStudio, you should select the Packages tab and click Update to keep Bookdown and other software packages up to date. See screenshot Close your project, and quit RStudio. The next set of steps will focus on pushing your edited book to your GitHub repository using the GitHub Desktop tool. Open GitHub Desktop and navigate to the bookdown-minimal folder on your local computer. Write a quick summary to commit (or save) the changes you made above to your main branch, and push this version to your online GitHub repo. In your web browser, go to your online GitHub repo, with a web address similar to https://github.com/USERNAME/bookdown-minimal. In your GitHub repo, select Settings, and scroll down to the GitHub Pages section, which is a free web hosting service to publish your code and book editions on the public web. Change the Source from None to Main, keep the default /root option in the middle, and press Save. Scroll down to the GitHub Pages section again, and the web address of your published site should appear similar to https://USERNAME.github.io/bookdown-minimal. Copy your published web address from above, paste into a new browser tab, and at the end add _book/index.html. The reason is because your sample book is configured by default to store all web and PDF editions in your _book subfolder, with index.html serving as the home page. Therefore, the full web address in your new browser tab should be similar to: https://USERNAME.github.io/bookdown-minimal/_book/index.html Tip: You may need to wait up to one minute for edits to your GitHub online repo to appear live at your GitHub Pages web address. Also, after waiting for GitHub Pages to make changes, be sure to “force reload” or “hard refresh” your web browser to update directly from the GitHub Pages server, not the browser’s internal cache. "],["structure.html", "File Structure and Headers", " File Structure and Headers To understand our file structure, see the GitHub repository for this book at http://github.com/ontheline/otl-bookdown. In general, each subchapter is a separate .Rmd file. Here is a simplified outline of the root file structure in the GitHub repo for this book: Preface of the book with non-numbered sections: index.Rmd Chapters with first-level headers in this format: 1-chapter.Rmd Subchapters with second-level headers in this format: 1.1-subchapter.Rmd. While Bookdown refers to these as sections, we call them subchapters. The images folder, where PNG, JPG, and PDF images to display in chapters are located. The docs folder, which contains the published book products, such as Web edition (index.html, introduction.html, etc.), the PDF edition (Dougherty-etal-OnTheLine.pdf), etc. Additional helper files described further below. When you change the names of chapters/sections, Bookdown builds new HMTL pages based on those new names, but old HMTL pages based on old chapter/section names may still exist in the same subfolder. To avoid confusion, you may wish to carefully delete old HTML pages in docs whenever you significantly alter names and build a new version of the book. Bookdown assigns a default ID to each header, which can be used for cross-references. The default ID for # Topic is {#topic}, and the default ID for ## Section Name is {#section-name}, where spaces are replaced by dashes. But we do not rely on default IDs because they might change due to editing or contain duplicates across the book. Instead, we manually assign a unique ID to each first- and second-level header in the following way. Note that the {-} symbol, used alone or in combination with a space and a unique ID, prevents auto-numbering in the second- thru fourth-level headers: # Top-level chapter title {#unique-name} ## Second-level section title {- #unique-name} ### Third-level subhead {-} #### Fourth-level subhead {-} Also, we match the unique ID keyword to the file name for top-level chapters this way: 01-keyword.Rmd to keep our work organized. Unique names should contain only alphanumeric characters (a-z, A-Z, 0-9) or dashes (-). Subheaders must have unique names or IDs to avoid Bookdown errors about duplicated references. In the Bookdown index.Rmd for the HTML book output and the PDF output, the toc_depth: 2 setting displays chapter and section headers down to the second level in the Table of Contents. The split_by: section setting divides the HTML pages at the second-level header, which creates shorter web pages with reduced scrolling for readers. For each web page, the unique ID becomes the file name, and is stored in the docs subfolder. The number_sections setting is true for the HTML and PDF editions, and given the toc_depth: 2, this means that they will display two-level chapter-section numbering (1.1, 1.2, etc.) in the Table of Contents. Note that number_sections must be true to display Figure and Table numbers in x.x format. To override numbered sections in individual subchapters, insert a minus sign before the hashtag inside the curly brackets: ## Subchapter title {- #keyword} See relevant settings in this excerpt from index.Rmd: output: bookdown::gitbook: ... toc_depth: 2 split_by: section number_sections: true split_bib: true ... bookdown::pdf_book: toc_depth: 2 number_sections: true Note that chapter and section numbering do not appear automatically in the MS Word output unless you supply a reference.docx file, as described in the RMarkdown guide and this Stack Overflow question. In the _bookdown.yml settings, all book outputs are built into the docs subfolder of our GitHub repo, as shown in this excerpt: output_dir: "docs" delete_merged_file: true book_filename: "OnTheLine" language: label: fig: "Figure " tab: "Table " chapter_name: "Chapter " In our GitHub repo, we set GitHub Pages to publish to the web using main/docs, which means that visitors can browse the source files at the root level, and view the HTML web pages hosted in the docs subfolder. We use the GitHub Pages custom domain setting so that the HTML edition is available at https://OnTheLine.trincoll.edu. The docs subfolder also may contain the following items, which are not generated by Bookdown and need to be manually created: CNAME file for the custom domain, generated by GitHub Pages. .nojekyll invisible empty file to ensure speedy processing of HTML files by GitHub Pages. wp-content folder to redirect old links from the previous WordPress site at this domain Note: Bookdown now generates a 404.html file that replaces the need for the custom version that previously needed to be manually created. This HTML version of this book also includes the Google Analytics code file, and also a footer that appears at the bottom of each web page, with references in the index.Rmd code, as shown below. output: bookdown::gitbook: ... includes: in_header: google-analytics-otl.html after_body: footer.html "],["style-guide.html", "Style Guide for On The Line", " Style Guide for On The Line View the underlying source code to understand how this page was composed at: https://github.com/OnTheLine/otl-bookdown/blob/main/9.3.3-style-guide.Rmd. The goal of this style guide is to compose one version of the text, primarily in easy-to-read R-flavored Markdown format, which Bookdown generates into multiple book products (HTML for open-access web edition, MS Word for editing, PDF for print edition, ePUB for electronic publication, full-length Markdown for conversion, etc.). Note: This style guide was created primarily for the HTML web edition, and the PDF and ePUB versions will require additional modifications prior to final publication of the print and eBook editions. In general, each subchapter is a separate R-flavored Markdown (.Rmd) file. Each paragraph begins on a separate line. Use brackets and parentheses for an embedded link, and remember to add a footnote (as shown further below) for readers of the printed version that does not display embedded links. For lists, always insert a blank line before the items, unless they appear directly after hashtag header. unordered list ordered list Dashes: Use a hyphen (1 dash) for hyphenated words, such as two-thirds or dog-friendly hotel. Use an en-dash (2 dashes) for ranges, such as the May–September magazine issue. Use an em-dash (3 dashes) to insert an additional thought—like this—in a sentence. Insert TODO to note items to finish or review with co-author or editor. For a block quote, start each line with a caret AND add two spaces to insert a line break: I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him. — Mark Twain — notable American author Note that the HTML edition has customized style.css code for block quotes. See relevant code on GitHub. Also note that the HTML edition has customized style.css code to improve visual contrast and make it more accessible for visually-impaired readers, based on the Wave Accessibility Evaluation Tool. See relevant code on GitHub. Conditional Formatting Conditional formatting offers the option to display text or images in some editions, but not other editions. Options: Conditional formatting offers the option to display text or images in some Bookdown editions, but not others. Here are several ways to use conditional formatting: Insert a HTML code comment <!-- Comment --> in the .Rmd file to hide a few lines of text. This appears as commented-out text in the HTML and .md formats, is not displayed in the HTML browser, and does not appear in any way in the PDF or MS Word formats. Demo: R package function is_[html/latex]_output allows conditional output for different book products, such as text that should appear in the HTML edition but not the PDF edition, or vice versa. Demos: This line appears in the HTML, Word, Markdown versions, and is commented-out in the PDF version. Option to customize the style.css code for the HTML book. Option to add headers, footers, preambles to the HTML or LaTeX versions. Option to build different versions of the HTML and LaTeX/PDF books using different chapters by listing them in order in the _bookdown.yml file. Cross-references In order to cross-reference in Bookdown, assign a unique name or R code-chunk label to each chapter, section, figure, and table. Unique names and labels should contain only alphanumeric characters (a-z, A-Z, 0-9) or dashes (-). To cross-reference any chapter or section, and allow readers to jump there, use a HTML link with the unique name, such as index.html or style-guide.html. Demos: See Preface See Style Guide in Chapter x. Note: We use the HTML link method because it works best for the HTML web edition. We avoid using Bookdown unique ID links to cross-reference chapters or sections, as recommended in the Bookdown manual, for the HTML edition because it creates imprecise URLs with extraneous hashtags for sections/subchapters. However, if your primary goal is to create an ePUB, use the Bookdown unique ID links method, since HTML links will not work. To cross-reference figures and tables, and display their auto-number and allow readers to jump there, write a call-out with a Bookdown reference to a code-chunk label, such as See Figure \\@ref(fig:sample-image) or See Table \\@ref(tab:left-table). Demos: See Figure 9.4. See Table 9.1. Cross-reference interactivity varies by output: In HTML, all cross-refs are clickable. In PDF, all cross-refs are clickable (except chapter-level HTML links). In Word, no cross-refs are clickable (unless this varies with reference.docx). "],["images.html", "Images and R Code-chunk formatting", " Images and R Code-chunk formatting View the underlying source code to understand how this page was composed at: https://github.com/ontheline/otl-bookdown/blob/main/9.3.4-images.Rmd NOTE: These instructions are designed primarily for the HTML web edition. Be sure to research and consider options if your primary objective is PDF print edition, ePUB electronic publication, or other formats. In general, create high-resolution color images and save in PNG format (preferred over JPG due to image loss) into the images folder of the Bookdown repository on GitHub. Write file names in lowercase with year-name format using dashes (not spaces or underscores). Begin with the relevant year if possible, and keywords to match bibliographic information in Zotero. If the original image is larger than 3MB, add -original to file name to avoid confusion, then create a duplicate and use photo editor to reduce size but maintain 300 dpi resolution for use in the publication. If adding any artwork to images, insert -annotated to file name to avoid confusion with original. To create screenshots, use high-resolution Retina monitor (144 ppi) with tight cropping. To combine images for side-by-sides or montages, save each element using the root file name plus a suffix. Save all elements in an images subfolder using a similar year-name format. Use either https://Canva.com or https://Photopea.com to combine images, and save a copy of the latter in Photoshop format (.psd) in the images subfolder. Since very large PNG images sometimes appear too large in the PDF edition, convert a copy into a smaller PDF image to fit better. In Preview, open the copy and reduce image size by 50% (or more), and double resolution (up to 300 dpi if feasible), and save. Then File > Export, with Option to change file format to PDF, but keep same file name as PNG. Save all versions of an image into the images folder to keep them together, as long as the overall GitHub repo size remains under 1GB. (Keep extremely large TIFF files elsewhere but use similar file names in order to locate them.) Bookdown will copy only the relevant files into the docs/images subfolder. As a result, one image may have different versions: images/1937-sample.png images/1937-sample.pdf images/1937-sample-original.png images/1937-sample-annotated.psd Include relevant source info in the Zotero library, and include the file name in the Abstract field to manually match up with the manuscript. Since Bookdown does not cleanly process endnotes in image captions, include the Zotero citation at the end of the main-text paragraph that describes the image, typically after a call-out: …as shown in Figure X. For the image caption, write a brief standalone description, add an action-instruction and supplemental link for any visualizations, and include any relevant image source credits or copyright information. In writing this book, one of key goals was to create R Markdown syntax to display different versions of images for different Bookdown editions. For each image, we wanted one set of instructions to display an interactive chart/map/video using an embedded iframe in the HTML web edition, but display a static PNG image in the full-length Markdown edition, or to substitute a smaller PDF static image when available in the PDF book edition. Also, we wanted auto-numbering of images by chapter. Our solution relies on R code-chunk formatting for most images, with some exceptions. This R Markdown/Bookdown syntax is more complex than basic Markdown image formatting, but supports conditional formatting and captions in all of our editions, and auto-numbering in HMTL and LaTeX/PDF editions. Our general R code-chunk image format looks roughly like this, minus some code tics that have been removed for simplicity: ...as shown in Figure \\@ref(fig:keyword). (ref:keyword) Caption, with optional Markdown links and image credits, but no endnotes. {r keyword, fig.cap="(ref:keyword)"} if(knitr::is_html_output(excludes="markdown")) knitr::include_url("http://pathname-to-interactive-version-keyword.html") else knitr::include_graphics("pathname-to-static-version-keyword.png") The first line generates an auto-numbered and clickable figure cross-reference call-out. Auto-numbering appears in Figure x.x format in HTML, PDF, and Word, but Figure x format in Markdown. (Word auto-number formatting can be changed with a reference.docx file.) This call-out is important because images in PDF output will “float” by design and may appear before or after the desired page. The second line contains the caption, with optional links in Markdown format. But do not insert endnotes with Zotero citation keys, since those will cause errors in the PDF edition. Insert detailed endnotes about sources for images in the body of the text, and use the caption for only a brief image credits and any copyright notice. The third block is the R code-chunk. (In practice, the code-chunk is set off from the other two lines using 3 code tic marks, as shown in later demos, which we omitted here for simplicity.) The first portion references keyword in the call-out and also the caption above. The latter portion may simply instruct Bookdown to include a static image (when there is no interactive version), or it may include an if-else statement for conditional formatting when both interactive and static versions exist. The if statement for HTML output contains (excludes=\"markdown\") because markdown is considered an HTML format, as described in the R Markdown Cookbook. Since the publisher’s platform will accept a full-length Markdown version of the book, which displays static images rather than interactive visualizations, we need to generate the “markdown” file differently than the HTML web edition. Write R code-chunk labels that use the same year and keywords as the image file name. Avoid duplicate labels across the book. Use only letters, numbers, and hyphens (not underscores): ref:1901-keywords-with-hyphens images/1901-keywords-with-hyphens.png Do not insert spaces inside the ref:chunk-label for the caption. But do add a blank line to separate it from the code-chunk. After the code-chunk, add another blank line to avoid “undefined reference” Bookdown errors. Inside the R code-chunk ref caption, do NOT use mischievous characters (such as < or > or \") that will throw HTML errors into the Markdown output images. Do not insert footnotes in the R code-chunk ref caption, which will throw PDF errors. Our Bookdown index.Rmd file includes global R code-chunk settings immediately after the first header. One setting displays each code-chunk image without a code echo, meaning that only the image is displayed, and not the code used to generate that image. The other setting automatically inserts the PDF version of an PNG/JPG image, whenever it exists, in the PDF output, which allows us to manually reduce the size of large images displayed in the PDF book. Read more about these options in this Bookdown chapter: https://bookdown.org/yihui/bookdown/figures.html. {r setup, include=FALSE} knitr::opts_chunk$set(echo = FALSE) options(knitr.graphics.auto_pdf = TRUE) Demo: R code-chunk for static image for all editions: HTML, PDF, DOCX, MD …as shown in Figure 9.4. Figure 9.4: Caption with optional Markdown links but no endnotes. Source: “Hippo and crocodile” by Stig Nygaard, CC-BY. Demo: R code-chunk to reduce size of static image for all editions First, create a copy of the original PNG image. Use Preview or any image editor to reduce size by 50 percent or more, and if needed, increase the resolution (from 72 to 144 dpi or higher), and save. Export as PDF image with same filename as PNG file, to produce two image files: keyword.png (original) and keyword.pdf (smaller size). The global setting will auto-substitute the smaller PDF image in place of the original PNG image. Second, insert an out.width=... in the second line to reduce the PNG display size as needed in the HTML edition. Note that this method keeps the original PNG image intact, which is ideal when working with historical images of a reasonable file size. Images larger than 3MB may be delayed in the HTML web edition for readers with slow internet connections. …as shown in Figure 9.5. Figure 9.5: This version reduces HTML display size using out.width=300 and auto-substitutes a smaller PDF image. Source: “Hippo and crocodile” by Stig Nygaard, CC-BY. R code-chunks allow more complex conditional formatting, where an interactive map or animated GIF or streaming video clip appears in the HTML version, and a manually-produced static image with an embedded link appears in the PDF, MS Word, and full-length Markdown outputs. To change the height of the default 400px iframe, add the new height to include_url as shown in the examples. (Note: Changing the width of the default 675px iframe to less than 100 percent requires adding a line in a custom-scripts.html file, and including this in the index.Rmd file). Demo: R code-chunk for iframe in HTML, static image in PDF, DOCX, MD …as shown in Figure 9.6. Figure 9.6: Explore the full-size interactive map, which enables readers of non-HTML editions to view it. View open-source code and historical sources, developed by list-authors-here. Demo: R code-chunk for locally-stored scrolling PDF in HTML, static screenshot in PDF, DOCX, MD Be sure to add “screenshot” to the file name of the static PNG to avoid confusing it with the scrolling PDF, in case the static PNG is converted into a static PDF for better image quality in the PDF book output. Note: Currently in 2021 this displays a scrolling PDF in Firefox, Chrome, but not Safari browser. Insert link to local PDF in the caption to provide workaround for readers with Safari browsers. …as shown in Figure 9.7. Figure 9.7: Explore the sample PDF that is locally stored in the GitHub repo, with option to add more Markdown links. Demo: R code-chunk for animated GIF in HTML, static image in PDF, DOCX, MD When appropriate, create animated GIF files using the free Giphy Capture or the paid Camtasia application, which allows the option to add fade-to-black to mark the end-point in the looped version. …as shown in Figure 9.8. Figure 9.8: View the animated GIF, which enables readers of non-HTML editions to view it. Note about CTDA Videos As of 2020, videos uploaded to CTDA have datastreams generated in MP4 video format, but these run in auto-play format in the browser, which CTDA cannot turn off, so are not appropriate to display in the browser in this book. See sample video datastream: https://collections.ctdigitalarchive.org/islandora/object/120002:172/datastream/MP4 and read more https://confluence.uconn.edu/display/CTDA/Datastreams. Therefore, CTDA should be used as a historical preservation video server, but must use either YouTube, Vimeo, or Kaltura examples above to display secondary video clips for display in this book. Demo: R code-chunk for YouTube video in HTML, static image in PDF, DOCX, MD Be sure to use the embed link from a YouTube or Vimeo share button. …as shown in the video 9.9. Figure 9.9: View the YouTube video, which enables readers of non-HTML editions to view it. YouTube formatting in Bookdown seems cleaner than Vimeo formatting. Add link to full video on a historical preservation server (such as CTDA) to avoid auto-play issue. Demo: R code-chunk for Kaltura video in HTML edition, static image in PDF, DOCX, MD Work with Trinity Library to upload items to their Kaltura Hartford History channel or your personal channel. Go to Kaltura video entry > share button > embed, extract the long URL, and paste in R code-chunk below. Option: This method allows you to select a video start time, such as 8:00, which will be appended to the embed code URL in seconds like this: [mediaProxy.mediaPlayFrom]=480\" This method successfully avoids auto-play in Mac browsers. TODO: test in Windows browsers and other devices. Note: If you paste the long URL directly into a modern browser, the early portion of the link transforms into HTML5-specific code, which you also could use if needed. TODO: Since Kaltura player setup auto-displays captions, which are faulty in the automated video upload process, need to insert corrected captions directly from the transcript. Prioritize videos that need caption revisions. …as shown in Figure 9.10. Figure 9.10: Here’s a sample caption for a video on Trinity Kaltura server. Option to add Markdown link to historical preservation version in CTDA. Demo: R code-chunk for streaming video ONLY in HTML This option is useful if you wish to display a video only in the HTML edition, with no screenshot in the other editions. Note that this will alter figure auto-numbering between the HTML and other editions. To avoid auto-numbering issues, use conventional iframe formatting without the R code-chunk. Figure 9.11: Caption only appears in HTML version. View link to YouTube video. Demo: Markdown image formatting without auto-numbering, for all editions While we normally use R code-chunk image formatting, there are some exceptions. For example, we use Markdown formatting for tables or grids of images that are relatively small and do not require captions or auto-numbering. When creating images to appear as the same size in sequence, temporarily add a code-comment with the image width, height, and resolution as a reminder to match up with others, as shown below. Use PNG images (rather than JPG), and if appropriate, add a numerical suffix to the filename (image-200.png) to distinguish this 200px-wide version from the larger original. <!-- Images below are 200x200 at 300 resolution --> Co-Authors About Us About Jack Dougherty About Ilya Ilyankou "],["tables.html", "Tables in Markdown Format", " Tables in Markdown Format View the underlying source code to understand how this page was composed at: https://github.com/ontheline/otl-bookdown/blob/main/9.3.5-tables.Rmd Two approaches to tables: long, complex, or dynamic in Datawrapper, versus short or static in Markdown For long, complex or dymamic tables that may be updated often, create a Google Sheet, link to Datawrapper, and save backup CSV or XLSX in GitHub repo. Follow iframe image guidelines, including a PNG download. Unless data has specific historical year, start file name with datawrapper-keywords.png. For short or static tables, create in Markdown format, since it produces good output for HTML, PDF, Word, and Markdown. Use a tool such as Tables Generator to import significant table data in CSV format, format the column alignment as desired, and press Generate button to create table in Markdown format. For significant table data, save the CSV version in a GitHub repo for potential later use. Add the Markdown table code shown below to auto-number (Table x) in HTML, PDF, Word. …as shown in Table 9.1. Table 9.1: Left-justify content, remember blank Line Much Much Longer Header Short Header Short Header Left-justify text content with left-colons Less Here Use more hyphens to grant more space to some columns Less Here Table 9.2: Right-justify content, remember blank line Header1 Header2 Header3 123 456 789 Right-justify numerical content with right-colons Use equal hyphens to make equal space for all columns Note that Bookdown creates the Markdown file with tables in HTML format, not Markdown format. If necessary, one workaround is to paste the individual Markdown-formatted tables directly from the .Rmd into a modified full-book .md file. "],["zotero.html", "Zotero and Better BibTeX", " Zotero and Better BibTeX Our Bookdown workflow uses the open-source Zotero bibliography manager, with the Better BibTeX extension, to simplify the process of creating source notes and a bibliography. Rather than typing full references directly into the text, you can insert a short citation key into the book manuscript, and the tools will automatically generate the desired references in your preferred format (we like Chicago-style endnotes), with an alphabetized bibliography of all sources cited at the end. After you’ve installed the tools, here’s an overview of the workflow: Create an entry for each source (book, journal article, document, etc.) in your Zotero library. Select and upload your preferred citation style in .csl format. For each source, Better BibTeX generates a unique citation key, similar to tyackOneBestSystem1974, which you can paste with formatting to create a note in the book manuscript. Each time before you build your book inside Bookdown, export your Zotero library or collection in .bib format into your Bookdown repository, which supplies the reference data to match your citation keys in the text. Here are more detailed instructions to install, set up, and use Zotero and Better BibTeX in a Bookdown workflow. Remember that this workflow may not be ideal for novice computer users. But if you have multiple citations, it will save you time in the long run. Download and install Zotero for Mac, Windows, or Linux. Add connectors to your preferred browsers to automatically upload bibliographic data for your sources. Install the Better BibTeX extension and follow all of the site’s instructions for initial setup. At the top of each entry in Zotero, the extension will generate a unique citation code, such as tyackOneBestSystem1974. Copy and paste the citation code into your Markdown text, and add a caret, square brackets, and the at symbol ^[@tyackOneBestSystem1974]. See more options in the Style Guide. Or to use Zotero’s drag-and-drop quick-copy feature, you can set Zotero preferences > Export > Better BibTeX Quick Copy, and also if desired, set Better BibTeX preferences > Export > Quick-Copy > Pandoc citation format. Tip: If you use R Studio’s built-in text editor, see this blog post on how it supports Zotero citations. Go to the Zotero Style Repository to find your preferred citation style (such as chicago-fullnote-bibliography.csl). Upload this file to your Bookdown repository, and also add it to your book’s index.Rmd settings for both the HTML and PDF editions. Each time before your build your book in Bookdown, export an updated Zotero bibliography (in .bib format) from your Zotero library or collection, and upload into your Bookdown repo, following these steps: A. Select Library > Right-click to export the collection B. Select format > Better BibLaTeX (IMPORTANT: We use this setting, rather than “Better BibTex”, because “Better BibLaTex” includes full dates in newspaper citations, and URLs). Also, we leave all of the checkboxes blank during the export, and do not select “keep updated”. This means that if your Better BibTex citation codes suddenly change in Zotero because the author, title, or year changed, then you are responsible for running find-and-replace to make these edits in the text of the book. C. Save the output in .bib format, save into your book repo, and be sure to add the same filename to your settings in index.Rmd, as shown in these excerpts: bibliography: ontheline.bib citation-style: chicago-fullnote-bibliography.csl ... output: bookdown::gitbook: ... pandoc_args: [ "--csl", "chicago-fullnote-bibliography.csl" ] ... bookdown::pdf_book: ... citation_package: default pandoc_args: [ "--csl", "chicago-fullnote-bibliography.csl" ] In our Bookdown workflow, which uses the Chicago full-note bibliography style, this Zotero source type entries appear correctly formatted: Book Book chapter Journal article Newspaper Thesis Report Web page Blog post – But we avoid this because Zotero Chicago-style entry inserts “(blog)” into citation title. Instead, we prefer to reset the type to Web page. Document – Use this all-purpose entry in place of other types: Law case, Presentation, Interview, Video recording, Television broadcast, etc. Insert important details (such as the archival location information) in the Publisher field. To help other researchers find items cited in this book, include URLs in Zotero entries whenever feasible, even if not required by convention. For example, some print-only books and documents are hard to locate, so include an OCLC WorldCat permalink to make them easier to find (example: http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/20683509). Also, if a print source has been digitized by HathiTrust, Google Books, or the Internet Archive, add one of these URLs to the Zotero entry. Reminder: Chicago full-note works exactly as it was designed, meaning that the second instance of a citation currently appears as an abbreviated note (author, with title when appropriate). Demo: Here’s a text-only note, with no Zotero citation.270 To create a note with citations only, separate Zotero/BibTeX citation keys with semi-colons: 271 Since notes also may include text and punctuation in Markdown syntax, always insert a caret symbol prior to the brackets to demarcate a note:272 Remember that the chicago-fullnote-bibliography.csl format is designed to automatically shorten the note after it its first reference. Customized to restart endnote numbering in each chapter & subchapter Note that this publication contains customized code in style.css to restart endnote numbering in each chapter and subchapter (aka section), to match a traditional history book publication. See relevant code on GitHub. TODO: Fix known issue: Using Bookdown version 0.16 as of January 2020, note numbering with customized code appears differently across editions, and needs to be addressed prior to final PDF publication: In the Web HTML edition, customized code in style.css renumbers endnotes at the beginning of each chapter (e.g. 2) and subchapter (e.g. 2.1), as desired by the author. But in the PDF edition, endnote renumbering begins only at each chapter, not subchapter, regardless of the custom CSS code. Probably need to change a Pandoc LaTeX setting. In the MS Word edition, footnotes (rather than endnotes) are continuously numbered without breaks across the entire document, regardless of the custom CSS code. Also, avoid placing notes in image captions, since URLs cause an extra } symbol to appear when generating PDF version, which crashes the build. Instead, place dynamic reference in the body text immediately before the image, along with footnote ref. This is a note, with no bibliographic reference.↩︎ Tyack, The One Best System; Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier.↩︎ Compare how urban education appears in Tyack, The One Best System, p. 123 versus suburban schooling in Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier, p. 234.↩︎ "],["alternative.html", "Alternative Book Publishing Tools", " Alternative Book Publishing Tools We gained some experience with book publishing tools while writing On The Line. During its early years, we migrated the book across different platforms, using different titles and domain names, with shapshots and code commits stored on the Internet Archive: 2010-2014 On The Line on self-hosted WordPress 2015 On The Line on self-hosted Pressbooks to 2017 2018 On The Line built with Bookdown on GitHub Before leaping into Bookdown or any other tools for authoring and/or publishing book-length works, clarify your goals and consider the costs and benefits of different approaches. Here’s a short list of alternatives we tested or considered, and our notes on how they addressed our specific goals. Your experience may differ, and tools are continually evolving, so we welcome feedback to the authors. Conventional word processors: Most authors work primarily with text, and are content with a traditional book-publishing workflow that begins with composing in Microsoft Word or LibreOffice, then handing it off to a publisher for review, copyediting, layout, and distribution. But this book is designed to blend text and interactive digital media, and to publish book products in multiple formats: on the public web (for free) and an inexpensive paperback (for sale). Traditional word processors do not efficiently achieve this goal. Advanced word processors: Scrivener by Literature & Latte is a powerful word-processor and outlining tool designed to help authors see both “the forest or the trees” of book-length manuscripts. Although Scrivener supports a different version of Markdown, the tool was not designed to integrate interactive maps and charts into text, nor does it support multi-author collaboration or sharing files on a public repository. Cloud-based word processors: Google Docs and other cloud-based word processors allow authors to write collaboratively in real-time, comment on each other’s work, and share drafts in semi-public or public venues for early reader feedback. Furthermore, installing the Docs to Markdown by Ed Bacher allows you to convert Google Doc files into Markdown format (for easier conversion to other platforms, such as Bookdown) or HTML format (for the web). Although Google Docs can display static images of interactive maps and videos, and links to online versions, it was not designed to display interactive iframes, nor to publish book-length editions to the web or PDF formats. GitBook is a collaborative publishing platform that is primarily designed for producing online documentation. Authors can embed some interactive content, share their work through a GitHub repository, and exercise version control. The GitBook layout with its collapsible table of contents is well-designed, and has been integrated as a style into Bookdown. But GitBook is not designed to produce exportable book files (and the PDF export is only available as a beta feature for paid business-level subscribers). Furthermore, GitBook does not support citation tools that some authors require. WordPress.org is an open-source web authoring platform, used by over 33 percent of the top 10 million websites as of 2019. Users can create a free account on WordPress.com, or freely download the WordPress software and run a self-hosted version on a server, which requires developer skills or a third-party service, such as ReclaimHosting.com. Although WordPress creates web pages, it was not designed to produce PDFs or print books, and it’s not easy for authors to edit book-length manuscripts on a WordPress platform. Pressbooks is an open-book publishing platform built on an open-source variation of WordPress Multisite, which produces books in different formats: web, print (PDF), ebooks (ePUB), etc. Authors can pay to publish on the Pressbooks.com platform or a third-party service such as ReclaimHosting.com, or freely download the software to run on a server, which requires developer skills. Although Pressbooks is a powerful tool, it requires an investment of time and resources to install and maintain its platform, dependencies, and updates. Also, creating a book in Pressbooks requires authors to compose directly in the WordPress-style editor, or copy-and-paste content from word processor to web platform, which requires continually updating back-and-forth to keep both versions the same. By contrast, composing in Bookdown is simpler because there is only one version of the book manuscript, from which all book products are generated. Scalar is an open-source scholarly authoring and publishing platform by the Alliance for Networking Visual Culture, with support from the Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. The platform was created primarily for authors to assemble born-digital book-length works online, with media from multiple sources, and it allows multi-author collaboration. But the platform was not designed to produce PDFs or print books, so was not considered for this book. See examples of online-only works at https://scalar.me/anvc/scalar/showcase/. Users can freely register to create works on the Scalar platform hosted by the University of Southern California at http://scalar.usc.edu/works/. Manifold is an open-source scholarly publishing platform created through a collaboration by the University of Minnesota Press, the Graduate Center at the City University of New York, and Cast Iron Coding, with funding from the Mellon Foundation. The platform was designed primarily for authors to integrate digital media into their texts, and also for readers to view and annotate drafts and finished books online. It appears that print book production is handled separately. Since installing Manifold on a server requires developer skills, most authors will need to work directly with a participating publisher to access the tool. The Manifold platform can ingest texts written in Markdown, Microsoft Word, and other formats. Fulcrum is an open-source scholarly publishing platform created University of Michigan Library and Press in collaboration with several partners, with initial funding from the Mellon Foundation. The platform was designed primarily for authors to integrate digital media into book-length works, which readers can view online or in e-book formats or print formats. Since the Fulcrum platform is hosted on the publisher’s server, authors will need to work directly with a participating publisher to access the tool. "],["bibliography.html", "Chapter 10 Bibliography", " Chapter 10 Bibliography The text and images for the On The Line book, including data files and source code for interactive charts and maps, is located in our open-source GitHub repository at https://github.com/ontheline. The text is copyrighted and shared under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license, and source code for interactive charts and maps is shared under an MIT license. See individual images and captions for information about copyrights held by others. See also digitized documents, oral history interviews, and videos related to this book, stored in the On The Line Digital Archives, Connecticut Digital Archives, https://collections.ctdigitalarchive.org/islandora/object/120002:otl. Since 2002, over 30 Trinity College student researchers have co-authored publications and/or research presentations with faculty, staff, and community partners through the Cities Suburbs and Schools Project http://commons.trincoll.edu/cssp. CSSP is both an undergraduate seminar and a research team for independent studies. Their works listed below include articles, book chapters, papers, and presentations, and many of these have been stored in the Papers and Publications section, Cities Suburbs and Schools Project, Trinity College Digital Repository, http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers. Note that several items currently in the Trinity Digital Repository https://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp/ will be migrated into the CTDA. Archival and Digital Collections Avon Free Public Library. Avon History Collection. https://history.avonctlibrary.info. ———. Connecticut Digital Archive Collection. https://collections.ctdigitalarchive.org/islandora/object/150002:001. ———. Map Collection Master Index. https://archives.library.wcsu.edu/cao/ctavfpl/mapcollection.xml. ———. Marian Hunter History Room. https://www.avonctlibrary.info/services/history-room/. Avon Historical Society. https://avonhistoricalsociety.org. Connecticut Digital Archive. http://collections.ctdigitalarchive.org/. Connecticut Historical Society. https://chs.org/. ———. Connecticut Digital Archive Collection. http://hdl.handle.net/11134/40002:CHS001. Connecticut History Illustrated. http://hdl.handle.net/11134/480002:collection. Connecticut Judicial Branch. Case Look-Up. https://www.jud.ct.gov/jud2.htm. Connecticut Open Data. https://data.ct.gov/. Connecticut State Library. https://ctstatelibrary.org/. ———. Aerial Photographs of Connecticut, 1934-Present. http://libguides.ctstatelibrary.org/hg/aerialphotos/home. ———. Connecticut Digital Archive Collection. http://hdl.handle.net/11134/30002:csl. ———. ResearchIT Newspapers (Available with a Public Library Card). https://researchitct.org/newspapers/. ———. Treasures of Connecticut Libraries. https://cslib.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p128501coll0. CT Mirror. https://ctmirror.org. CTHumanities. https://cthumanities.org/. ———. Connecticut History. https://connecticuthistory.org/. ———. TeachIt Curriculum Projects. https://teachitct.org. Google Books. https://books.google.com/. Google Scholar. https://scholar.google.com/. Hartford Courant. https://courant.com. ———. 1764-1995, ProQuest Historical Newspapers. https://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant. ———. 1764-1995, ProQuest Historical Newspapers, CT State Library Access with a Public Library Card. https://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/?accountid=46995. ———. 1764-1995, ProQuest Historical Newspapers, Trinity College Library Subscription. https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/hnphartfordcourant/?accountid=14405. ———. 1992-Present, ProQuest Newspapers. https://search.proquest.com/hartfordcourant. ———. 1992-Present, ProQuest Newspapers, CT State Library with a Public Library Card. https://search.proquest.com/hartfordcourant?accountid=46995. ———. 1992-Present, ProQuest Newspapers, Trinity College Library Subscription. https://search-proquest-com/hartfordcourant?accountid=14405. Hartford Data. https://data.hartford.gov/. Hartford Public High School Museum & Archive. https://hphs1638.wordpress.com/. ———. Connecticut Digital Archive Collection. http://hdl.handle.net/11134/620002:HPHSMA. Hartford Public Library. https://www.hplct.org. Hartford Public Library, Hartford History Center. https://hhc.hplct.org. ———. ArchivesSpace. http://hhc2.hplct.org. ———. Boyd Hinds Papers. http://hhc2.hplct.org/repositories/2/resources/29. ———. Butch Lewis Video Collection. https://collections.ctdigitalarchive.org/islandora/object/50002:butch_lewis. ———. Connecticut Digital Archive. http://hdl.handle.net/11134/50002:AdminJME02. ———. Hartford Changemakers. https://hplct.libguides.com/changemakers. ———. Hartford Housing Resources. https://hplct.libguides.com/hhc-resources/housing. ———. Map Collection. http://hhc2.hplct.org/repositories/2/resources/19. HathiTrust Digital Library. https://www.hathitrust.org/. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/. Jewish Historical Society of Greater Hartford. https://jhsgh.org/. Life in West Hartford. Essays by Tracey M. Wilson. http://lifeinwesthartford.org. Map Warper by Topomancy LLC. http://mapwarper.net/. New York Public Library. Map Warper. http://maps.nypl.org/warper/. On The Line. GitHub Repository. https://github.com/ontheline. On The Line Digital Archives. Connecticut Digital Archive Collection. http://hdl.handle.net/11134/120002:otl. Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER). https://www.pacer.gov/pcl.html. Shoeleather History Project. Stories from Hartford’s Grassroots. Essays by Steve Thornton. https://shoeleatherhistoryproject.com. Social Explorer. Trinity College Library Subscription. https://www.socialexplorer.com/. Trinity College Library. https://www.trincoll.edu/lits/. ———. Digital Repository. https://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/. ———. Digital Repository, Cities, Suburbs, and Schools Project. https://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp/. ———. Digital Repository, Hartford Studies Papers. https://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/hartford_papers/. ———. Hartford Collection [Hartford Times Photos]. https://www.jstor.org/site/trinity/hartford/. ———. Watkinson Library, Hartford Studies Project Collection. https://trinitywatkinson.libraryhost.com/repositories/3/resources/58. University of Connecticut Library. https://lib.uconn.edu. ———. Archives and Special Collections, Connecticut Digital Archive Collection. http://hdl.handle.net/11134/20002:UniversityofConnecticut. ———. Map and Geographic Information Center (MAGIC). http://magic.lib.uconn.edu/. ———. Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, Archives and Special Collections. https://dodd.uconn.edu/thomas-j-dodd-research-center/. University of Hartford. Connecticut Digital Archive Collection. http://hdl.handle.net/11134/550002:UniversityofHartford. University of Pennsylvania Library. Online Books Page. https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/. US Census Bureau. Decennial Publications. https://www.census.gov/prod/www/decennial.html. US Department of Education. National Center for Education Statistics. https://nces.ed.gov. US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Historical and Archived Reports. https://www.huduser.gov/portal/taxonomy/term/2520. US Government Publishing Office. GovInfo. https://www.govinfo.gov/. US Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/. ———. Sanborn Maps Collection. https://www.loc.gov/collections/sanborn-maps. US National Archives. https://www.archives.gov/. Wadsworth Atheneum. Connecticut Digital Archives Collection. http://hdl.handle.net/11134/250002:WA001. West Hartford Public Library. West Hartford History Online. https://history.westhartfordlibrary.org/. ———. West Hartford Life. https://history.westhartfordlibrary.org/collections/show/1. ———. West Hartford Local History Resources. https://www.westhartfordlibrary.org/local-history/. ———. West Hartford News and Predecessors. https://history.westhartfordlibrary.org/collections/show/6. WorldCat. https://www.worldcat.org/. Automated list of sources cited in book-in-progress "],["404.html", "Page not found", " Page not found The page you requested cannot be found (perhaps it was moved or renamed). You may want to try searching to find the page's new location, or use the table of contents to find the page you are looking for. "]] +[["index.html", "On The Line: How Schooling, Housing, and Civil Rights Shaped Hartford and its Suburbs Preface", " On The Line: How Schooling, Housing, and Civil Rights Shaped Hartford and its Suburbs Jack Dougherty and contributors 2024-02-29 Preface Book-in-progress last updated on 29 Feb 2024 On The Line, an open-access digital book, makes visible the hidden history of schooling and housing boundaries that divided metropolitan Hartford, Connecticut, and tells the stories of everyday families and civil rights activists who seek to cross over, redraw, or erase these lines. Feedback and corrections on this book-in-progress are welcome by email to the lead author, or GitHub users can submit a pull request to our repository. This text of this book is copyrighted by the authors and freely distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. You may re-use and modify our text for non-commercial purposes, with a source credit to: OnTheLine.trincoll.edu by Jack Dougherty and contributors. Similarly, our interactive charts and maps in this book are copyrighted by Jack Dougherty and contributors, and freely shared under an MIT license, with the open source code available at our GitHub repository. You may re-use and modify our charts, maps, and code, with an acknowledgement to: OnTheLine.trincoll.edu by Jack Dougherty and contributors. Learn how to work with GitHub and create your own charts and maps in Hands-On Data Visualization by Jack Dougherty and Ilya Ilyankou. Other images and videos in this book include a caption stating if the original is copyrighted by its creator. "],["about-the-book.html", "About the Book", " About the Book On The Line tells the story of schooling and housing boundaries that shaped American metropolitan life over the past century, and also the civil rights struggles of families and activists to cross over, redraw, or erase these powerful lines. Set in the city of Hartford, Connecticut, and its emerging suburbs, the book explains how this metropolitan area became one of the most racially and economically polarized regions in the northeastern United States. The story highlights how government, business, and white middle-class families drew lines to distance themselves from others, and the evolving coalitions that have sought to reform the relationship between private housing and public education. This digital-first book was designed for the open web. The narrative is wrapped around digital evidence—including interactive maps, videos, and documents—to make hidden boundaries more visible, and to amplify the voices of people who challenged these lines. On The Line is best read in your web browser, where readers may fully explore the evidence, follow links to related sources, and connect with the author and other readers through comments. In addition to the web edition, the same text (with static images and links) also appears in the downloadable e-book versions, and an inexpensive print edition to come. In an open-access book, history becomes more widely available to the public, without barriers of price or permissions. As educators, we believe that knowledge becomes more valuable when it is easily discoverable and accessible, not hidden behind password-protected paywalls. Moreover, the liberating power of history—and civil rights history in particular—should be freely available, especially for the communities of people who lived these stories. Anyone may freely read this book online or download it from the web, and after it is completed, purchase or borrow a low-cost paperback edition. Written for the liberal arts, the book blends interdisciplinary scholarship with highly-engaged student learning. It draws on the fields of history, social sciences, and policy analysis in urban America, and more than a decade of collaborative research with undergraduate students, faculty, staff, and community partners at Trinity College. Rather than simply report our results, we describe our discovery process, so that others may expand upon, or even challenge our findings, in future works. We also strived to explain new concepts and make the text accessible for younger students and residents of the Hartford region. In sum, On The Line blends the best aspects of conventional publishing and web innovation. The main narrative still looks and feels like a scholarly book, divided into chapters and backed up by endnotes. But the web platform allows us to embed digital evidence on the page, and to link directly to external resources located elsewhere. As a result, this book delivers a more comprehensive, coherent, and connected work of scholarship than what was previously possible in print-only publications, or scattered online journal articles and blog posts, at no cost to the reader. Flip the page—in whatever format you prefer—and find out for yourself. "],["how-to-read-and-cite.html", "How to Read and Cite", " How to Read and Cite This open-access book-in-progress is freely available on the web at http://ontheline.trincoll.edu. The web edition allows readers to fully experience the interactive maps, video clips, and clickable source links. Any modern web browser will display the book, but readers may prefer larger screens (desktop, laptop, tablet) over smaller screens (such as smartphones). In your web browser, try these toolbar features near the top of the page: Menu Search Font to adjust text size and display View source code on GitHub Download PDF Shortcuts (arrow keys to navigate; s to toggle sidebar; f to toggle search) Social Media Share How to Cite For general citations of the book-in-progress, see these samples of common academic styles: Chicago-style footnote or endnote: Jack Dougherty and contributors, On the Line: How Schooling, Housing, and Civil Rights Shaped Hartford and Its Suburbs (Trinity College, book-in-progress, 2021), http://ontheline.trincoll.edu. Chicago-style bibliography entry: Dougherty, Jack, and contributors. On the Line: How Schooling, Housing, and Civil Rights Shaped Hartford and Its Suburbs. Trinity College, book-in-progress, 2021. http://ontheline.trincoll.edu. MLA bibliography entry (with web address): Dougherty, Jack, and contributors. On the Line: How Schooling, Housing, and Civil Rights Shaped Hartford and Its Suburbs. Trinity College, book-in-progress, 2021. Web. http://ontheline.trincoll.edu/. APA reference entry: Dougherty, J., & contributors. (2021). On the Line: How Schooling, Housing, and Civil Rights Shaped Hartford and Its Suburbs. Trinity College, book-in-progress. Retrieved from http://ontheline.trincoll.edu To cite a specific passage, insert the author/title/web address of the relevant chapter as a “book section” in your preferred citation style. Since the web edition does not include page numbers, include the chapter-level web address to point readers to the specific page. Sample Chicago-style note for a specific chapter: Elaina Rollins, Clarissa Ceglio, and Jack Dougherty, “Writing Greater Hartford’s Civil Rights Past with ConnecticutHistory.org,” in On The Line: How Schooling, Housing, and Civil Rights Shaped Hartford and its Suburbs (Trinity College, book-in-progress, 2021), https://ontheline.trincoll.edu/writing. What if web links break? All past and present editions of On The Line include the stable web address (http://OnTheLine.trincoll.edu), which redirects readers to the current version of the book. The web edition of the book also includes internal links to different pages within the book (e.g. selected chapters, bibliography, etc.) If any internal links break, this platform has been set up to automatically redirect readers to the book’s home page. The book also contains external links (such as endnotes that refer to other articles, books, or websites). Whenever possible, external links point to open-access sources. When only paywall-protected sources are available, external links may include a web address specific to readers on the Trinity College network. If any external links break, each endnote contains a full citation and external web address, which readers may search in the “Way Back Machine” at (http://archive.org) to see the most recent version of this site. Donate to the Internet Archive, the non-profit organization that maintains this valuable collection of our digital history as a free public service. "],["authors.html", "Authors and Contributors", " Authors and Contributors While teaching and researching this book at Trinity College, over 25 undergraduate students have co-authored publications or co-presented conference papers with the lead author. Several also were invited to co-author chapters or make other significant contributions to this publication, and are listed below. Lead Author Jack Dougherty, the lead author of On The Line, is Professor of Educational Studies at Trinity College. He collaborates with students, colleagues, and community partners by using digital history and data visualization to explore cities, suburbs, schools, and housing in metropolitan Hartford, Connecticut. Contact him on his faculty profile page or his personal site https://jackdougherty.org. Co-Authors Jasmin Agosto (Trinity College Class of 2010 with bachelor’s degree in American Studies and Educational Studies) co-authored Mobilizing Against Racial Steering and Redlining, and also researched 18th-19th century school documents, and decades of school residency cases. Photo by Seth Markle. Clarissa Ceglio co-authored Writing Greater Hartford’s Civil Rights Past with ConnecticutHistory.org Ilya Ilyankou (Trinity College Class of 2018 with bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and Studio Arts) developed several interactive maps in this book. His open-source code and map links are available at our GitHub public repository: http://github.com/OnTheLine/. Vianna Iorio (Trinity College Class of 2019 with double major in Educational Studies and English) co-authored Restricting with Property Covenants, Mobilizing Against Racial Steering and Redlining, Jumping the School District Line, and more chapters to come. Katie Campbell Levasseur (Trinity College Class of 2011 with bachelor’s degree in Educational Studies and Mathematics) conducted restrictive covenant property records research and co-authored How We Found Restrictive Covenants. June Gold co-authored Restricting with Property Covenants and How We Found Restrictive Covenants. JiYun (Lisa) Lee (Trinity College Class of 2017 with bachelor’s degree in Educational Studies and Psychology) co-authored Jumping the School District Line. Shaun McGann (Trinity College Class of 2014 with bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Urban Studies) co-authored Federal Lending and Redlining. Emily Meehan (Trinity College Class of 2016 with bachelor’s degree in Educational Studies) co-authored Racial Barriers to Public Housing Elaina Rollins (Trinity College Class of 2016 with bachelor’s degree in Educational Studies) co-authored Writing Greater Hartford’s Civil Rights Past with ConnecticutHistory.org Candace Simpson (Trinity College Class of 2012 with bachelor’s degree in Educational Studies) co-authored Who Owns Oral History? A Creative Commons Solution and conducted oral history interviews on restrictive property covenants and Sheff v. O’Neill. David K. Ware co-authored Restricting with Property Covenants and How We Found Restrictive Covenants. Tracey M. Wilson (Trinity College Class of 1976) co-authored Restricting with Property Covenants. See related chapters in her 2018 open-access book, Life in West Hartford,(http://lifeinwesthartford.org). More co-authors to come… Additional contributors Staff and students at MAGIC, the Map and Geographic Information Center at the University of Connecticut Libraries, co-created the first edition of interactive maps for this book, with support from a National Endowment for the Humanities grant in 2010-11. Michael Howser, Project Director and Map Interface Development Curtis Denton, Project Management and Interface Design Cary Lynch, Map Interface Development and Interface Design Bill Miller, Aerial Photography Digitization Project Manager Tom Bachant, Map Interface Development George Bentley, Shapefile and KML Development Jonathan Pollak, Shapefile and KML Development Benjamin Spaulding, Dual Map Interface WMS Code Development Josh Strunk, Aerial Photography Mosaic and Digitization Other books by Jack Dougherty Hands-On Data Visualization: Interactive Storytelling from Spreadsheets to Code, with Ilya Ilyankou. O’Reilly Media, 2021. This open-access publication is freely available online and for sale in print at http://HandsOnDataViz.org. Learn how to tell your story with data and use many of the tools we used to create interactive charts and maps for the On The Line, such as Chart.js and Leaflet map code templates on GitHub. Web Writing: Why and How for Liberal Arts Teaching and Learning, co-edited with Tennyson O’Donnell. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2015. This open-access publication is freely available online at http://WebWriting.trincoll.edu and for sale in print at https://www.press.umich.edu/8291956/web_writing.See also more than 1,000 comments by 70 readers and 4 expert reviewers commissioned by the publisher during the open peer review phase on the draft manuscript at https://webwriting2013.trincoll.edu/. Writing History in the Digital Age, co-edited with Kristen Nawrotzki. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2013. This open-access publication is freely available online and for sale in print at https://www.press.umich.edu/4766562/writing_history_in_the_digital_age.See also more than 940 comments by 65 readers and 4 expert reviewers commissioned by the publisher during the open peer review phase on the draft manuscript at http://WritingHistory.trincoll.edu. More Than One Struggle: The Evolution of Black School Reform in Milwaukee. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004, https://www.uncpress.org/book/9780807855249/more-than-one-struggle/. See also more than 60 oral history interviews donated to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Archives, and several that were included in the UWM Libraries March on Milwaukee digital history project. "],["acknowledgements.html", "Acknowledgements", " Acknowledgements TODO "],["introduction.html", "My Introduction to the Lines", " My Introduction to the Lines “Are you looking to buy a home?” came a voice from behind me. I turned around and faced a white man wearing a big smile. Somehow, he knew exactly what I was doing. “Just looking,” I replied. “Got a job interview tomorrow and I’m just looking around.” It was a warm Sunday afternoon in May 1999, on my first visit to the City of Hartford. I was standing on the sidewalk in front of a three-story house with a for-sale sign, on a street somewhere near the West End neighborhood, based on my limited knowledge of the city at that time. There was no open house, nor did I have an appointment to meet a real estate agent. I simply wanted to get out of my rental car and walk around to get a feel for this neighborhood. My hands held the real estate section of the Sunday newspaper and a city street map, which I had purchased at a nearby gas station about fifteen minutes earlier. “Hold on a second. My wife’s a Realtor. She’s right next door and I’ll bring her over.” The man walked back across the street, and returned a minute later with a woman. She introduced herself, mentioned that she happened to be visiting a client on this block, and asked what brought me to Hartford. I explained that I had a job interview the next day at Trinity College, located about two miles from where we stood, but was just looking around. What I also knew—but didn’t tell her—was that the search committee seemed interested in my application, it was very late in the academic hiring season, and if all went well and they offered me a job, they would expect a speedy reply. Time and money were tight for my partner Beth and me. She worked full-time, we had two young children, and I didn’t have a steady job. Leaving home to do another multi-day job interview was a major strain on our family life. That Sunday afternoon probably would be my only opportunity to scope out local housing opportunities in case we needed to make a quick decision about moving to Hartford. The real estate agent rattled off names of people we might know in common. But none of them were familiar to me, since I had not yet met anyone at the college or the city. She turned the conversation to ask what kind of home I was looking to buy. All of this was premature, I explained. The interview was not until Monday, and I didn’t know whether or not they would offer me the job. “Do you have children?” she asked. “Yes,” I replied. “Two kids, ages five and two.” “You might want to look on the other side of Farmington Avenue,” she suggested, pointing to a major street a couple of blocks north. The agent handed me her card, we exchanged goodbyes, and she departed in a car with her husband. I stood there on the sidewalk, dumbfounded, trying to make sense of what had just happened during my first half-hour in Hartford. This agent had gently steered my housing search based on what she had quickly learned about me as a white middle-class professional, and more importantly, as a parent of two school-age children. Somewhere down the street there was a line—not yet visible to me—but one that clearly stood out in this agent’s mind, and most likely in the minds of families living on opposite sides of it. Memories of that sidewalk encounter rolled around in my head over the next few days, weeks, and years. The job interview at Trinity was successful, but that opportunity forced my spouse and me to face several difficult decisions about moving our family to the Hartford region, a theme that we will return to later. While living and learning about the city and its suburbs, my eyes now sharply focused on the lines that differentiate where families reside and send their children to school. Boundaries that were once invisible to me now vibrantly stand out in my mind, while crossing over them on foot, bike, or car. At work I teach my students about the lines, and together we map them on computer screens, measure their influence, record their meaning in people’s lives, and write about what we learn to share with the public. Three types of questions—on the history, pedagogy, and policy of these lines—have captured my attention over the past fifteen years: Why did schooling and housing boundary lines become so influential in shaping US metropolitan life over the past century? How can we make these hidden lines more visible, and amplify the voices of people who challenged them, to educate future generations? What does the evolution of these boundaries, and different activists’ strategies to challenge them, tell us about our present-day policies? This book seeks to answer these questions in a format designed to invite readers like you into the story, to explore the evidence, pose your own questions, and perhaps share comments about the influence of these lines on each of our lives. "],["bridging.html", "Bridging the History Gap", " Bridging the History Gap On The Line is written for students and residents of the Hartford region, as well as for scholars of metropolitan history. On the local level, this work of public history weaves together two vitally important stories: the rise of increasingly rigid schooling and housing boundaries that shaped metropolitan Hartford over the past century, and the civil rights struggles of families and activists to cross over, redraw, or erase these powerful lines. To learn how the city of Hartford and its surrounding suburbs became one of the most racially and economically divided regions in the northeastern United States, the book traces how government, business, and white upper-class families drew boundary lines to distance themselves from others who they perceived as a threat to their position. Moreover, to make us wiser about future prospects for change, it explores how civil rights coalitions crafted different strategies over the decades to challenge and reshape boundary lines, with mixed success, in both the education and housing sectors. More people need to learn these stories about the partitioning of the Hartford region into different towns, school districts, attendance areas, and housing zones, which created disparate social worlds with dramatic differently odds for life outcomes. Whether people grew up or went to school on one side or the other, these divisive boundaries are part of our shared history. Living and learning on the lines have profoundly shaped all of us. For scholars, On The Line argues that we cannot understand the broader narrative of twentieth-century US history without the explanatory power of housing and schooling. Indeed, suburbanization was caused by multiple factors: job migration, interstate highways, tax policies, urban rebellions, and white flight. But this book argues that the dynamic relationship between housing and schooling played a central role in shaping places like Connecticut, which we have not fully understood because a prior generation of historians split these topics into separate bodies of literature, and essentially drew boundaries around these disciplinary subfields. On one side of this scholarly divide, urban and suburban historians (such as Arnold Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto, and Ken Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier) described how housing policies and racial discrimination fueled the post-World War II decline of cities and expansion of outlying suburbs, but schools did not play a meaningful role in their equation. On one side, educational historians who followed the lead of David Tyack (The One Best System) focused on the rise and fall of big-city school districts, yet paid little attention to their relationship with suburbs. Whereas most educational historians halted at the city line, urban and suburban historians generally stopped at the schoolhouse door.1 Arnold R Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago, 1940-1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983); Kenneth T Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985); David Tyack, The One Best System: A History of American Urban Education (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974). For an extended version of this historiographical argument, see Jack Dougherty, “Bridging the Gap Between Urban, Suburban, and Educational History,” in Rethinking the History of American Education, ed. William Reese and John Rury (New York: Palgrave MacMillan Press, 2007), 245–59, http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/5/.↩︎ "],["outline.html", "Outline of the Book", " Outline of the Book On The Line seeks to bridge this disciplinary divide by showing how the dynamic relationship between schooling and housing reshaped our cities and suburbs. During the immediate post-war years of mass suburban housing, public schools in many of these formerly rural towns were seen as inferior to the big-city districts, and a deterrent to outward migration. But in the late 1950s and ‘60s, a convergence of three groups—real estate industry, pro-suburban government, and white middle-class homebuyers—invested in suburban public schools, marketed them to private homes, and defended their attendance boundary lines. This schooling-housing convergence became more powerful in US families’ lives in the human capital market of the 1960s to today, when education credentials have become the most reliable means to transfer middle-class privilege to one’s children. Americans seeking upward mobility began to embrace what we recognize today as a familiar formula: buy a home in the right neighborhood, in order to send your children to a good school, to increase their odds of being accepted into a top-ranked college, to help them to land the perfect job. Moreover, wealth-based schooling and housing boundaries became a more legitimate way for upper-class white families to defend and pass on their privileges, without resorting to overtly racist boundaries of the past, while still distancing their children from other students perceived to be less desirable peers. America’s story of urban decline and suburban ascent, and civil rights struggles to challenge these inequalities, cannot be told without the interaction between two key ingredients— housing and schooling—and the boundary lines that bind them together. This book concentrates on the metropolitan Hartford story, and is divided into multiple chapters of narrative and evidence, organized thematically and chronologically to advance key elements of the broader historical argument. Chapter 1: Defining City and Suburban Lines begins by challenging us to reconsider the familiar poor cities and rich suburbs narrative that is so ingrained in our present-day thinking. But a century ago, these roles were reversed. Connecticut’s capital city was the center of financial wealth, adorned by its crown jewel of public education, Hartford Public High School. Urban schools earned such a strong reputation through the early 1900s that they attracted families from outlying towns to send their children into the city’s borders. By contrast, public schools in areas that we consider today to be elite suburbs, were relatively weak rural districts at this time. This part of the book begins to explain the reversal of fortunes between Hartford’s city and its suburbs over time. Larger colonial-era tracts of land were carved up into smaller town boundaries, state laws formed more rigid school district lines, and suburban voters blocked urban annexation. Today’s Connecticut is highly fragmented into 169 municipal governments, and most manage their own public school districts and land-use decisions, with weak regional governance. Even the phrase “metropolitan Hartford,” which appears in this book, has no official nor consistent definition. As a result, self-interested suburban policies with state governmental support have generated some of the nation’s highest levels of inequality between the central city and its suburbs, and also across suburbs of different socioeconomic standings. Chapter 2: Segregating Along Color Lines explains how the boundaries of White privilege and racism have shifted over time, from explicit racial barriers to more sophisticated hurdles, across both schooling and housing. The Connecticut legislature banned schooling for out-of-state Black students during the 1830s, and Hartford leaders voted to officially segregate public schools for a brief period in 1868, and proposed it again in 1917. After civil rights activists overturned these policies, Hartford officials quietly continued to separate many Black and White students through its decisions on locating new schools and redrawing attendance lines well into the 1970s. In the housing sector, local and federal governments and lenders strengthened the color line through discriminatory ‘redlining’ in mortgage lending, enforcing White-only property deeds, and creating White-only public housing. Even after civil rights activists overturned several of these governmental barriers, Connecticut’s real estate industry reframed the color line through racial steering and other tactics that were harder to detect, even after the federal Fair Housing Act of 1968 outlawed these and related practices. Chapter 3: Excluding Through Zoning Lines makes this hidden history more visible, and explains how decisions made by local and state governmental leaders shaped the suburban landscape in metropolitan Hartford. In general, zoning refers to rules over how land can be used, and some zoning policies have progressive goals, such as separating industrial factories from residential neighborhoods. But in present-day debates, exclusionary zoning refers to policies that favor expensive single-family home construction that requires large amounts of property, rather than more affordable multi-family homes that use less land per resident. In Connecticut, the origins of exclusionary zoning can be traced back one suburban town’s attempt to block an urban Jewish grocery from building a store in a residential neighborhood in the early 1920s. When the town’s effort failed, it sparked a political movement to create stronger legal tools to control future real estate development and exclude types of property (and people) deemed as undesirable neighbors. Exclusionary zoning laws intentionally made it more expensive to build homes in suburban neighborhoods, which effectively limited lower-income people from living there. Unlike other discriminatory barriers of this era—such as mortgage redlining or restrictive covenants or segregated public housing—exclusionary zoning did not directly refer to race, religion, or nationality. Instead, exclusionary zoning cleverly carved up suburban neighborhoods using minimum-land rules that segregated residents by their wealth. In this way, exclusionary zoning became a more sophisticated tool of housing discrimination that largely resisted fair-housing legislation of the 1960s-70s civil rights era, and continues to divide Connecticut into the present day. Chapter 4: Selling and Shopping the Lines explores the pivotal relationship between public schooling and private housing, which fundamentally reshaped metropolitan life and upward mobility strategies in Connecticut in the latter half of the twentieth century. By contrast, in the early 1900s, when a smaller proportion of youth pursued secondary education and beyond, most families did not choose their homes based on the boundary lines of desirable public schools. Prior to the 1950s, schools were relatively weak in attracting middle-class families to the suburbs, but in post-war human capital markets, education became a powerful magnet. Pro-suburban government, real estate interests and prospective homebuyers converged to create the practice commonly known today as “shopping for schools.” Agents began to advertise private homes by their location in higher status public school areas. Local school leaders competed for upper-class families by offering curricular extras. State legislators invested in suburban schools, and legitimized school-by-school rankings by publishing standardized test results. Upwardly mobile families with children sought more desirable school attendance areas, and paid higher prices for private homes that included access to this public good. Overall, the rise of shopping for schools unites the twin narratives of credentialism and consumerism in American metropolitan history. Chapter 5: Challenging the Power Lines tells the stories of everyday families and civil rights activists who sought to cross over, redraw, or erase schooling and housing boundaries in metropolitan Hartford, focusing primarily on the past five decades. When comparing these stories, we learn that the tools of privilege do not stand still, but evolve when confronted by civil rights challenges. In turn, this requires newer generations of activists to continually rethink and revise strategies to address the limited successes of prior years. After Connecticut civil rights advocates won legislative bans against overt racial discrimination in public housing in the late 1940s, and most private housing in the 1960s, they needed to create more sophisticated strategies to combat racial steering and redlining practices, since these were more difficult to prove without direct testing and quantitative studies. Similarly, although activists won a 1965 state constitutional amendment for equal public schools, initial efforts to implement this law were equally challenged in moving students or dollars across city-suburban district lines. This portion concludes with the 1996 courtroom victory of the Sheff v O’Neill school integration plaintiffs, where Connecticut’s highest court outlawed the segregation of Hartford minority students, but left the specifics of the remedy to be determined by a suburban-dominated political process. Chapter 6: Choosing to Cross the Lines describes the present-day political compromises that have emerged from battles over schooling and housing boundaries. When civil rights activists finally pressured Connecticut leaders to deliver on the promise of integration with the Sheff remedies, beginning in 2003, the agreement hinged on voluntary public school choice that did not require participation by any individual, or initially, any suburban district. Instead, state leaders agreed to expand interdistrict magnet schools, with highly-desirable curricular offerings in the arts, sciences, and other specialties to attract white suburban families to voluntarily enroll their children in the same school as urban students of color. The Sheff remedy signals a tangible civil rights victory. As of 2015, state funding for 48 interdistrict magnet schools and the Open Choice city-suburban transfer program enrolls about 12,000 Hartford minority students (or 45 percent of the total) in racially integrated settings. But compromises come at a cost. Interdistrict schools merely blur the boundary lines, rather than erase the root causes of inequality. Furthermore, this voluntary integration plan protects suburban white privilege, and our data analysis shows how it favors more privileged Hartford families. The Sheff remedy has attracted critics from all sides, but the suburban-dominated state government has resisted change and threatened to unilaterally drop all support, despite the judge’s order. At present, the Sheff schooling compromise—and related housing voucher policies that promise greater choice—are caught in a standoff, with suburban interests holding the upper hand. Conclusion: Where Do We Draw the Line? offers historical reflections on present-day policy decisions to come. Two additional chapters offer readers a behind-the-scenes look into the process of creating this book: Teaching and Researching On The Line describes how the book emerged through working with liberal arts undergraduates and Hartford-area community partners in the Cities Suburbs and Schools seminar at Trinity College. For educators, this chapter offers lesson ideas to help students of all ages explore key questions about past and present topics raised in the book. For historical researchers, this chapter describes some of the methods and source materials consulted in creating this book, and some questions that remain unresolved. By making our work process more transparent, we hope to inspire people to educate others and engage in further research on topics in this book. Mapping and Publishing On The Line details our design process and web technologies we used to create this open-access digital book. Our interactive web maps, built with open-source Leaflet code, help broader audiences to visualize spatial and historical change over time. The chapter also describes our publishing workflow, based on the open-source Bookdown package for RStudio, which produces both HTML web pages and PDF print pages. We share our knowledge about these tools so that others may innovate and build more digital books to tell their own stories. "],["defining.html", "Chapter 1 Defining City and Suburban Lines", " Chapter 1 Defining City and Suburban Lines This chapter begins by challenging us to reconsider the familiar poor cities and rich suburbs narrative that is so ingrained in our present-day thinking. But a century ago, these roles were reversed. Connecticut’s capital city was the center of financial wealth, adorned by its crown jewel of public education, Hartford Public High School. Urban schools earned such a strong reputation through the early 1900s that they attracted families from outlying towns to send their children into the city’s borders. By contrast, public schools in areas that we consider today to be elite suburbs, were relatively weak rural districts at this time. This part of the book begins to explain the reversal of fortunes between Hartford’s city and its suburbs over time. Larger colonial-era tracts of land were carved up into smaller town boundaries, state laws formed more rigid school district lines, and suburban voters blocked urban annexation. Today’s Connecticut is highly fragmented into 169 municipal governments, and most manage their own public school districts and land-use decisions, with weak regional governance. Even the phrase “metropolitan Hartford,” which appears in this book, has no official nor consistent definition. As a result, self-interested suburban policies with state governmental support have generated some of the nation’s highest levels of inequality between the central city and its suburbs, and also across suburbs of different socioeconomic standings. "],["richest.html", "The Richest City in the Nation", " The Richest City in the Nation Over a century ago, the press declared Hartford as “the richest city in the United States” per capita, a label from the past that seems strange to anyone familiar with its extreme poverty in the present day. That tagline came from journalist Charles Clark, who wrote a cover story on Connecticut’s capital city in 1876 for Scribner’s Monthly, one of the most popular illustrated literary magazines of its time. While Clark may not have invented this slogan, he certainly popularized it, based on some loose arithmetic of the city’s accumulated wealth, relative to the size of its population, approximately 40,000 people. His essay opened by surveying the value of vast financial and industrial corporations based in the downtown area. The city’s well-known insurance companies, including The Hartford and Aetna, held more than $113 million in assets, which rebuilt Chicago after its disastrous 1871 fire. Added together, the city’s numerous banks amassed over $50 million in deposits and capital. Five railroad lines fed Hartford’s extensive factories, including Colt’s Arms Manufacturing Company, “perhaps the most famous in the country” for its rifles and revolvers during the Civil War. Summed together, these businesses pushed the city’s taxable property value to more than $200 million. In addition to its financial assets, Clark also praised Hartford’s abundant cultural riches. The nation’s best-known authors, Samuel Clemens (more commonly known as Mark Twain) and Harriet Beecher Stowe (whose best-seller, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, influenced the Civil War), both took up residence in the city, alongside many of their literary companions, editors, and publishers. In addition to serving as the state capital, Hartford prized its extensive libraries, museum, and hospital. “The Hartford school buildings are said to the finest in the State,” Clark added, and called special attention to his alma mater, Hartford Public High School, the second oldest in the nation, which also enjoyed “a reputation with all the leading colleges as one of the best of all the preparatory schools,” as shown in Figure 1.1.2 In fact, the education that young people received in the city’s public school system far surpassed what was available in the outlying rural towns, known today as the suburbs. Figure 1.1: Scroll the full-screen document from Scribner’s Monthly in 1876, which declared Hartford as “the richest city in the United States,” relative to its population. Digitized by Google Books. Today we recognize Clark’s “richest city” slogan as boosterism. The twenty-eight-year-old son of a local congressman was a rising reporter at the Hartford Courant, the nation’s oldest continuously published newspaper, and would later become its editor and owner. Clark “had an investment in the city,” observes historian Steven Courtney, and later served on the boards of corporations and philanthropies his essay praised.3 He did not offer a definitive statement on Hartford’s total wealth per capita, nor any direct comparison to financial statistics for other cities, to the extent they were available. Today, the idea of measuring a city by the wealth of its total corporate wealth, rather than the assets actually owned by individual residents, makes little sense. In 1903, nearly four decades after Clark’s essay, skeptics questioned some of its claims. One critic was Alexander Merriam, a Hartford Theological Seminary professor in the brand-new field of sociology. Although Hartford was still “computed as one of the richest cities of its size in the country,” he observed, “local wealth is not so large and available as the statistical aggregate might seem to indicate.” Residents included both “wealthier citizens… scattered in different parts of the city” and also “a slum of almost the first magnitude” of the poorest citizens along the banks of the Connecticut River. While Hartford still had significant pockets of wealth, they were not uniformly distributed. In fact, while Samuel Clemens lived in Hartford, he and his co-author satirically named this era the Gilded Age, referring to a thin gold layer that symbolizes wealth, but masks underlying social problems.4 But none of this skepticism mattered, as long as Hartford’s slogan as the “nation’s richest city” stuck in the public mind. It contained an element of truth that ordinary people could see with their own eyes, whenever they caught sight of a wealthy resident or passed by one of their prestigious homes in the city’s neighborhoods. In fact, the “richest city” label predated Clark’s 1876 article. Five years earlier, advocates for an art museum announced their fundraising appeal by declaring that “Hartford is the richest city of its size in the United States, we believe,” but must construct an institution “if she is to keep her pre-eminence, or is to be a city worthy of her wealth and acknowledged culture.” A similar 1878 appeal argued that while “Hartford is said to be the richest city in the country… so far, however, it fails to sustain adequately a public library.” 5 Variations on the “richest” theme appeared in Hartford church sermons, commencement addresses, and local news and feature stories, sometimes accompanied by tax or bank records, into the early 1920s. Whether or not this claim was based in fact, enough people believed it to publicly repeat it.6 By the end of the twentieth century, the “richest city” slogan had turned upside down. Census 2000 ranked Hartford as one of the poorest major cities, with a population over 100,000, in the United States. When measured by the percentage of families living in poverty, Hartford was the second poorest, with 28 percent of its residents earning less than $17,600 for a family of four. Only the border city of Brownsville, Texas had a higher family poverty rate. When measured by median household income, Hartford was the fourth poorest city with a typical household earning only $24,820, just behind Miami, Brownsville, and Buffalo. Connecticut’s capital city first appeared among the ten most impoverished major cities in the 1980 Census. As of this writing in 2015, the city has not risen out of this dismal category. Although Hartford has inched upward from the near-bottom of the list in recent years, the token change in its rating has been caused by the sharper decline of cities such as Detroit and Flint, Michigan, rather than substantive improvements on its own.7 After the 2000 Census became public, the New York Times ran a front-page story on the depths of Hartford’s poverty. Reminding readers of the city’s former wealthy status, the article pointed to the powerless mayor, internal racial divisions, and public schools that were “among the worst performing in the nation” as markers of urban decline. “The NY Times piece was a teeth-kicker,” recalled Stan Simpson, a Hartford Courant columnist. “It rehashed the well-documented problems in the capital city—poverty, education, crime, race relations—and gave scant attention to any progress.” It was a riches-to-rags story, with no hope of redemption. Tom Condon, another Courant columnist, complained that the New York Times story “described Hartford as a decaying hulk of a once-grand city” and “left the impression that we’re all on skid row.” In response, the Courant published its editorial, “In Defense of Hartford,” which did not question the facts, but criticized the pessimistic portrayal of their city. “It hurts when outsiders point out the ailments that afflict Connecticut’s capital,” the editorial began, describing how this intensely negative national news coverage “felt like an insult.” The spin on Hartford had made a full circle back to the city’s oldest newspaper, where Charles Clark originally crafted the slogan of wealth more than a century ago.8 Where did the money go? What became of the wealth that once made Hartford “the richest city” in the nation into the early 1900s? During the twentieth century, the fortunes of the central city and its suburbs were reversed. According to Census 2000, when Hartford was rated as the second-poorest city by family poverty, its metropolitan statistical area (the city and suburbs combined) rose to the sixth-richest in the nation, as measured by median household income. Consider the size of this gap. Inside Hartford’s city boundaries, the median family earned $24,820 in 2000, but the median family in the metropolitan area earned $52,188, more than twice that amount. If we could exclude the city data from the surrounding metropolitan area, that gap would increase even further. The Gilded Age did not magically disappear from Hartford; most of it moved to selected suburbs.9 One way to visualize the spatial redistribution of wealth from the City of Hartford to its suburbs is to track home values by town during the twentieth century. For each decade in the map below, the average dwelling or single-family home value is indexed to the region to correct for historical price inflation, with higher values represented by darker shades of green. While not a precise measure, the rough differences over time are striking. In 1910, the region’s highest home values were located in the City of Hartford and its neighboring suburb of West Hartford. In second place were inner-ring suburbs with manufacturing jobs (such as East Hartford, Manchester, Windsor, and New Britain), followed by outlying farming towns to the west and southeast. In 1910, the average home value in Hartford was nearly $5,000, four times more than the average $1,200 home value in the agricultural community of Avon. A century later, that relationship had reversed, as home values in the city fell to nearly the lowest in the region, while some outlying farm towns—known today as elite suburbs—climbed to the top. In 2010, the average sales price for a single-family home in Avon climbed to $536,000, more than three times the average $178,000 sales price in Hartford. In some eyes, the once-powerful city-based economic powerhouse had become a doughnut—a fiscally depressed center surrounded by an affluent suburban ring—though with wide variation in the middle, as shown in Figure 1.2.10 Figure 1.2: Explore this full-screen interactive map of home values in Hartford County, 1910-2010. The most valuable single-family homes (in dark green) shifted from the capital city to selected suburbs over time. Home values have been indexed (where county average = 1.0) to adjust for rising prices over time. Missing values appear in gray. Sources: 1910-1980 from Connecticut Tax Commissioner, author’s calculation of average dwelling value from equalized assessments; 1990 from Capital Region Council of Governments, median single-family home sales price; 2000-10 from State of Connecticut, Office of Policy and Management, average single-family home sales price (2000-2010). Learn more in “Calculating Wealth and Poverty in Past and Present” chapter, TODO in this book. View open-source code and historical sources for the map, developed by Ilya Ilyankou and Jack Dougherty, with MAGIC UConn Libraries. How do we explain this reversal of fortunes between Hartford’s city and its suburbs? Histories of twentieth-century suburbanization point to multiple factors, including white flight, urban rebellions, interstate highways, and job migration. But this book argues that the pivotal relationship between private housing and public schooling reshaped central Connecticut. During the first half of the twentieth century, the city’s public school system—and its crown jewel, Hartford Public High School—earned the highest reputation in the region, while most small-town and rural school districts were viewed as woefully behind. When the first generations of city dwellers moved to outlying suburbs, they were attracted by housing opportunities, not substandard schools. Yet this relationship quickly changed during the latter half of the century, when rising suburbs actively competed for upper-class white families and created elite public schools that acted as powerful magnets, while state policies kept most low-income black students at a distance. As the most privileged families fled Hartford, the concentration of poverty and limited resources led the city’s most prized high school to nearly lose its accreditation in the 1990s, while elite suburban public schools rose to the top of new ranking systems. To tell this story about the changing relationship between housing and schooling, this book begins by retracing the lines that were drawn to separate the city and suburban towns, and later its school districts. During the 1800s, town boundaries were still a work-in-progress, and public school districts were relatively porous until the early twentieth century. Connecticut legislators sharpened these divisions under a 1909 school consolidation law, with deep consequences for a school desegregation lawsuit that arose eight decades later. Yet while mass suburbanization prompted more metropolitan governance for water, sewer, and transit between towns in the region, public schooling became more restricted to only families that resided inside local district boundaries. In today’s politically fragmented Connecticut, most policies about housing and education are made either at the State Capitol or in 169 individual town halls and school boards. Even the phrase “metropolitan Hartford” has no officially consistent meaning here. As a result, local self-interested policy decisions have generated some of the nation’s highest levels of inequality between the city and its suburbs, and also between suburbs of different social standing. This chapter visually describes what happened in the Hartford region, as a prelude to later chapters that explain in more detail why it happened, and how civil rights activists have challenged the status quo in different ways. Charles H. Clark, “The Charter Oak City,” Scribner’s Monthly 13, no. 1 (November 1876): 1–21, https://books.google.com/books?id=2q_PAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA1#v=onepage&q&f=false.↩︎ Steve Courtney, “Commentary: Was Hartford ’The Richest City In The United States’?” Hartford Courant, October 10, 2014, http://www.courant.com/opinion/op-ed/hc-op-courtney-was-hartford-richest-city-in-americ-20141010-story.html. On Clark, see Norris Galpin Osborn, “Charles Hopkins Clark,” in Men of Mark in Connecticut: Ideals of American Life Told in Biographies and Autobiographies of Eminent Living Americans (W.R. Goodspeed, 1906), 230–34, https://books.google.com/books?id=ARFh_Sbpg84C&pg=PA230; Joseph F. Nunes, “The Lasting Legacy of Charles Hopkins Clark,” Hartford Courant, October 18, 2014, http://www.courant.com/courant-250/your-moments/hc-courant-clark-profile-20141018-story.html; Joseph F. Nunes, “Chapter Four: ’Fighting Joe’ And Mark Twain,” Hartford Courant, October 18, 2014, http://www.courant.com/courant-250/your-moments/hc-courant-chapter-four-20141018-story.html.↩︎ Alexander R. Merriam, The Social Significance of the Smaller City (Hartford, Conn.: Hartford Seminary Press, 1903), http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/64385345, reprinted as Alexander R. Merriam, “The Social Conditions of the Smaller City,” The Hartford Courant, July 21, 1903, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/555173471?accountid=14405. See also skepticism about the corporate assets underlying the “richest city” claim in “The Richest City,” The Hartford Courant (1887-1922), October 23, 1903, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/555173471?accountid=14405. On satirical name, see Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner, The Gilded Age: A Tale of To-Day (Hartford: American Publishing Company, 1873), http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000664544.↩︎ Although the Wadsworth Atheneum opened in Hartford in 1844 and currently is described as one of the oldest art museums in the nation, the original buildings included an art gallery, the Connecticut Historical Society, and the Young Men’s Institute (which later became the Hartford Public Library). Advocates sought funding for a separate dedicated art museum and public library. See “An Art Museum,” Hartford Daily Courant, April 29, 1871, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/553680505?accountid=14405; “A Suggestive Contrast,” Hartford Daily Courant, October 15, 1878, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/554105478?accountid=14405; Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, “History,” accessed July 28, 2015, https://thewadsworth.org/about/history/.↩︎ For a selection of “richest city” claims, see Conn.) First Church of Christ (Hartford, “Address of Edward Everett Hale,” in Commemorative Exercises of the First Church of Christ in Hartford, at Its Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary, October 11 and 12, 1883 (Press of the Case, Lockwood & Brainard Company, 1883), https://books.google.com/books?id=1ncsAAAAYAAJ; “Girl Graduates: Closing Exercises of Mt. St. Joseph Seminary Cluster of Historical Essays on Hartford,” Hartford Courant, June 19, 1903, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/555144638?accountid=14405; “Hartford as the \"Richest City\": A Great Financial Center,” Hartford Courant: Financial Section, October 6, 1908, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/555586930?accountid=14405; Otis Skinner, “Save Twain Home, Urges Otis Skinner: Should Be Easy for Richest City Per Capita in This Country,” Hartford Courant, April 23, 1920, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/556799530?accountid=14405; “Hartford Holds Lead as Wealthiest City: Over 21,000 Local People Pay Federal Income Tax –Stamford Second and New Haven Third 10 Per Cent. In State Assessed,” Hartford Courant, November 26, 1921, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/556971490?accountid=14405; “Wealth of Hartford Clearly Shown by Bank Statements: Per Capita Wealth, $600, Equalled by No Other City in U. S.–1921 Bank Dis-Counts Total $455,975,029 Insurance in Lead as Chief Industry City Known for Its Manu-Facturing for Over 150 Years–Center for Traders and Buyers for Radius of 50 Miles,” Hartford Courant, September 3, 1922, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/557107212?accountid=14405.↩︎ See census data sources in “Calculating Wealth and Poverty in Past and Present” chapter, TO COME in this book.↩︎ Paul Zielbauer, “Poverty in a Land of Plenty: Can Hartford Ever Recover?” The New York Times: N.Y. / Region, August 26, 2002, https://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/26/nyregion/poverty-in-a-land-of-plenty-can-hartford-ever-recover.html. Contrast the NY Times portrayal with a later story by the LA Times, which Simpson noted had a more positive spin: David Lamb, “Once-Gilded City Buffing Itself Up,” Los Angeles Times, June 15, 2003, http://articles.latimes.com/2003/jun/15/nation/na-hartford15. See reactions by Stan Simpson, “Capital Progress: Read All About It,” Hartford Courant, June 28, 2003, http://articles.courant.com/2003-06-28/news/0306281788; Tom Condon, “‘Troubled City’ a Victim of Geography,” Hartford Courant, September 12, 2002, http://articles.courant.com/2002-09-12/news/0209120303; “Editorial: In Defense of Hartford,” Hartford Courant, August 27, 2002, http://articles.courant.com/2002-08-27/news/0208270795.↩︎ See census data sources in “Calculating Wealth and Poverty in Past and Present” chapter, TO COME in this book.↩︎ Ilya Ilyankou and Jack Dougherty, “Map: Home Value Index in Hartford County CT from 1910-2010” (On The Line, 2017), https://github.com/OnTheLine/otl-home-value; See home value data sources in “Calculating Wealth and Poverty in Past and Present” chapter, TO COME in this book.↩︎ "],["carving.html", "Carving Up Town Boundaries", " Carving Up Town Boundaries Text to come on the continual redrawing of town boundaries in Hartford region thru 1880s, as shown in Figure 1.3.11 Figure 1.3: Scroll down (or click the narrative and use keyboard down arrow) in the full-size interactive map of town borders in Hartford County, Connecticut. From the early 1600s to the late 1880s, local and state government divided the region into 29 separate towns as the European settler population grew. Boundaries shown here are not exact, but approximated from the best available digital sources: UConn Libraries MAGIC historical maps, Atlas of Historical County Boundaries at Newberry Library, and the Connecticut State Register and Manual. View open-source code and historical sources for the map, developed by Ilya Ilyankou and Jack Dougherty. TODO: Text to come on CT 1909 school district consolidation, which redrew school district boundaries to match town boundaries TODO: Fix basemaps and narrative for https://ontheline.github.io/otl-redraw-lines-hartford/index-frame.html TODO: Text to come on rigidity of CT school district boundaries today, and their size relative to cities that annexed suburban land or county-wide school districts in many other states Figure 1.4: Compare any US elementary school district boundaries side-by-side, at the same scale, in this full-size interactive map. Hover over districts to view student population and poverty data. Click any district to freeze its data panel when moving between maps. In the Northeast, many school districts are narrowly drawn along city and suburban boundaries, which concentrates student poverty, as shown in Hartford, Connecticut and its surrounding towns. By contrast, metropolitan and county-wide school districts are more common in Southern and Western states, as shown in Charlotte-Mecklenberg, North Carolina. Map data from EdBuild.org Dividing Lines, as described in their methodology. Map developed by Ilya Ilyankou and Jack Dougherty, with code on GitHub. Ilya Ilyankou and Jack Dougherty, “Map: Town Borders in Hartford County, CT from 1600s to Present” (On The Line, 2017), https://github.com/OnTheLine/otl-town-borders.↩︎ "],["golden.html", "A Golden Age for City Schools", " A Golden Age for City Schools TODO: TEXT TO COME "],["consolidating.html", "Consolidating Rural School Districts", " Consolidating Rural School Districts PREVIEW: In contrast to the golden age of urban schools, most rural and suburban schools faced deep challenges to educational quality during the early 1900s. Several had no high schools and relied on regional arrangements with neighboring towns–funded by state subsidies–to educate their teenage students. Decades ago, Connecticut students routinely and legally crossed school district boundaries to receive a public education, and the entire system was arguably more regionalized than it is today, with rigidly divided districts. According to a 1925 study by the Connecticut State Board of Education, about 137 out of 169 towns (81 percent) still operated a one-room school, for a total of 558. State officials praised a modest decrease in one-room schools from 1921, but noted that the rural school grants program served as a disincentive. “The town which receives a percentage of teachers’ salaries grants is not inclined to close a school, transport the pupils, and lose this grant when no compensating grant to help meet the costs of conveyance is provided,” stated the report authors. “The present scheme of grants is all too evidently hindering rather than aiding the small towns to improve their schools,” as shown in Figure 1.5.12 TODO - expand chapter Figure 1.5: This map illustrated the gradual decline of one-room schools across Connecticut from 1921 to 1925, according to the State Board of Education. In 1901, the Connecticut State Board of Education attempted to shame towns by printing photos of low-quality one-room schools, without the name of the town, as shown in Figure 1.6.13 Figure 1.6: The Connecticut State Board of Education shamed towns by printing photos of low-quality one-room rural schools in its 1901 report. TODO: add index-caption Figure 1.7: Click thumbnail photos in this full-screen interactive map to view larger present-day photos from Instragram photographer Johnna Kaplan, shown here with her permission. Map developed by Ilya Ilyankou and Jack Dougherty, with research by Elizabeth Rose. View map data and code on GitHub. To come: CT legislation in 1909 to consolidate rural school districts and solidify boundaries for town-level school governance, role of Luther S. Flavel Connecticut State Board of Education, “One-Room Schools in Connecticut,” Connecticut Schools 7, no. 7 (March 1926): 6–7, http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/20683509.↩︎ Connecticut State Board of Education, “Annual Report of the Connecticut State Board of Education to the Governor,” Annual Report of the Connecticut State Board of Education to the Governor, 1901, http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/22548673.↩︎ "],["segregating.html", "Chapter 2 Segregating Along Color Lines", " Chapter 2 Segregating Along Color Lines This chapter explains how the boundaries of white middle-class privilege have shifted over time, from explicit racial barriers to more sophisticated hurdles, and from the schooling to the housing sector. The Connecticut legislature banned schooling for out-of-state black students during the 1830s, and Hartford leaders voted to officially segregate public schools for a brief period in 1868, and proposed it again in 1917. After civil rights activists overturned these policies, Hartford officials quietly continued to separate many black and white students into the 1970s, through its decisions on locating new schools and redrawing attendance lines. In the housing sector, the color line gained more governmental support in the 1930s and ’40s, with federal and local policies that openly prohibited home mortgages and public housing for blacks, and legally protected white-only property deeds. After activists overturned these governmental restrictions, the Connecticut real estate industry continued the color line through discriminatory steering and lending, even after the federal Fair Housing Act of 1968 outlawed these practices. Figure 2.1: Explore the full-screen interactive map of racial change in Hartford County, Connecticut, which displays the percentage of the “White” population in towns and census tracts from 1900 to 2018. Since categories of race and ethnicity are socially constructed, US Census labels vary over time. For example, “Native White” and “Foreign-born White” were combined and generally reported as “White” by the 1940s, and “Negro” was replaced by “Black” in 1980. While the Census classified “Mexican” as “Other races” in 1930, it moved this group back to “White” in 1940, and began to report “Puerto Rican or Spanish surname” data in 1960, followed by “Hispanic or Latino” in later decades, as an ethnic category regardless of race. Beginning in 2000, the Census allowed people to select more than one racial category. To create this century-long map that visualizes patterns across racial and ethnic categories that vary over time, we decided to show the percentage of the “White” or “White alone (non-Hispanic)” population with uniform shading for each area, along with data details for specific years in the hover box. View open-source code and historical sources for the map, developed by Ilya Ilyankou and Jack Dougherty, with Katie Campbell and MAGIC UConn Libraries. "],["lending.html", "Federal Lending and Redlining", " Federal Lending and Redlining by Shaun McGann and Jack Dougherty Racial and economic segregation in American housing was not simply caused by the prejudices of individual property owners. In addition, segregation was systematically institutionalized by governmental public policies that were designed to make it more affordable for White families to purchase newer homes away from central cities and in the suburbs. This chapter focuses on the 1930s Depression, when U.S. federal agencies collaborated with banks and other lenders to bolster the economy by expanding the availability of long-term loans to purchase homes, known as mortgages. Specifically, the chapter compares how two federal lending programs—the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) and the Federal Housing Administration (FHA)—carried out their respective missions, and their long-term consequences for metropolitan America. Both HOLC and FHA instituted ratings systems that downgraded neighborhoods based on the demographics of their residents—such as the presence of Black, immigrant, or impoverished families—rather than assessing value solely on the physical condition of the property. Both HOLC and FHA contributed to what we today call “redlining”: systematic discrimination in offering home mortgages or other financial services based on the social composition of the neighborhood, rather than the individual property or owner. While government involvement in the private lending market prevented millions of families from being forced out of their homes, and expanded homeownership to millions more, eligibility to participate in these programs was not neutral, and federal funds promoted racial and economic discrimination.14 Looking back at these 1930s programs reveals the thoughts and actions of public officials and private real estate interests, who together drew lines that intensified racial and economic segregation in metropolitan Hartford and other regions that continues today. America’s historical awareness of redlining has grown in recent years, thanks to widely-read authors who reconnected the past with present-day policy debates on public investment in urban areas, such as Ta-Nehisi Coates, Richard Rothstein, and contributors to Nikole Hannah-Jones’s The 1619 Project.15 Color-coded maps from the 1930s, probably seen by only a small number of people when they were originally drawn, have been rediscovered and shared widely with millions of people on the web by the Digital Scholarship Lab at the University of Richmond and many others.16 Even the 2020 Democratic presidential primary featured a “What is Redlining?” Twitter historical video when Elizabeth Warren challenged Michael Bloomberg’s stance on the issue.17 But as the history of redlining have become popularized, important distinctions about federal programs such as the HOLC and FHA have become blurred, and the latter portion of this chapter draws on scholarship by Amy Hillier, Todd Michney, and LaDale Winling to clear up common misunderstandings. One important lesson: although the HOLC color-coded maps provide the most visually striking portrayal of discrimination in government policy, the more powerful and enduring tools of segregation persisted in the plain white pages of the FHA’s bureaucratic Underwriting Manual. For this reason, this chapter presents direct evidence from both HOLC and FHA to help us understand key differences in how they divided metropolitan America. For readers who have not bought a home: You may not yet be familiar with key concepts in personal finance, such as how lower down payments with amortization of principal and interest have made home ownership a more affordable aspect of “The American Dream.” See the “Home and School Shopping Simulation” in the Teaching and Researching chapter in this book for a learning activity developed while teaching undergraduate students about housing, to better understand the present-day realities in order to compare with the past. How Federal Lending Changed Homeownership During the 1920s, purchasing a home was difficult for even middle-class Americans to afford because of the financial terms. Many banks typically offered home mortgage loans that placed the burden of risk on the borrower’s shoulders, and required them to pay it back very quickly. Typical mortgages during the 1920s included these terms: Large down payment: Typically 50 percent of the home value, because banks usually limited their mortgages to 50 percent (called a loan-to-value ratio of 50 percent). Short-term loans: Typically 5 years, designed to repay only the interest on mortgage loan. “Balloon payment” loans: Borrowers were required to repay the entire principal, or the amount borrowed, in one lump sum at the end of the loan period. Higher interest rates: Typically 6 to 8 percent during the 1920s. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the economic collapse devastated the housing market and threatened the interests of both lenders and borrowers. Homeowners who suddenly lost their jobs were now in danger of missing loan payments, defaulting on their mortgages, and losing their homes to bank foreclosures. But when banks foreclosed and attempted to sell off these homes, they typically were worth less than their original price prior to the Depression. In response to this economic crisis, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “New Deal” administration created federal agencies that increased access to the middle class by offering home mortgages on more favorable terms: Smaller down payment: Typically 10 or 20 percent of the home value, because lenders raised the loan-to-value ratio to 80 or 90 percent. Longer-term loans: Repayment extended to 15 or 20 years. Amortization of loans: This formula meant that borrowers repaid both the interest and principal on the loan in regular installments over time, rather than one lump sum at the end. Lower interest rates: Federal support lowered interest rates to around 5 percent during the 1930s. Picture how homeownership became more affordable for a buyer in the Hartford area, based on typical prices and mortgage terms during this period. Prior to the 1930s, if a home price was $10,000, a typical bank would only offer a $5,000 mortgage loan, limited to 50 percent of the home value, which forced the buyer to raise the remaining $5,000 in cash for the down payment at the time of purchase. If the buyer only had $2,000 on hand, they might need to make up the $3,000 difference by seeking a second mortgage from another lender, who would charge higher fees than the first mortgage lender due to the increased risk. During a five-year loan period, the homeowner would pay back interest to the bank on the first mortgage, but then need to raise funds for the $5,000 “balloon payment” at the end, which often required them to refinance a subsequent loan. But during the 1930s, New Deal federal agencies provided mortgage loans with better terms for middle-class homebuyers in the Hartford region. In 1934, the Hartford Courant observed that buying a $10,000 home required a 20 percent down payment of $2,000, because lenders raised the borrowing limit to 80 percent of the home value. The loan repayment period was extended from 5 years to 15-20 years. Buyers repaid the $8,000 principal plus interest through a series of stable monthly payments. According to an amortization schedule, the monthly repayments on an $8,000 mortgage at 5 percent interest for 20 years would be about $50 per month, very similar to monthly housing rental payments in Hartford at that time. No longer would “balloon payments” explode the homeowners’ finances at the end of a short-term loan. Amortization also enabled families to build up equity in their homes, meaning that they gradually owned a larger share of their home’s market value, minus the remaining mortgage they owed, while the lender legally held the property deed. For many Americans, as New Deal home loans programs improved these terms into the late 1930s, it became cheaper to buy than to rent.18 How HOLC Rated Mortgage Risk One of Roosevelt’s first steps to change mortgages was to sign legislation to create the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) in 1933. Historians Todd Michney and LaDale Winling describe how HOLC had two distinct phases. During its “rescue” phase (1933-35), HOLC purchased and refinanced loans for homeowners who were in danger of bank foreclosure due to their failure to keep up with existing mortgage payments or balloon payments. During its “consolidation” phase (1935-51), HOLC managed its mortgage holdings and sold them off to other investors. During this second phase, HOLC launched its City Survey Program and sent field agents to interview local banks and other lenders in 239 cities to assess mortgage investment risks. They conducted neighborhood-level appraisals and compiled data into confidential reports, which HOLC staff converted into color-coded maps, seen only by a small number of people at that time. While the federal government initially created HOLC to make home ownership more accessible to the middle class, these appraisals and maps also reflected the racism and elitism of the people who created them.19 Foster Milliken Jr., the HOLC field agent assigned to the Hartford area, was no stranger to the world of finance. Decades earlier, his father presided over Milliken Brothers, Inc., a multi-million dollar structural steel manufacturer in New York City that built the world’s tallest buildings at that time. Prior to the Depression, Foster Milliken Jr. worked as a stockbroker in Manhattan and was familiar with its social circles. When HOLC first sent him to Hartford in 1936, he consulted with real estate board members and banking executives, such as leaders of the Society for Savings, the state’s oldest mutual savings bank and the city’s leading mortgage lender. While Milliken described these men as “a fair and composite opinion of the best qualified local people, his confidential report labeled Hartford as a”typical New England city” with “ultra-conservative” lending policies. Hartford bankers “desire to solve their own problems without outside help or assistance,” he observed, and “it is not surprising that the FHA is generally frowned upon just as was the HOLC.”20 Despite bankers’ distrust towards FDR’s home lending programs, Milliken persuaded several executives to speak privately with him and offer their candid assessment of neighborhoods in the City of Hartford and two suburbs, West Hartford and East Hartford. Milliken’s report captured their collective views of the “trend of desirability” for each area, accompanied by the four-color HOLC “Residential Security Map” to visually illustrate their perceived levels of mortgage investment risk. Green signaled the safest areas for lenders to offer home loans, followed by blue and yellow, and then red to mark the most “hazardous” areas. Years later, these became more widely known as “redlining” maps, as shown in Figure 2.2.21 Figure 2.2: Explore the original 1937 Residential Security Map for Hartford and West Hartford, and the adjacent Map for East Hartford, scanned from the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation records at the National Archives. Green indicated the HOLC’s view of the safest neighborhoods for mortgage investment, followed by blue and yellow, and then red to signal the riskiest areas. Standing in downtown Hartford’s business district, Milliken observed that “the entire trend is to the west.” Green, the highest rating, was most prominent in the northern half of West Hartford, and the northwest corner of Hartford around Prospect Avenue and Scarborough Streets. These marked the best opportunities for mortgage investment, what Milliken described as “hot spots” of new and well-planned home construction where “lenders with available funds are willing to make their maximum loans” at up to 80 percent of the appraised property value (thereby requiring only a 20 percent down payment from homeowners). Blue, the second-grade rating, stood out along Farmington Avenue from West Hartford Center into Hartford’s West End, plus North End neighborhoods such as Blue Hills, and smaller pockets in the South End, as well as portions of East Hartford. Milliken stated that blue represented completely developed neighborhoods of good quality, but not the best, where lenders offered mortgages at no more than 70 percent of the home value (or a 30 percent down payment). Yellow, the third-grade ranking, dominated the southeast corner of West Hartford, most of the South End and large portions of the North End of Hartford, and the majority of East Hartford. Milliken indicated that yellow signified areas in “transition” where mortgage lenders were even more cautious than above. Finally, red marked the lowest-grade areas with the least desirable housing, generally located along the flood-prone banks of the Connecticut River, such as Hartford’s Italian and Black neighborhoods in tenement housing along Front Street and Windsor Street.22 A closer look at the HOLC map reveals striking patterns but also some variation across Hartford’s city-suburban lines. When comparing the HOLC ratings of the land area evaluated in each municipality, 84 percent of West Hartford received an A or B, compared to 29 percent of Hartford and 5 percent of East Hartford, as shown in Table 2.1. But the lowest ratings were not exclusive to the City of Hartford. In West Hartford, 16 percent of the rated land received a C, and the D rating was more prevalent in East Hartford (20 percent of all rated land) compared to Hartford (9 percent).23 Table 2.1: Percent of Land Area by HOLC Rating in Hartford Area 1937 Grade & Color West Hartford Hartford East Hartford All Areas A - Green 69% 7% 2% 33% B - Blue 15% 22% 3% 16% C - Yellow 16% 62% 75% 44% D - Red 0% 9% 20% 7% Total 100% 100% 100% 100% How did HOLC field agents rate neighborhoods? Although HOLC guidelines considered the physical condition and market price of the housing stock, field agents were instructed to evaluate the “social status of the population,” based on the dominant standards of racial superiority and economic privilege at the time. The one-page standardized HOLC appraisal forms asked Milliken to report the percentage of “Foreign-born” and “Negro” families in each neighborhood, as well as “Relief families” who received Depression-era federal income assistance. In the subsequent section asking about the “Infiltration” of outside groups, Milliken occasionally listed “Italians” or “Mixed foreign” residents for specific neighborhoods, as shown in Figure 2.3.24 Figure 2.3: Explore the HOLC area descriptions, based on forms that instructed field agents to report on the social composition of the neighborhood as a factor to measure mortgage risk. Source: Hartford area C-10, 1937, from the National Archives. HOLC invited field agents to write additional comments at the bottom of the form, and Milliken’s notes reflect his biases as well as those he likely heard from local bank and real estate leaders. In suburban West Hartford (map area Green A-2), one of the highest ratings was granted to a newer housing development that attracted “minor executives and businessmen.” Milliken approvingly added that “a stream separates this section from its less desirable neighbor,” referring to how Trout Brook served as a natural barrier to the adjacent southeastern area of West Hartford (Yellow C-2) which he described as having an “infiltration of mixed foreign” families in “workingmen’s homes.” In the North End of Hartford, Milliken favorably described the Blue Hills neighborhood (Blue B-5) but disapprovingly stated that it was “largely given over to the Hebrew race,” meaning Jews had moved in, “although the better class Italians are now also moving there.” In the South End of Hartford (Yellow C-9), Milliken observed that one nearly all-White neighborhood had a small percentage of “Negro families are confined to Roosevelt Street,” and he added that “lenders suggest caution in the selection of loans.” But all of these neighborhoods stood above HOLC’s lowest-rated red areas, which Milliken described as “broader than the so-called slum districts” due to an “undesirable population” with “unstable incomes.” Near downtown Hartford, Milliken labeled the Front Street and Windsor Street neighborhoods (Red D-1) as “the city’s oldest residential section, which has gradually drifted into a slum area” occupied primarily by Black and Italian residents. See all of the HOLC neighborhood appraisals by clicking on the interactive map shown in Figure 2.4. Through the process of rating and mapping the Hartford region, the invisible color and class lines in the minds of Hartford’s financial leaders were transformed into a visible color-coded map, endorsed by the federal government, yet hidden from public view.25 Figure 2.4: Click on color-coded areas in the full-screen interactive map to view one-page HOLC appraisals for each neighborhood in 1937, and the factors that field agents and local banks and lenders considered. They rated not only the physical condition of property, but also the “social status of the population,” and downgraded neighborhoods with Black, immigrant, and lower-income residents. Decades later, activists labeled these discriminatory lending practices as “redlining.” Map developed by Ilya Ilyankou and Jack Dougherty, based on an earlier version with UConn MAGIC and the Kirwin Institute. View historical sources and code on GitHub. How can we tell whether HOLC neighborhood ratings were driven primarily by physical housing characteristics, or by the discriminatory views of lenders and field agents about the people living there? Given that White elites segregated Black, immigrant, and lower-class residents into sub-standard housing, these two factors are tangled together. For example, one could argue that the neighborhood north of downtown Hartford received a Red D-1 rating not only because it had the greatest concentration of Black residents (66 percent), but also because it had the lowest-quality property (valued at only $4,000 - $6,000 per unit). Answering this question definitively is difficult because HOLC divided the Hartford area into only 27 neighborhoods, and only 3 of these included Black residents, so in statistical terms, this is a small sample size with limited variation. While not a definitive method, we can assess the relative weight of these factors by comparing two Hartford neighborhoods that shared relatively similar physical housing characteristics, but received different HOLC ratings. Table 2.2 compares HOLC appraisal report data for two areas: the Blue Hills neighborhood in Hartford’s North End (Blue B-5) versus the South End neighborhood (Yellow C-9). Both consisted primarily of two-family wooden frame homes, built within the previous two decades, which sold and rented at comparable prices in 1937. Why did HOLC grade one as a B and the other as a C? Demographic differences between the two neighborhoods are highlighted in bold type. The South End C-9 neighborhood contained more blue-collar factory workers, more foreign-born families, a very small but noticeable percentages of Black families, and “quite a few” more lower-income families who received government assistance. Once again, this side-by-side comparison of only 2 out of 27 HOLC ratings is not statistically definitive, but it certainly suggests that in the eyes of HOLC appraisers, the social composition of the neighborhood mattered more than the physical composition of the housing or its market value.26 Table 2.2: Compare HOLC Appraisals in Areas B5 vs. C9, Hartford 1937 Area B5 (Blue Hills) C9 (South End) Security Grade Second Third Location Hartford Hartford Trend Next Decade Stable Stable Occupation Shopkeepers & white collar Factory workers & clerks Estimated Family Income $1,800 $1,500 Foreign-born families 5% 20% Predominant foreign group Italians Italians Negro Y/N No Yes Negroes 0% 1% Relief Families None Quite a few Primary Building: Type 2-Family 2-Family Construction Frame Frame Average Age (yrs) 15 20 Repair Good Fair Occupancy 98% 97% Home ownership rate 85% 85% Price Range (1937) $7,500 to 12,000 $7,500 to 11,000 Sales Activity Poor Almost None Rental Range (1937) $40 to 50/month $32.5 to 55/month Rental Activity Good Good Mortgage Availability Ample Limited The Hartford region was only one of 239 areas across the U.S. where field agents rated neighborhoods during the 1930s. Historians Robert K. Nelson and colleagues have compiled the most comprehensive digital collection of HOLC maps and appraisal reports at Mapping Inequality: Redlining in New Deal America, as shown in Figure 2.5. Looking across HOLC reports, federal field agents frequently warned about “infiltration” of higher-status neighborhoods by “undesirable” or “inharmonious” populations, using pejorative labels of the 1930s such as “Colored” or “Italian” or “Jewish” or “Orientals.”27 Clearly, the HOLC maps and appraisals reflected the racist and elitist views of the people who created these documents. But their direct impact on mortgage lending is another matter, to be addressed further below. Figure 2.5: Zoom in and click on HOLC maps and appraisals for cities across the US in the full-screen interactive version of Mapping Inequality: Redlining in New Deal America by Robert K. Nelson and collaborators. Their collection includes digitized HOLC maps and area descriptions from the National Archives for at least 18 of Connecticut’s 169 municipalities: the capital city of Hartford and its suburbs East Hartford and West Hartford; Bridgeport, Fairfield and Stratford; New Britain; New Haven and portions of its suburbs East Haven, North Haven, West Haven, Hamden, and Woodbridge; Stamford and its suburbs Darien and New Canaan; Waterbury and its suburb of Watertown. Although New London appeared in a prior list of HOLC cities, the Mapping Inequality team has not yet been able to locate and digitize it. How FHA Restricted Lending by Location Shortly after Roosevelt’s New Deal launched the HOLC, he signed the National Housing Act in 1934, which created a second agency that also reshaped home mortgage financing, called the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). While the HOLC directly provided mortgages to existing homeowners to rescue them from bank foreclosures, the FHA dealt directly with banks and other lenders, and offered a form of insurance—called underwriting—to guarantee that homebuyers would repay their loans. FHA signaled a major step by the federal government into the marketplace by using public tax dollars to subsidize the cost of mortgages by absorbing risks that would normally fall to privately-owned banks and other financial institutions, and was part of the New Deal administration’s overall plan to rebuild the shattered housing market. The FHA’s definition of risks in the housing market reflected the racial views of Frederick M. Babcock, the FHA Director of Underwriting, and other White leaders at this federal agency. Scholars point to Babcock as the first to codify how the real estate industry should factor race into its formal assessments of property values. Originally from Chicago, he graduated from Northwestern University, worked in his father’s real estate firm, then wrote his first book, The Appraisal of Real Estate, in 1924. Babcock observed that “Residential values are affected by racial and religious factors… A home utility seeks location near people, but always near persons of the same social standing, same races…” He delved further into this theme of socially homogenous neighborhoods when writing his influential textbook, The Valuation of Real Estate in 1932. In a section titled “The Influence of Social and Racial Factors,” Babcock asserted that while most population changes only lead to gradual differences in property value, “there is one difference in people, namely race, which can result in a very rapid decline.” Rapid declines in property values “can be partially avoided by segregation,” Babcock claimed, and suggested that Southern methods for separating Whites and Blacks also might be appropriate in Northern states.28 Figure 2.6: Frederick M. Babcock, shown here as Director of the Underwriting Division of the Federal Housing Administration in 1937, codified how the presence of “inharmonious” racial groups should be negatively factored into FHA mortgage applications. Photo digitized by Library of Congress. Under Babcock’s influence, the FHA published its first Underwriting Manual in 1935 to determine which homebuyers qualified for FHA-insured loans. This detailed 200+ page manual, which grew longer with subsequent editions, established guidelines for FHA staff to rate mortgage applications. Instructions specified exactly how FHA evaluators should inspect the property, evaluate its location, and judge the applicant’s credit worthiness, before FHA examiners approved government funds to underwrite the loan and guarantee repayment. The Manual featured sample scoring charts, which summarized various factors that FHA evaluators should consider, such as the ratio of the loan to the value of the home, and the likelihood that the building still would have economic value beyond the life of the mortgage. But the most important factor on the form was “Location.” Even if the application received high marks in other categories, an unfavorable location rating required FHA staff to reject it, as shown in Figure 2.7.29 Figure 2.7: This sample scoring chart from the 1936 Federal Housing Administration Underwriting Manual showed how an unfavorable location rating required FHA staff to reject a mortgage application. Hosted by HathiTrust. Exactly how did the FHA Underwriting Manual define a good location? The most heavily-weighted factor was “Protection from Adverse Influences,” which referred to different ways to defend homogenous White middle-class suburban neighborhoods from people they deemed undesirable. FHA sent appraisers to inspect not only the physical building, but the social demographics of its surroundings and future threats to its stability. The Manual instructed appraisers to “investigate areas surrounding the location to determine whether or not incompatible racial and social groups are present,” such as Black, immigrant, or lower-income residents, as any intrusions would provoke “instability and a reduction in values,” as shown in Figure 2.8. Neighborhoods received higher scores if they were protected by “natural or artificially established barriers,” such as hills, parks, highways, or college campuses that prevented “infiltration” by “lower-class occupancy and inharmonious racial groups.” The Manual also favored legal tools that racially and economically segregated neighborhoods— such as racially restrictive covenants and exclusionary zoning ordinances—as described in later chapters of this book. FHA guidelines also shaped local educational policy by cautioning that neighborhood schools “should not be attended in large numbers by inharmonious racial groups,” thereby using federal funds to block any attempts to integrate schools. Finally, the Manual warned appraisers to carefully consider potential changes in future decades, because if the “character of a neighborhood” declines, “it is usually impossible to induce a higher social class than those already in the neighborhood to purchase and occupy properties.” Overall, tax-supported FHA mortgages funded new home construction in all-White suburbs, and divested federal money from existing homes in racially and economically diverse urban neighborhoods.30 Figure 2.8: Explore excerpts on “adverse influences” in the 1936 FHA Underwriting Manual or view the full document, hosted by Hathitrust. The FHA required evaluators to reduce scores for mortgage applications located near racially or socioeconomically diverse neighborhoods, and to raise scores for those in homogenous all-White middle-class areas. When the FHA expanded its Underwriting Manual in 1938, it added a four-level ranking for the neighborhood location, on a scale from A to D, based largely on the HOLC City Security Map ratings. Updated FHA evaluation forms also included specific codes to designate the predominant racial composition of the neighborhood: White, Mixed, Foreign, and Negro, as shown in Figure 2.9.31 Figure 2.9: The FHA introduced codes to indicate the predominant racial composition of neighborhoods in its 1938 Underwriting Manual. Digitized by HathiTrust. Opponents of racist federal lending policies spoke out. In June 1938, Roy Wilkins at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) wrote to Robert Weaver, a Black official in the FDR administration, to relay that a White FHA employee had tipped them off about about race restrictive covenants in the mortgage guidelines. The NAACP magazine The Crisis reported in 1939 that a local branch in Queens, New York had investigated complaints from Black homebuyers whose FHA applications were rejected. When pressed by NAACP attorney Thurgood Marshall, local FHA officials admitted that “no mortgages were guaranteed for colored people in any neighborhood which was less than 50% Negro.” NAACP head William White wrote directly to President Roosevelt to demand the removal of the segregationist clause about “incompatible racial and social groups” from the Underwriting Manual, but FDR delayed and deflected in his response. Black newspapers investigated these issues, turning more of their attention from the HOLC to the FHA, while the White press largely ignored it. FHA leaders kept explicitly racist and classist language in the Underwriting Manual until pressured to remove it in 1952. Charles Abrahams, a Polish-born fair housing expert in New York City, wrote in 1955 that “FHA adopted a racial policy that could well have been culled from the Nuremberg laws” by setting itself up as “the protector of the all white neighborhood.”32 Comparing the Impact of HOLC and FHA Although both of these New Deal mortgage programs—the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation and the Federal Housing Administration—clearly illustrate the segregationist intent of the public officials who administered them, their impact on people’s lives was not identical. While the HOLC “redlining” maps visually capture our attention as stark evidence of government-sponsored discrimination, many readers are surprised to learn that HOLC did, in fact, offer mortgage loans to Black homeowners in “hazardous” neighborhoods, and in several cases at higher proportions than to White homeowners. By contrast, the discriminatory power of FHA-insured mortgage policy has been buried inside lengthy bureaucratic government documents such as the Underwriting Manual, whose textual details have not yet attracted similar levels of public attention. The remainder of this chapter seeks to clearly lay out some of the key differences between the relative impact of HOLC versus FHA. When Kenneth Jackson effectively launched the field of US suburban history with the publication of Crabgrass Frontier in 1985, he renewed scholarly attention on the discriminatory practices of both the HOLC and the FHA mortgage programs. Jackson rediscovered the HOLC Residential Security Maps buried deep within the National Archives, reframed them as “redlining” maps by pointing out their racial and antisemitic prejudices, and reprinted examples in his book. Similarly, Jackson called out the FHA Underwriting Manual for its multiple prohibitions against insuring loans in racially- or ethnically-mixed neighborhoods neighborhoods.33 For people reading about redlining for the first time, racist intent by government officials probably served as sufficient evidence of racist impact on local communities. But Jackson did not make that claim. In fact, his discussion of HOLC loans briefly noted one very surprising pattern. Although HOLC maps had redlined areas as “hazardous” to investors, HOLC distributed about 30 percent of its mortgages to homes in the lowest D-grade neighborhoods in cities that Jackson closely examined, such as Newark, New Jersey. He explained this puzzling result by stating that HOLC found that residents of poorer neighborhoods generally repaid their loans at a higher rate than more affluent neighborhoods. In this way, the HOLC program did not refuse to do business in “redlined” areas. Its own reports cautiously stated that “we do not mean to imply that good mortgages do not exist or cannot be made in the Third or Fourth grade areas,” the lowest-rated yellow and red areas of the map, “but we do think that they should be made and serviced on a different basis than in the First and Second grade areas.” Furthermore, Jackson demonstrated that publicly-funded HOLC maps influenced privately-owned banks to refuse to make loans to low-rated neighborhoods.34 Historical geographer Amy Hillier also challenged conventional understandings of “redlining” by investigating HOLC and FHA rating and lending patterns more closely across neighborhoods in the city of Philadelphia. In one study, Hillier confirmed what we suspected but did not have sufficient evidence to prove: HOLC systematically downgraded neighborhoods with Black residents, which were a statistically significant predictor of ratings when compared to census tract demographics, while controlling for differences in housing characteristics. But Hillier’s other studies yielded more surprising results when she examined which properties actually received HOLC or FHA loans for a sample of Philadelphia mortgage documents from 1940 to 1960. First, Hillier found that HOLC made a large proportion of its loans to lower-grade areas, despite the racial biases of field agents against Black, immigrant, and lower-class residents. Second, Hillier found that FHA made relatively fewer loans in lower-rated neighborhoods, but data limitations prevented her from making more definitive claims. Overall, when considering both direct and indirect evidence, the FHA is the primary culprit responsible for federal divestment and segregation that led to post-war urban decline. Hillier argues that the FHA “reflected an anti-urban and racial bias deeper than the HOLC’s,” because its Underwriting Manual required privately-owned lenders to avoid risks associated with neighborhood demographics in order to qualify for publicly-funded mortgage insurance, while HOLC reports consistently stated that loans could still be profitable in those areas. “Whether or not [the FHA] used maps with red lines” Hillier concludes, it “did more to institutionalize redlining than any other agency…”35 Available evidence from the Hartford region concurs with Hillier’s analysis that FHA was more influential that HOLC in shaping racial and social class divisions that continue today. To grasp the big picture, compare White and Blacks homeownership, and relative rates of federal lending, in both the city and the suburbs. From 1940 to 1950, homeownership rates steadily increased in the City of Hartford for Whites (from 18 to 23 percent) and Blacks (from 6 to 10 percent). Both White and Black single-family homeowners obtained mortgages through savings banks (54 percent) and commercial banks (19 percent), with the federal HOLC program far behind other providers (7 percent) in 1940. Surprisingly, while the total number of Black Hartford single-family homeowners was very small (only 119) in Hartford that year, they were more likely than Whites to hold HOLC mortgages (13 percent versus 7 percent) relative to their population. This pattern of Black access to HOLC, which contradicts what the redlining maps suggests at first glance, matches trends found by historians Michney and Winling in several other US cities.36 To understand the full influence of FHA during this period, look at Hartford’s nearly all-White, rapidly-growing suburbs. West Hartford, for example, had over 33,000 residents, with over 99.5 percent identified as White, and a homeownership rate of 59 percent according to the 1940 Census.37 FHA policies favoring new home construction in all-White areas fit this profile. While the federal government did not publish detailed FHA loan data for the Hartford region, patterns were probably similar what the agency revealed about the Northeast region at large. In 1950, about 17 percent of Northeastern White single-family homeowners benefitted from a government-subsidized FHA-insured mortgage, compared to only 9 percent of Black homeowners. US Census officials tried to dismiss this racial gap by noting that “nonwhite owners” tended to live in “older structures” with a “lower median purchase price” than White owners, and therefore were “not so likely to meet the requirements for government insurance as newer properties with a higher purchase price.” But this official explanation was silent on the role played by FHA policymakers who intentionally segregated racial and social classes by design.38 One final lasting difference between HOLC and FHA was the volume of loans serviced over time. During its rescue phase from 1933-1935, HOLC purchased mortgages with a total value of over $3 billion, but that dropped off during its consolidation phase from 1935-1951. By contrast, the FHA program steadily grew and backed over $5 billion in total loans from the 1930s Depression until World War II, then soared in the post-war years, supporting over $3 billion in loans in 1948 alone, as shown in Figure 2.10.39 While HOLC directly funded mortgages, FHA insured mortgage payments to banks and other lenders, thereby using public funding to cooperate with, rather than compete against, private enterprise. After World War II, the federal government created another FHA-style program through the GI Bill and the Veteran’s Administration, called the VA-guaranteed mortgage program, which made it more affordable for returning soldiers and sailors to purchase homes.40 Figure 2.10: Explore the full-screen interactive chart to compare the value of HOLC mortgages versus all types of FHA-insured loans and mortgages sponsored by year from 1933 to 1948. While HOLC mortgage lending peaked at $2.25 billion in 1934, FHA-insured loans have had a longer-lasting influence that surpassed HOLC in the post-war era and continues to the present. See historical sources, data, and code on GitHub. The FHA continues to exist today as the largest federal home lending program and currently insures mortgage repayments for over 8 million single-family homes. Its explicitly racist policies were removed in the 1950s, and additional improvements came when legislators voted in favor of the 1968 Fair Housing Act, which activists pressured the executive branch to enforce more consistently during the 1970s. By contrast, HOLC actively made loans for only three years during the mid-1930s, then sold off its holdings and dissolved by 1951. Although the HOLC’s color-coded redlining maps brightly stand out in our growing historical consciousness about discriminatory federal lending programs in US cities, a more important story lies inside the bureaucratic FHA policies that fueled the growth of new single-family homes in virtually all-White suburbs.41 About the authors and contributors: Shaun McGann (Trinity 2014) wrote the first draft of this essay in the Cities Suburbs and Schools seminar, and published it in ConnecticutHistory.org.42 Jack Dougherty expanded the essay for publication in this book. Ilya Ilyankou (Trinity 2018) and Jack Dougherty developed the interactive map, based on an earlier version created with contributors from UConn MAGIC and the Kirwin Institute.43 David Freund, Colored Property: State Policy and White Racial Politics in the Modern American Suburb (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), https://www.google.com/books/edition/Colored_Property/QRaH4u9yRTQC.↩︎ Ta-Nehisi Coates, “The Case for Reparations” (The Atlantic, June 2014), http://www.theatlantic.com/galleries/reparations/1/; Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America (New York: Liveright Publishing, 2017), http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/959808903; Nikole Hannah-Jones, “The 1619 Project,” The New York Times: Magazine, August 14, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/1619-america-slavery.html.↩︎ Robert K. Nelson and collaborators, “Mapping Inequality: Redlining in New Deal America, Third Version” (American Panorama, Digital Scholarship Lab, University of Richmond, December 2023), https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining/.↩︎ Elizabeth Warren, “What Is Redlining?” (Twitter, February 13, 2020), https://twitter.com/ewarren/status/1228009904973238274; Reid J. Epstein and Lisa Lerer, “Warren Says Bloomberg Shouldn’t Be Nominee, Citing Redlining Remarks,” The New York Times: U.S., February 13, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/13/us/politics/elizabeth-warren-bloomberg.html.↩︎ On national changes in home mortgage loan terms from the 1920s to the 1930s, see Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier, pp. 204-06; Rothstein, The Color of Law, pp. 63-4. On Hartford changes, see Leon A. Winslow, “Home Purchase Is Made Easier By Federal Act,” Hartford Courant, November 11, 1934, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/558502839?accountid=14405.↩︎ Todd M. Michney and LaDale Winling, “New Perspectives on New Deal Housing Policy: Explicating and Mapping HOLC Loans to African Americans,” Journal of Urban History 46, no. 1 (January 1, 2020): 150–80, https://doi.org/10.1177/0096144218819429.↩︎ “Milliken Brothers Fail for $6,500,000,” New York Times, June 11, 1907, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/96770976?accountid=14405; “Foster Milliken Jr., 1930 US Census Manuscript, New York, NY, Manhattan ED 1215, Image 10 of 70” (FamilySearch, 1930), https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33S7-9R89-DCW; “Milliken – Durell.” New York Times, January 20, 1935, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/101500203?accountid=14405; Foster Milliken Jr., “Confidential Report of a Survey in Hartford, Connecticut for the Division of Research and Statistics, Home Owners’ Loan Corporation” (Record Group 195, Records of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, Box 64, Folder Hartford CT #2, National Archives II, College Park MD, May 5, 1936), p. 3, 20.↩︎ Home Owners’ Loan Corporation, “Residential Security Map and Area Descriptions, Hartford-West Hartford-East Hartford, Connecticut” (Record Group 195: Records of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, Box 64, City Survey Files, National Archives II, College Park, Maryland, November 20, 1937), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_archives/14/; see georeferenced maps at Home Owners’ Loan Corporation, “Residential Security ’Redlining’ Map, West Hartford-Hartford, CT,” 1937, http://mapwarper.net/maps/15096; Home Owners’ Loan Corporation, “Residential Security ’Redlining’ Map, East Hartford CT,” 1937, http://mapwarper.net/maps/15097.↩︎ Milliken Jr., “Confidential Report of a Survey in Hartford, Connecticut for the Division of Research and Statistics, Home Owners’ Loan Corporation”; Home Owners’ Loan Corporation, “Residential Security Map and Area Descriptions, Hartford-West Hartford-East Hartford, Connecticut”.↩︎ Table based on geodata calculations of land areas in 1937 HOLC map and report. Not all land area in each municipality received HOLC ratings.↩︎ Home Owners’ Loan Corporation, “Residential Security Map and Area Descriptions, Hartford-West Hartford-East Hartford, Connecticut”, pp. 1, A1-D3.↩︎ Home Owners’ Loan Corporation; Ilya Ilyankou and Jack Dougherty, “Map: Federal HOLC \"Redlining\" in Hartford Area, CT, 1937” (2016; repr., On The Line, 2017), https://ontheline.github.io/otl-redlining/index-caption.html; University of Connecticut Libraries Map and Geographic Information Center, “Federal HOLC \"Redlining\" Map, Hartford Area, 1937,” 2012, http://magic.lib.uconn.edu/otl/doclink_holc.html; Jason Reece et al., People, Place, and Opportunity: Mapping Communities of Opportunity in Connecticut: A Report Commissioned by the Connecticut Fair Housing Center (Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, The Ohio State University, 2009), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/44/.↩︎ See table source in Ilyankou and Dougherty, “Map,” 2017. Although the HOLC report noted that the Hartford C-9 neighborhood included a very small percentage of Black families, that did not automatically place it in the riskiest category, in contrast to Rothstein’s claim that “A neighborhood earned a red color if African Americans lived in it, even if it was a solid middle-class neighborhood of single-family homes.” Rothstein, The Color of Law, p. 64.↩︎ See “Read about Redlining: Introduction” in Nelson and collaborators, “Mapping Inequality”.↩︎ Frederick Morrison Babcock, The Appraisal of Real Estate (MacMillan, 1924), https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/102610401, p. 71; Frederick Morrison. Babcock, The Valuation of Real Estate (New York ; London: McGraw-Hill, 1932), https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Valuation_of_Real_Estate/duDSAAAAMAAJ, p. 91. On Babcock’s role in codifying race and real estate, see Adrienne Brown, “Appraisal Narratives: Reading Race on the Midcentury Block,” American Quarterly 70, no. 2 (2018): 211–34, https://doi.org/10.1353/aq.2018.0015; Stella J Adams, “Putting Race Explicitly into the CRA,” in Revisiting the CRA: Perspectives on the Future of the Community Reinvestment Act, ed. Prabal Chakrabarti (A Joint Publication of the Federal Reserve Banks of Boston and San Francisco, 2009), 167–69; “Babcock, Frederick Morrison” (SNAC: Social Networks and Archival Content, 2020), http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6gx58gz; Harris & Ewing, “Frederick M. Babcock (Photograph)” (Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, 1937), https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2016871684/.↩︎ Federal Housing Administration, Underwriting Manual: Underwriting and Valuation Procedure Under Title II of the National Housing Act (Washington: U.S. Govt. Print. Off, 1935), http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1017217834; Federal Housing Administration, Underwriting Manual: Underwriting and Valuation Procedure Under Title II of the National Housing Act (Washington, D.C.: US Government Printing Office, 1936), http://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015018409246, section 247.↩︎ Administration, Underwriting Manual, 1936, part II, sections 226-233, 284, 289. On the racial logic of the Underwriting Manual, see Freund, Colored Property, pp. 155-162; Rothstein, The Color of Law, pp. 64-66.↩︎ Federal Housing Administration, Underwriting Manual: Underwriting and Valuation Procedure Under Title II of the National Housing Act (Washington, D.C.: US Government Printing Office, 1938), http://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015018409261, section 1849-50↩︎ N. D. B. Connolly, “How Did African Americans Discover They Were Being ‘Redlined’?” (Talking Points Memo, August 9, 2015), https://talkingpointsmemo.com/primary-source/redlining-holc-fha-wilkins-weaver; “Housing Authority Draws Mortgage Color Line,” The Crisis 46, no. 2 (February 1939): 54–55, https://books.google.com/books?id=MFsEAAAAMBAJ; Michney and Winling, “New Perspectives on New Deal Housing Policy”, pp. 152-56; Rothstein, The Color of Law, p. 64; Charles Abrams, Forbidden Neighbors: A Study of Prejudice in Housing (New York: Harper, 1955), https://www.google.com/books/edition/Forbidden_Neighbors/gxVHAAAAMAAJ, pp. 229-30.↩︎ Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier, pp. 195-218.↩︎ Jackson, p. 202; Home Owners’ Loan Corporation, “Residential Security Map and Area Descriptions, Hartford-West Hartford-East Hartford, Connecticut”, p. 2.↩︎ Amy Hillier, “Redlining and the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation,” Journal of Urban History 29, no. 4 (2003): 394–420, http://doi.org/10.1177/0096144203029004002, p. 415; Amy Hillier, “Redlining in Philadelphia,” in Past Time, Past Place: GIS in History, ed. Anne Kelly Knowles (Redlands, CA: ESRI Press, 2002), 79–92; Amy Hillier, “Spatial Analysis of Historical Redlining: A Methodological Exploration,” Journal of Housing Research 14, no. 1 (2003): 137–67, http://jstor.org/stable/44944777; Amy Hillier, “Searching for Red Lines: Spatial Analysis of Lending Patterns in Philadelphia, 1940-1960,” Pennsylvania History 72, no. 1 (2005): 25–47, https://jstor.org/stable/27778657; Amy Hillier, “Residential Security Maps and Neighborhood Appraisals: The Home Owners’ Loan Corporation and the Case of Philadelphia,” Social Science History 29, no. 2 (2005): 207–33, https://doi.org/10.1017/S014555320001292X; Amy Hillier, “Who Received Loans? Home Owners’ Loan Corporation Lending and Discrimination in Philadelphia in the 1930s,” Journal of Planning History 2, no. 1 (2003): 3–24, http://jph.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/2/1/3.↩︎ Table 1: Occupied Dwelling Units and Table 22: Occupancy, Tenure, Race, Population Per Unit (for Connecticut); Table F-4: Holder of First Mortgage on 1-Family Properties, by Race of Occupants and Year Built, for the City of Hartford; all in Volume IV: Mortgages on Owner-Occupied Nonfarm Homes, US Census Bureau, Census of Housing: 1940 (US Government Printing Office, 1943), https://www.census.gov/prod/www/decennial.html. See calculations in Sources folder in Ilyankou and Dougherty, “Map,” 2017; compare with Michney and Winling, “New Perspectives on New Deal Housing Policy”.↩︎ See Census source notes above and calculations in Sources folder in Ilyankou and Dougherty, “Map,” 2017.↩︎ Summary of Findings, Volume IV: Residential Financing, US Census Bureau, Census of Housing: 1950 (US Government Printing Office, 1952), https://www.census.gov/prod/www/decennial.html, PDF chapter 2, p. XLI↩︎ Ilya Ilyankou and Jack Dougherty, “Chart: Value of HOLC Mortgages and FHA-Insured Loans by Year, 1933-48” (On The Line, 2020), https://ontheline.github.io/otl-chart-holc-fha/, with data sources from C. Lowell Harriss, History and Policies of the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (New York: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1951), https://www.nber.org/books/harr51-1, Table 4: Loans Closed by HOLC, 1933-1936, p. 30, and Federal Housing Administration, Fifteenth Annual Report of the Federal Housing Administration, 1949, https://www.huduser.gov/portal/publications/Fifteenth-Annual-Report-of-the-Federal-Housing-Administration.html, Table 1: Yearly Volume of Mortgages and Loans Insured by FHA Under All Titles: Face amount of mortgages written and net proceeds of loans insured, 1934-1948, p. 8. Note that the chart compares HOLC mortgages versus all types of FHA-insured loans and mortgages. The majority of FHA is home mortgage insurance, but the total also includes property improvements and rental housing, which can be disaggregated in the source table.↩︎ Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier, p. 206-07.↩︎ “Federal Housing Administration History” (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), 2020), https://www.hud.gov/program_offices/housing/fhahistory.↩︎ Shaun McGann, “The Effects of ‘Redlining’ on the Hartford Metropolitan Region” (ConnecticutHistory.org, March 2014), http://connecticuthistory.org/the-effects-of-redlining-on-the-hartford-metropolitan-region/.↩︎ Ilyankou and Dougherty, “Map,” 2017; University of Connecticut Libraries Map and Geographic Information Center, “Federal HOLC \"Redlining\" Map, Hartford Area, 1937”.↩︎ "],["restricting.html", "Restricting with Property Covenants", " Restricting with Property Covenants by Tracey Wilson, Vianna Iorio, David K. Ware, June Gold, and Jack Dougherty No persons of any race except the white race shall use or occupy any building on any lot except that this covenant shall not prevent occupancy by domestic servants of a different race employed by an owner or tenant. – High Ledge Homes on South Main Street, West Hartford, Connecticut, 1940.44 To some readers, this shockingly racist language might seem like a long-ago segregation policy from the Deep South. Instead, it comes from the Deep North and represents a hidden chapter in White suburban history. Inside this 1940 property deed, meaning a real estate contract between sellers and buyers, a covenant refers to any limitation on how the land may be used, such as for residential or commercial use. Race restrictive covenants like these typically prohibited people outside of the “white race” from owning or residing on property, often with exceptions for domestic servants. Beginning in the 1920s across the U.S., real estate developers, homeowners’ associations, and private owners added racial covenants to different types of property contracts. But these represented more than agreements between racist individuals. Since property contracts were filed with local government clerks to become legally-binding public records, racial covenants became another form of government-sponsored housing segregation. White-only property covenants were enforceable in the courts. If a Black resident moved in, a White resident with legal standing could sue in court for breach of contract. Eventually the U.S. Supreme Court ruled racial covenants to be unenforceable in 1948, and the 1968 Fair Housing Act made them unlawful, yet some local governments continued to file property deeds with these restrictions until 1972.45 This chapter reveals the history of state-sponsored racial restrictions in Connecticut land records. So far, our team has located 20 racial covenants that real estate developers placed on hundreds of properties for suburban home construction from the late 1930s into the 1940s. We have documented racial covenants in the Connecticut towns of Hamden, Manchester, Newington, and West Hartford, as shown in Figure 2.11, with evidence pointing to more in East Haddam, Stamford, and other towns to come.46 Learn more about How We Found Restrictive Covenants in this book. If you know of similar covenants with racial or religious restrictions anywhere in Connecticut, contact the authors. Figure 2.11: Explore the full-screen interactive map and click links or polygons to view racist restrictions in property deeds across Connecticut in the 1930s-40s, where suburban developers prohibited occupants “other than the white race” or “other than the Caucasian race,” until the US Supreme Court declared these unenforceable in 1948. While the racist language still exists in town property records, a 2021 Connecticut law made it easier for current owners to legally remove it, without erasing it from our historical memory. To date, researchers have found racial covenants in the CT towns of West Hartford (by Katie Campbell); Newington and Manchester (by David Ware); and Hamden (by June Gold). If you know of similar covenants with racial or religious restrictions anywhere in Connecticut, contact the authors. View historical sources and the code for this map, developed by Ilya Ilyankou and Jack Dougherty, based on an earlier version created with UConn MAGIC. First, this chapter explains how race restrictive covenants arose in the nation beginning in the 1920s, and to our current knowledge, appeared later in Connecticut during the 1930s-40s, primarily in suburban housing developments. Although racist covenants were more common in Northern and Western cities such as Seattle, Minneapolis, and Chicago, so far those we have found in Connecticut vary, with a heavier concentration around New Haven suburbs than Hartford suburbs. Second, it describes how Connecticut civil rights advocates challenged restrictive covenants as an “un-American” policy during the late 1940s, and helped shift public opinion as the US Supreme Court ruled them to be unenforceable in 1948. In the present day, fair-housing advocates won passage of a 2021 Connecticut law that enables current homeowners to easily void racist covenants in the legal record, without erasing them from our collective memory. Overall, their historical legacy remains with us in two ways. On a tangible level, White homebuyers who purchased covenant-protected property gained financial benefits—meaning higher home values in legally-guaranteed all-White neighborhoods—that they passed forward as inheritances to future family members. On a structural level, the uncovering the hidden history of racist covenants in the Deep North reminds us how Connecticut’s suburbs were shaped not simply by market forces, but also government-sponsored White supremacy. The Rise of Racial Covenants The nation’s story of restrictive covenants begins with the U.S Supreme Court case Corrigan v. Buckley in 1921. White property owners in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of Washington D.C. formed a property owners’ association that used racially restrictive covenants to keep out Black homebuyers. The dispute arose when White owner John Corrigan attempted to sell his house to an African-American buyer, Irene Curtis, a violation of the property’s racial covenant. Learning of this violation, White neighbor Irene Buckley brought suit to enforce the race restrictive covenant and stop the property sale. As the case worked its way through the nation’s legal system, courts upheld this new tool for racial barriers in housing. First, the District of Columbia Supreme Court approved the racial covenant and cited existing legal segregation in schools and public recreational facilities as precedent. Second, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals also approved the racial covenant and stated that African Americans were free to include the same kind of racially exclusive language against Whites in their own property deeds. Finally, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously affirmed the lower court decisions in 1926 by refusing to hear the case on grounds that they lacked jurisdiction. When Justice Edward Sanford delivered the U.S. Supreme Court’s opinion, he narrowly defined the Constitution’s guarantee that no person should “be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law” as it applied to Corrigan v. Buckley. While the Fifth Amendment limited the actions of the federal government, Sanford asserted that it did not apply to individuals entering into a private contact, such as a restrictive covenant. Moreover, he argued that the Thirteenth Amendment did not protect individual rights of Black citizens, and the Fourteenth Amendment again referred to actions of the state, not of private individuals. Therefore, the 1926 Corrigan v. Buckley decision reaffirmed the right of property owners to legally enforce race restrictive covenants, while ignoring that the court system itself acted as governmental support for segregation. Their interpretation of the Constitution would prevail for the next two decades.47 In Connecticut, lake association developers, who sold rural summer cottages to urban residents with automobiles, apparently were among the first to take advantage of the Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of racial covenants. When Charles White and investors in the Andover Lake Corporation sought to attract buyers from Hartford, located 18 miles away, their initial 1928 full-page newspaper ad mentioned it was a “quiet, restricted lake” in regular-size type. One year later, as they struggled to entice buyers, their 1929 full-page ad made a bolder promise in a larger font: “Reasonable Restrictions Will Maintain the Desirability of this Development,” as shown in Figure 2.12. Those code words signaled that Andover Lake expressly prohibited Blacks and Jews from buying property with restrictive covenants in land records, according to two observers. Similar euphemisms by other Connecticut lake associations advertised in the late 1920s that their property was “wisely restricted” (Secret Lake in Canton), had “sensible restrictions” (Pine Lake Shores in Coventry), and that “proper restrictions assure a happy, congenial family of vacationists” (Lake Hayward in Colchester). In later years, the Andover Lake Property Owners Association prohibited anyone—even other property owners—from swimming in the lake unless they received a two-thirds majority secret ballot. Racism ran so deep that when William Philpot, an African-American minister from New Haven, successfully purchased an Andover Lake cottage in 1955, the Association rejected his application for lake access three times. Philpot protested by conducting a “Wade In” from his property to Andover Lake in 1964, with support from powerful allies, including Governor John Dempsey. Yet the Association filed an injunction to block Philpot from the lake, and persisted until they lost in court in 1967, then finally changed their bylaws to allow any property owner to join.48 Figure 2.12: The Andover Lake Corporation publicized “reasonable restrictions” as code words for racial prohibitions against Black or Jewish owners of summer cottages. Image copyrighted 1929 by Hartford Courant, reprinted here under fair-use guidelines. Racial covenants in Connecticut’s emerging single-family suburban developments appeared a decade later in the late 1930s. Previously, owners began adding non-racial types of deed restrictions to increase the desirability of property in the 1910s, perhaps earlier. For example in West Hartford, individual owners began to add home-value restrictions, requiring that future homes constructed on the land must be built above a minimum size or sold above a minimum dollar amount, to maintain property values. Some owners added “nuisance” restrictions to prohibit chicken coops or noxious fumes, again to raise property values. Finally, some West Hartford real estate developers began to add home-value restrictions across entire subdivisions, setting the stage for exclusionary zoning policies that the Town would later adopt in 1924, as described in this book chapter. While these early 1900s home-value deed restrictions effectively limited neighborhoods to wealthier White families, they did not yet contain explicitly racist prohibitions. To our knowledge, the first racial covenant in suburban Hartford-area property deeds appeared in late 1939 for an entire subdivision in Newington, a town on Hartford’s southern border, based on research by David Ware. During the Depression, real estate developers sought ways to convert rural farmland to prospective homes and make it more attractive to city dwellers to purchase. One developer was Alfred E. Hanbury, who renamed farmland he purchased near the town’s crossroads as the “Center Village” subdivision for future homes. Hanbury told city news reporters he was “optimistic concern[ing] the future of Newington as a residential community,” with its gas and electric utilities, easy trolley commute to Hartford, and affordable Federal Housing Adminstration mortgages, a topic described in this book chapter. Hanbury added several restrictions to a handwritten deed he filed when selling five property lots to homebuyers in October 1939. First, he required that only single-family homes could be constructed, on plots of land no smaller than about one-fifth of an acre, with no noxious or offensive businesses that might annoy neighbors. Later in the deed, he added an explicitly racist restriction, probably drawn from language he had seen other developers using elsewhere. “No persons of any race except the white race shall use or occupy any buildings on any lot, except that this covenant shall not prevent occupancy by domestic servants of a different race employed by an owner or tenant,” as shown in Figure 2.13. Selling homes was challenging during the Depression and World War II, but Hanbury finally sold 47 units at Center Village after the war and was selected as one of the first directors of the Home Builders Association of Hartford County, reflecting his status within the profession. Interestingly, Hanbury did not add racial covenants to two of his post-war Newington housing developments: Alandale and Belden Acres.49 Figure 2.13: Alfred Hanbury developed Newington farmland as shown in 1934 aerial image into the Center Village housing subdivision and added a race restrictive covenant in 1939. Image of Hanbury copyrighted 1950 by Hartford Courant, reprinted here under fair-use guidelines. Aerial map digitized by UConn MAGIC, and document from Town of Newington property records, both in public domain. In nearby West Hartford, some real estate developers also added racial covenants to attract homebuyers to more exclusive all-White suburban neighborhoods. Edward Hammel, president of High Ledge Homes, Inc., added the first racial covenant we have found in West Hartford in 1940. Described as a “builder of fine homes” in wealthy areas of Westchester County, New York, and Fairfield County, Connecticut, Hammel introduced new methods to make unsold property more marketable. Hammel purchased a subdivision on South Main Street, across from the Rockledge Gold Course, consisting of 84 property lots that the prior owner, developer Robert Bent, had not been able to sell during the Depression. Hammel’s land records added a “uniform plan of development” for single-family homes that also prohibited occupants “of any race except the white race.” Although High Ledge Homes did not openly publicize their White-only covenant, their 1940 advertising promised homebuyers that with A-level exclusionary zoning requirements, “you’ll like your neighbors,” as shown in Figure 2.14. The pitch also mentioned “West Hartford’s famous schools,” one of the earliest real estate advertising references to this young suburb’s public education system, and perhaps a premature one for this time period, when Hartford’s city schools still had a stronger reputation. By 1941, at least four more West Hartford developers followed Hammel’s lead and added racial covenants to their subdivisions.50 Figure 2.14: Although High Ledge Homes did not openly publicize their White-only covenant (map on left), their 1940 advertising promised homebuyers that with A-level exclusionary zoning requirements, “you’ll like your neighbors.” Image copyrighted 1940 by Hartford Courant, reprinted under fair-use guidelines. In Manchester, a suburb located to the east of Hartford, at least three real estate developers added race restrictive covenants to subdivisions in the early 1940s, according to attorney David Ware. At this stage, the ban against occupants “other than the white race” for housing developments such as Greenway Park, now appeared on pre-printed forms designed for mass duplication to individual buyers, as shown in Figure 2.15. But Ware points out how racial covenants still remained “hidden” in several ways. First, while land records are public documents in the town clerk’s office, individual pages inside large bound volumes were not easily searchable or copied in the 1940s, and still remain difficult to find in today’s digital age, as described in How We Found Restrictive Covenants in this book. Second, the White-only restriction was buried in the fine print in section F in a long page (sections A-M) of seemingly innocuous restrictions, meaning it would not stand out to homeowners unless they carefully read every line of their property deed. Third, Ware argues that racial covenants were “temporally camouflaged” because the White-only language only appeared in the original version. For all future sales, the deed simply stated that the property was “subject to certain restrictions of record,” which disguised its racist origins. For example, when Ware’s parents bought their Manchester home in 1950, their property deed vaguely stated that “said premises are subject to certain restrictive covenants of record” – which went back five prior transfers – to the original racial restriction in the 1942 deed by Lawrence Converse, present of the Greenway Park, Inc. development. Racism was legally powerful yet well-hidden in the Deep North.51 Figure 2.15: In Manchester, The Greenway Company placed racial covenants in pre-printed forms in 1940, seen only by homebuyers who read the fine print on the original property deed. View full-size document from Town of Manchester property records, public domain. Elsewhere in Connecticut, the racial covenants appeared more frequently. In Hamden, a suburb north of New Haven, real estate developers added White-only restrictions more often than the Hartford suburbs above during the 1940s. So far attorney June Gold has found racial covenants in 11 Hamden subdivisions, many of them located between the New Haven city boundary and the planned route of the Wilbur Cross Parkway, shown in Figure 2.16. Five of the nine restricted subdivisions were created by three developers: Joseph Maselli and his business partner Pasquale DeRosa, and their competitor, Veggo Larsen. In sum, these nine Hamden subdivisions added racial prohibitions to nearly 450 suburban homes.52 Figure 2.16: Hamden developers added White-only restrictions to several suburban subdivisions located between the New Haven city border (red line) and the planned route of the Wilbur Cross Parkway in the early 1940s. Explore the interactive covenants map. Overall, the frequency and concentration of racial covenants from the 1930s-40s varies across Connecticut. So far we have searched property deeds in a small number of towns, but have found over a thousand of White-only property deeds, as shown in Figure 2.17. In some suburban towns, given the large number of homes built during this period, the percentage with racial covenants can be relatively small. In Manchester, only 248 out of approximately 7,100 (3.5 percent) residential building lots approved by town officials between 1910-1950 included racial covenants. In West Hartford, only 190 homes out of approximately 3020 (6 percent) buildings constructed during the 1940s had racial covenants. Overall, despite the shocking existence of White-only covenants, many Connecticut suburbs relied more on other types of government-sponsored discrimination – such as federal lending policies, public housing barriers, and exclusionary zoning ordinances – to restrict non-White and low-income residents.53 Figure 2.17: View the table and calculations, by Jack Dougherty, June Gold, and David Ware. Compared to Connecticut, restrictive covenants were more common in other US cities, with some estimates of properties with racial restrictions ranging as high as 80 percent. Public history project teams have uncovered evidence and sparked action, according to the National Covenants Research Coalition, including those shown in Figure 2.18. One of the earliest to launch online was the Segregated Seattle project in 2005, where researchers have found White-only and anti-Jewish clauses in over 30,000 property deeds in King County to date, plus 20,000 more in other counties in Washington state. Their work pushed state legislators to approve a 2006 law to encourage homeowners to strike out racist covenants in the public record, and a 2023 law to provide compensation for victims. In the Minneapolis-St. Paul region, the Mapping Prejudice project began to document restrictive covenants in 2016 and has found over 30,000 restrictive property deeds to date. Researchers showed that current prices of Minnesota homes with racial covenants are 4 to 15 percent higher than identical homes without covenants. The Chicago Covenants project has already found over 100,000 properties with restrictive covenants, after searching about 20 percent of the city’s land records, and expects to find more as estimates of White-only property restrictions in that city range from 50 to 80 percent. In St. Louis, Missouri, the Dividing The City project found racial restrictions in about 80 percent of homes built in St. Louis county by 1950.54 Figure 2.18: Restrictive covenants were more common in other US cities. Explore digital history projects with images from Seattle, Minneapolis, Chicago, St. Louis, and more by the National Covenants Research Coalition. Challenging Racial and Religious Covenants Across the nation, a coalition of Black homebuyers, real estate agents, civil rights activists, and NAACP attorneys mounted a political and legal battle to overturn racial as well as religious covenants during the 1940s. Their efforts focused primarily on two cities. In Detroit, with its recent history of White mob violence against Black wartime workers, the McGhee family purchased a home and were sued and harassed by a White neighborhood association for violating a racial covenant. In St. Louis, the Shelley family bought their home through a “straw-party,” a White buyer who purchased from a White seller and immediately resold to a Black buyer (often at a higher price). On the day the Shelleys moved in, the White neighborhood association delivered a legal summons to evict them for violating the covenant. As state courts defended these covenants, NAACP attorney Thurgood Marshall and colleagues eventually persuaded the U.S. Supreme Court to hear their appeal in January 1948 for the consolidated cases, known as Shelley v. Kraemer55 Meanwhile in Hartford, Black activists and journalists spoke out against racial covenants and called to ban them in Connecticut. The Hartford Negro Citizens’ Council, organized at the Women’s League in the city’s North End in 1941, publicly criticized a housing committee report by the Bridgeport Chamber of Commerce in 1945, which recommended racial covenants to create White-only suburban neighborhoods. Also, Black newspapers such as the Hartford Chronicle regularly reported on the national NAACP’s efforts to eliminate covenants in other states, and indirectly referred to their existence inside the state, with few details. Perhaps Hartford’s Black community did not know the full extent of racial covenants buried deep inside the property records in suburban town clerk’s offices.56 One Jewish civil rights ally supported Black Hartford activists by condemning covenants that restricted against race or religion. Simon Bernstein, an attorney and Democratic member of Hartford’s city council, sent a public letter to the chair of the Judiciary Committee at the State Capitol in April 1947, calling for a bill to prohibit restrictive covenants. One month earlier, Hartford’s Black press had run a story on New York State legislators raising their own anti-covenant bill. Bernstein called for Connecticut to ban property covenants regarding “nationality, color and religious belief” because these “un-American” practices are “contrary to public policy”. He argued that “real estate deals are public records” and “our Town Clerks are unwitting tools in transcribing prejudices on record” in a “government publication” that grants “immunity” to perpetrators. As an attorney who handled property transfers, Bernstein described but did not name “a nearby town” where a covenant for an entire subdivision restricted sales “to only non-semitic members of the Caucasian race,” a phrase he quoted directly. Hartford’s White press summarized Bernstein’s letter, but only the Black press published it in its entirety. Despite these efforts, Connecticut legislators waited for a decision from the federal government.57 Across the nation by the late 1940s, civil rights activists successfully began to turn the tide in the political and legal struggle against racial covenants. One month before the U.S. Supreme Court heard the NAACP’s consolidated Shelley v. Kraemer case, President Truman’s Committee on Civil Rights issued its report against racial covenants, and the US Department of Justice also filed a brief against this discriminatory practice. NAACP attorneys won the case when the US Supreme Court ruled restrictive covenants to be “unenforceable” in 1948. Yet the Court’s reasoning was not a striking blow against racism. First, the Court’s unanimous vote was 6-0, minus three justices who recused themselves without explanation, which suggested that perhaps they also owned racially restricted property. Second, the Court decided that private parties could voluntarily agree to restrictive covenants, but that the judicial system could not enforce these agreements because discriminatory state action violated the Equal Protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In sum, the Shelley v. Kraemer ruling overturned the logic of the 1926 Buckley v. Corrigan decision, which refused to acknowledge legal enforcement of contracts as an act of government.58 While restrictive covenants were no longer enforceable, they did not disappear. In Connecticut, the East Haddam Town Clerk filed a racial covenant in December 1950, more than two years after the Shelley ruling. Across the nation, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) continued to require racial covenants for properties it insured until 1950, and continued to back mortgages for some White-only properties until 1962. Also, several state courts resisted the Shelley decision until a subsequent US Supreme Court decision in 1953, and the US Congress explicitly made restrictive covenants unlawful when it passed the US Fair Housing Act of 1968. Yet some local governments continued to accept restrictive covenants in property records until a US federal court struck down this practice in the 1972 Mayers v. Ridley ruling. Finally, even when local government clerks stopped accepting property deeds with unlawful covenants, generations of racist documents from the past continued to remain “on the books” in town halls across the US.59 Confronting the Legacy of Covenants Although courts ruled that restrictive covenants were no longer enforceable, and town clerks eventually stopped filing racist property deeds into the public record, their legacy still influences us today. White Christian families that purchased restricted homes in the 1940s financially benefitted from government-supported segregation that boosted the value of property that guaranteed no Black or Jewish neighbors. Decades later, even when overtly racist housing preferences have declined, the descendants of 1940s homeowners benefitted from inherited wealth built upon a more intense era of prejudice. Even if someone’s White grandparents did not personally express racist views, if their home had a restrictive covenant, or was located in an all-White neighborhood created by covenants, those more-desirable qualities among today’s homebuyers probably put more dollars into their grandchildren’s pockets. In addition, the legacy of covenants also affected Black or Jewish homebuyers in more recent decades, who had to decide whether or not to live in a neighborhood with a documented past of being openly hostile to their presence.60 Inspired by the Segregated Seattle project and related work in other states, Connecticut residents have gradually begun to confront restrictive covenants in our past, strike them out of the public record, but not erase them from our historical memory. The process is not fast, but key steps have become more visible and gained momentum over the past decade.61 After we found restrictive covenants in West Hartford property records in 2010, we contacted current residents and invited them to publicly share their reflections in oral history video interviews, to build broader awareness of how racism shaped this predominantly White suburb. Two present-day White residents of West Hartford’s High Ledge Homes development were shocked to learn that their neighborhood had been protected by a 1940s White-only covenant, and sought to make sense of its meaning on their lives. Debra Walsh, an educator and actor, reflected on the White privilege that was attached to her decision to buy her home in 2010, shown in Figure 2.19. Although she had believed that the North had not exhibited such explicit racist policies, the direct evidence of race restrictive covenants convinced her that “West Hartford made a concerted effort to stay White and WASPy and that contributes to the feel of the neighborhood.” Walsh acknowledged how the explicit racism of the covenants in her own neighborhood made her feel uncomfortable with the White privilege she experiences. “It’s really hard to look really deep within and answer those questions,” she explained, “…when you live in the dominant class. Like you don’t know how to answer it.” Even though she knew the covenants are no longer enforceable, Walsh could see how “the legacy of the piece of land gets passed on to a feeling of a neighborhood,” a sense of White exclusivity that pervades even today, when barriers take on less overtly racial language.62 Figure 2.19: Watch the oral history video or read the transcript of the interview with Debra Walsh to hear how she learned about a race restrictive covenant in her West Hartford neighborhood. Interview copyrighted 2011 by Walsh and shared under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. Yet while racial covenants make White West Hartford residents uncomfortable about the past, they remain an important piece of history, a hidden chapter that deserves more attention. Susan Hansen, a librarian and White resident who bought her home in the High Ledge Homes neighborhood in the 1990s, reflected on this theme in her 2011 oral history interview, shown in Figure 2.20. “I think this is something that people should know,” Hansen observed, “because there are people still living on my street who were here then, who must have been fully aware.” Hansen also emphasized the importance of knowing that racial covenants were not something that happened only in the Deep South long ago, but are a very recent part of Northern suburban history that should not be whitewashed out of memory. As Hansen concluded, “We need to know that we were being idiots up here, too, and it wasn’t somewhere else. It was here. It’s still here.”63 Figure 2.20: Watch the oral history video or read the transcript of the interview with Susan Hansen to hear her reflections about a race restrictive covenant in her West Hartford neighborhood. Interview copyrighted 2011 by Hansen and shared under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. After David Ware wrote his 2020 academic study of restrictive covenants in Manchester, he took it one step further by raising it with reporters and lobbying Connecticut legislators to change the law. Ware initially began his study when his father revealed that their 1950s family home contained a racial covenant, hidden in the paperwork over five prior real estate transfers. Since a growing number of states had passed laws to address the legacy of covenants, Ware believed Connecticut needed one too. In the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement in early 2021, Ware drafted a plan to strike out racial covenants, which was initially sponsored by Manchester State Rep. Jason Doucette. At the Judiciary Committee, co-chair State Senator Gary Winfield revised it into a bill that won quickly won unanimous support by the legislature and became law with the governor’s signature in 2021. Connecticut law now officially declares all unlawful covenants in land records to be void. Furthermore, the law requires towns to make available a free form for any resident to request the clerk to mark their covenant as void in the public record, though some town clerks have not yet complied. The process to void a covenant officially recognizes racism without removing it from our history. One of the first residents to void a racial covenant was David’s 95-year-old father, Frederick Ware, as shown in Figure 2.21.64 Figure 2.21: Frederick Ware (left), with his son David, one of the first Connecticut residents to void a restrictive covenant in 2021. Photo copyrighted 2021 by UConn and reprinted under fair-use guidelines. Document from Town of Manchester property records, public domain. In the New Haven suburb of Hamden, as current homeowners and community activists became aware of racial covenants in their property deeds, they spoke up and eventually connected with each other to publicly void them. Melinda Tuhus wrote a 1994 Hartford Courant opinion essay on discovering a racist covenant when purchasing her home in Hamden. At that time, Tuhus’s attorney discouraged her from attempting to strike out the restriction during the closing of her home purchase, arguing that making changes might “muddy the waters” and interfere with the sale. “You can’t change history,” her lawyer told her, yet Tuhus questioned the decision “to keep it hidden in musty tomes in the town clerk’s office.”65 Decades later during the Black Lives Matter movement in 2021, activists called attention to the history of racist property deeds in suburban developments that shaped Hamden’s Spring Glen neighborhood. When attorney June Gold attended Hamden’s Spring Glen Church in 2023, she learned about racial covenants from a speaker with Congregations Organized for a New Connecticut (CONECT). Gold also read about Ware’s work in Manchester and used her research skills to uncover several racial covenants in Hamden’s town records—to the surprise of the Town Clerk’s staff—and taught them about their legal obligation to publicize 2021 state law. Currently, Gold works with community groups to build awareness and offers her free legal services to help current homeowners void these racial restrictions. One of the many Hamden homeowners Gold assisted was Melinda Tulus, who wrote about wanting to “change history” and not “keep it hidden” in her 1994 article, and now had a way to make it happen.66 Under Connecticut Public Act 2021-173, each Town Clerk must post these forms, both on their website and inside the land records office, to allow property owners to reject unlawful covenants, free of charge. Property owners may fill out and submit either form below: CT Identification and Renunciation of Unlawful Covenant OR CT Affidavit to Identify Racial Covenant, signed by notary Help us continue the work to find and reject Connecticut’s racist covenants. In early 2024 we created the https://myCTdeed.com site to build public awareness and simplify the process for current owners to find and remove unlawful covenants from their property. To share with others, download our flyer shown in Figure 2.22. Learn more about How We Found Restrictive Covenants in this book and start research in your own community. If you know of similar property records with racial or religious restrictions anywhere in Connecticut, contact the authors. Figure 2.22: Download our myCTdeed.com flyer to share with others. About the authors and contributors: Tracey Wilson (Trinity 1976) wrote the first draft of the West Hartford portion for her 2010 article in the West Hartford Life magazine and published it in her 2018 Life in West Hartford book, which Vianna Iorio (Trinity 2019) revised for this book. David K. Ware and June Gold co-authored sections based on their covenant research in other Connecticut towns. Jack Dougherty collaborated with all and expanded the historical and comparative sections of this chapter. Ilya Ilyankou (Trinity 2018) and Jack Dougherty developed the interactive map, based on an earlier version created with UConn MAGIC. Katie Campbell Levasseur (Trinity 2011) researched restrictive property covenants, and both she and Candace Simpson (Trinity 2012) conducted oral history interviews.67 High Ledge Homes Inc., “Agreement Concerning Building Restrictions” (Volume 152, pages 224-5, maps #218, 222, 247, Property Records, Town Clerk, Town of West Hartford, Connecticut, June 10, 1940), https://github.com/ontheline/otl-covenants.↩︎ For an introduction to different types of restrictive covenants, see Examples in “National Covenants Research Coalition” (National Covenants Research Coalition, 2022), https://www.nationalcovenantsresearchcoalition.com.↩︎ See historical sources on Hamden, Manchester, Newington, West Hartford, and partial record for East Haddam in Ilya Ilyankou and Jack Dougherty, “Map: Race Restrictive Covenants in Connecticut, 1930s-40s” (On The Line, 2017), https://ontheline.github.io/otl-covenants/index-caption.html. Our current map is based on an earlier version, University of Connecticut Libraries Map and Geographic Information Center, “Race Restrictive Covenants in Property Deeds, Hartford Area, 1940s,” 2012, http://magic.lib.uconn.edu/otl/doclink_covenant.html. On Manchester research, see also David K. Ware, “The Black and White of Greenway: Racially Restrictive Covenants in Manchester, Connecticut” (Paper submitted for University of Connecticut School of Law, January 2020), http://ssrn.com/abstract=3546228. On a Stamford restrictive covenant discovered when Richard Blumenthal was campaigning for CT Attorney General, see Michele Jacklin, “Civility Getting Trampled in Attorney General Race,” Hartford Courant, June 18, 1990, https://www.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/1731514593/AF759DBAAC0E49D0PQ/1?accountid=14405&sourcetype=Historical%20Newspapers; Christopher Keating, “A Deja Vu Moment for Blumenthal,” The Hartford Courant, May 20, 2010, http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/hartfordcourant/docview/257278442/abstract/C74B42362F2248FEPQ/2.↩︎ Corrigan v. Buckley, (271 US Supreme Court 323, May 24, 1926), https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=11135903580197116691; Prologue DC, “Mapping Segregation in Washington DC,” 2015, http://prologuedc.com/blog/mapping-segregation.↩︎ “Andover Lake (Ad),” Hartford Courant, July 8, 1928, https://www.newspapers.com/image/369457693/; “Andover Lake (Ad),” Hartford Courant, April 28, 1929, https://www.newspapers.com/image/369287683/; Gerald J. Demeusy, “Negro Landowner Wins Andover Lake Rights,” Hartford Courant, December 29, 1967, https://www.newspapers.com/image/371508785/; David Rhinelander, “Andover Lake: Investors’ Creation,” Hartford Courant, February 26, 1999, https://web.archive.org/web/20210717030820/https://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-xpm-1999-02-26-9902260384-story.html; Walter Woodward, “July 29: A Determined Minister’s Swim for Justice” (Today in Connecticut History, July 29, 2021), https://web.archive.org/web/20210729112410/https://todayincthistory.com/2021/07/29/july-29-a-determined-ministers-swim-for-justice/. TODO: confirm if 1920s restrictive covenant exists in Andover property records; add newspaper sources for other lake associations and confirm if they also had restrictive covenants in their property records. TODO: decide on moving Philpot portion to latter section on challenging covenants↩︎ Alfred E. Hanbury, “Center Village Subdivision, Warranty Deed” (Land Records, Town of Newington, Connecticut, vol. 41, pp. 226-27, and maps 64, 66, 69, October 4, 1939), https://github.com/ontheline/otl-covenants; On Hanbury’s housing developments, see “Will Erect Houses in Newington: Alfred E. Hanbury,” Hartford Courant, March 29, 1937, https://www.newspapers.com/image/370101048/; “Hanbury to Build Brick Structure on Newington Site,” Hartford Courant, January 27, 1946, https://www.newspapers.com/image/367917727/; “Contractor Optimistic on Outlook,” Hartford Courant, May 14, 1950, https://www.newspapers.com/image/370251077/; “Alfred E. Hanbury: New Trustees and Officers Are Elected,” Hartford Courant, June 16, 1950, https://www.newspapers.com/image/370110307/; “Alfred Hanbury Dies,” Hartford Courant, February 5, 1970, https://www.newspapers.com/image/371464241/. Ware found no restrictive covenants in either Alandale or Belden Acres.↩︎ “100 New Homes To Be Built On High Ledge Tract: E. F. Hammel, New York Builder, Buys Tract From The R. G. Bent Co.” The Hartford Courant, March 31, 1940, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/559299850?accountid=14405; “Ad: Modern Homes in High Ledge,” Hartford Courant, March 31, 1940, https://www.newspapers.com/image/367307306/; High Ledge Homes Inc., “Agreement Concerning Building Restrictions”. See other West Hartford racial covenants in Ilyankou and Dougherty, “Map,” 2017.↩︎ Ware, “The Black and White of Greenway”, p. 4. See real estate transaction Frederick Ware, Vivian Ware, and Vincent Marcin, “Warrantee Deed Greenway Park Lot 35” (Town of Manchester CT Land Records, vol. 207, p. 62, February 24, 1950), https://recordhub.cottsystems.com/ManchesterCT/Search/Records/Details?IndexId=13094587, with 5 additional transfers between 1945-1949, back to the original race restriction in Lawrence A. Converse and Greenway, Inc., “Warrantee Deed, Greenway Park, Lots 15-17, 29-35,80-93” (Town of Manchester CT, Land Records, vol. 147, p. 463, October 7, 1942), https://recordhub.cottsystems.com/ManchesterCT/Search/Records/Details?IndexId=13333067. Interestingly, in personal correspondence Ware notes that while CT statute chapter 92 section 7.24(b) requires town clerks to record land records within thirty days, and nearly all property owners do so to make them public record, no CT law requires property owners to file land contracts with town clerks, meaning that some restrictive covenants might not have become public record. See Connecticut General Assembly, “Chapter 92 Section 7-24(b): Town Clerks. Recording,” in General Statutes of Connecticut, 2023, https://www.cga.ct.gov/current/pub/chap_092.htm#sec_7-24.↩︎ See Hamden restrictive covenant land records in Ilyankou and Dougherty, “Map,” 2017.↩︎ TODO: Request total number of homes built each year in 1940s from Hamden property assessor database to calculate percentage with racial covenants. See table calculations in Ilyankou and Dougherty. Manchester data from Ware, “The Black and White of Greenway”, p. 15↩︎ See more projects by members of the “National Covenants Research Coalition”. The earliest digital history project on racial property deeds probably was Wendy Plotkin, “Racial and Religious Restrictive Covenants in the US and Canada,” 2015, https://web.archive.org/web/20151026174853/http://wbhsi.net/~wendyplotkin/DeedsWeb/, which states that content was posted online prior to 1999. On Seattle and Washington State, see James Gregory, “Segregated Seattle” (Seattle Civil Rights & Labor History Project, 2006), https://depts.washington.edu/civilr/segregated.htm and Civil Rights and Labor History Consortium, University of Washington, “Racial Restrictive Covenants Project Washington State,” 2023, https://depts.washington.edu/covenants/laws.shtml. On Minnesota, see University of Minnesota Libraries, “Mapping Prejudice,” 2020, https://www.mappingprejudice.org and Aradhya Sood, William Speagle, and Kevin Ehrman-Solberg, “Long Shadow of Racial Discrimination: Evidence from Housing Covenants of Minneapolis,” SSRN Scholarly Paper (Rochester, NY, September 30, 2019), https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3468520. On the Chicago 80 percent estimate, see LaDale Winling, “Chicago Covenants” (Chicago Covenants, 2021), https://www.chicagocovenants.com and analysis by Robert Clifton Weaver, The Negro Ghetto (1948; repr., New York, Russell & Russell, 1967), http://archive.org/details/negroghetto00weav, p. 213 and chapter 13. On the St. Louis 80 percent estimate, see Colin Gordon, “Dividing the City: Race-Restrictive Covenants in St. Louis and St. Louis County,” 2022, https://dsps.lib.uiowa.edu/thedividedcity/ and Corinne Ruff, “80% of St. Louis County Homes Built by 1950 Have Racial Covenants, Researcher Finds” (STLPR: St. Louis Public Radio, January 31, 2022), https://www.stlpr.org/culture-history/2022-01-26/80-of-st-louis-county-homes-built-by-1950-have-racial-covenants-researcher-finds.↩︎ See also the role of Black homeowners and allies in Washington DC and other cities in Jeffrey D Gonda, Unjust Deeds: The Restrictive Covenant Cases and the Making of the Civil Rights Movement (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015), http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/906234529, chapter 1. For contemporary accounts by Black activists and researchers, see Herman H. Long and Charles S. Johnson, People Vs. Property: Race Restrictive Covenants in Housing (Fisk University Press, 1947), https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015020076074?urlappend=%3Bseq=1; Weaver, The Negro Ghetto, chapter 13. For national histories of restrictive covenants, see Clement E. Vose, Caucasians Only: The Supreme Court, the NAACP, and the Restrictive Covenant Cases (1959; repr., University of California Press, 2019), https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520325647; Richard R. W. Brooks and Carol M. Rose, Saving the Neighborhood: Racially Restrictive Covenants, Law, and Social Norms (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2013), http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/836206008; Rothstein, The Color of Law, chapter 5↩︎ “Negro Citizens’ Council Formation Is Discussed,” Hartford Courant, June 25, 1941, https://www.newspapers.com/image/369871907/; Hartford Negro Citizens’Council, “Letter to Editor: Segregation Opposed: Racial Problems in Housing Call for Post-War Settlement,” The Hartford Courant, April 5, 1945, http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/hnphartfordcourant/docview/560252900/abstract/10CAE45732FD4C54PQ/8; “Middletown (Restrictive Covenants Reference),” Hartford Chronicle, January 11, 1947, https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn92051342/1947-01-11/ed-1/?dl=page&q=restrictive+covenant&sp=1. Learn about Hartford’s 1940s Black press Hartford Chronicle, \"1940?-1947\", https://www.loc.gov/item/sn92051342.↩︎ “Bill to Outlaw Race Covenants (New York State),” Hartford Chronicle, March 8, 1947, https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn92051342/1947-03-08/ed-1/; Simon Bernstein, “Letter to the Editor,” Hartford Chronicle, April 12, 1947, https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn92051342/1947-04-12/ed-1/; “Bernstein Seeks End Of Restrictive Clauses,” Hartford Courant, March 28, 1947, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/560759017?accountid=14405; “State Law Sought Against Racial Ban In Realty Deals,” Hartford Courant, April 2, 1947, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/560760502?accountid=14405. Holly Hutton, A Brief Look Back: A Historical Overview of the Jewish Legal Community of Hartford, Connecticut (Jewish Historical Society of Greater Hartford, 2014), p. 40 briefly states that the anti-Jewish covenant was in West Hartford. But in our interview with Bernstein at age 98, he only recalled details about an anti-Black covenant in West Hartford that was settled out of court, not the anti-Jewish covenant in his 1947 letter, see Simon Bernstein, “Oral History Interview on Connecticut Civil Rights” (On The Line, Connecticut Digital Archives, August 1, 2011), http://hdl.handle.net/11134/120002:otl-bernstein. Tracey M. Wilson, “High Ledge Homes and Restrictive Covenants,” in Life in West Hartford (West Hartford Historical Society and Noah Webster House, 2018), https://lifeinwesthartford.org/world-war-ii-era.html#high-ledge-homes-and-restrictive-covenants described anecdotal accounts of anti-Jewish and anti-Catholic housing prohibitions in specific parts of West Hartford, but it is unclear whether or not these were written into property deeds or some other mechanism, as we have not yet found any religious covenants in Connecticut.↩︎ Shelley v. Kraemer, (334 US Supreme Court 1, May 3, 1948), https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=12732018998507979172; Gonda, Unjust Deeds, p. 174↩︎ Edward L. Parker and The Lake Realty Company, “Warrantee Deed, Moodus Estates, Lot 8, Block 37” (Town of East Haddam, Connecticut, Land Records, vol. 66, p. 103, December 21, 1950), https://github.com/ontheline/otl-covenants; Rothstein, The Color of Law pp. 85-91; Mayers v. Ridley, “Decision” (465 F.2d US Court of Appeals, DC Circuit, 630, March 1, 1972), https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=15478926121065691421.↩︎ Recall that in Minneapolis-St. Paul, current prices of homes with racial covenants are 4 to 15 percent higher than identical homes without covenants, according to Sood, Speagle, and Ehrman-Solberg, “Long Shadow of Racial Discrimination”.↩︎ On Seattle and Washington State, see Gregory, “Segregated Seattle” and Civil Rights and Labor History Consortium, University of Washington, “Racial Restrictive Covenants Project Washington State”. In Connecticut, the topic briefly arose in 1990 when the press reported that Richard Blumenthal, at that time the Democratic candidate for state attorney general, owned a home in Stamford CT with a race restrictive covenant. But this was driven by opponents in a political campaign, not a sustained effort for broader public awareness. See Jacklin, “Civility Getting Trampled in Attorney General Race - ProQuest Historical Newspapers”; Keating, “A Deja Vu Moment for Blumenthal”.↩︎ Debra Walsh, “Oral History Interview on West Hartford” (Cities, Suburbs, Schools Project, Trinity College Digital Repository, July 21, 2011), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_ohistory/21. ↩︎ Susan Hansen, “Oral History Interview on West Hartford” (Cities, Suburbs, Schools Project, Trinity College Digital Repository, July 22, 2011), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_ohistory/17.↩︎ Ken Dixon, “Whites-Only Rules Still Surface in Ct Property Records,” CT Insider, March 1, 2020, https://www.ctinsider.com/local/ctpost/article/Whites-only-rules-still-surface-in-CT-property-15096545.php; see public hearing testimony in Connecticut General Assembly, “Raised Bill 6665: An Act Concerning the Removal of Restrictive Covenants Based on Race and Elimination of the Race Designation on Marriage Licenses,” January 2021, https://www.cga.ct.gov/asp/cgabillstatus/cgabillstatus.asp?selBillType=Bill&bill_num=HB06665&which_year=2021; Connecticut General Assembly, “Public Act 21-173: An Act Concerning the Removal of Restrictions on Ownership or Occupancy of Real Property Based on Race and Elimination of the Race Designation on Marriage Licenses.” July 12, 2021, https://www.cga.ct.gov/2021/ACT/PA/PDF/2021PA-00173-R00HB-06665-PA.PDF; Jacalyn Severance, “Revelation of a Racist Property Restriction Leads to New State Law in Connecticut” (UConn Today, July 27, 2021), https://today.uconn.edu/2021/07/revelation-of-a-racist-property-restriction-leads-to-new-state-law-in-connecticut/; Susan Haigh, “State Lawmakers Work to Strip Old ’Whites Only’ Covenants” (Associated Press News, July 28, 2021), https://apnews.com/article/whites-only-property-covenants-race-ethnicity-56d67ad0dff72e8b71de768a24c90274; Frederick D. Ware, “Void Racially Restrictive Covenant” (Town of Manchester CT, Land Records, vol. 4659, p. 1076, August 3, 2021), https://recordhub.cottsystems.com/ManchesterCT/Search/Records/Details?IndexId=21189265.↩︎ Melinda Tuhus, “Vestiges of Racism Live on in Property Deeds (Op-Ed),” Hartford Courant, May 17, 1994, https://www.newspapers.com/image/175814134/.↩︎ Emily DiSalvo, “Hamden Confronts Legacy Of Segregation,” New Haven Independent, April 27, 2021, http://www.newhavenindependent.org/index.php/archives/entry/hamdensegregation_/; Emily DiSalvo, “Zoning Laws Have Led to a Segregated Hamden: Activists Are Working to Fix It” (HQNN.org, April 27, 2021), http://hqnn.org/2021/04/27/zoning-laws-have-led-to-a-segregated-hamden-activists-are-working-to-fix-it/; Dena Dupree, “Hamden in ’Black and White’: The Effects of Redlining Practices Today” (HQNN.org, December 7, 2021), https://hqnn.org/2021/12/07/hamden-in-black-and-white-the-effects-of-redlining-practices-today/; Austin Mirmina, “When Hamden Woman Found Racist Covenant in Her Property Deed, Rooting Them Out Became a Mission” (CT Insider, November 25, 2023), https://www.ctinsider.com/news/article/hamden-racist-property-deeds-spring-glen-18481356.php.↩︎ Tracey Wilson, “Taking Stock of High Ledge Homes and Restricted Covenants,” West Hartford Life 13, no. 2 (June 2010): 36–37, https://history.westhartfordlibrary.org/items/show/257; Wilson, “High Ledge Homes and Restrictive Covenants”; University of Connecticut Libraries Map and Geographic Information Center, “Race Restrictive Covenants in Property Deeds, Hartford Area, 1940s”; Ilyankou and Dougherty, “Map,” 2017.↩︎ "],["public-housing.html", "Racial Barriers to Public Housing", " Racial Barriers to Public Housing by Emily Meehan and Jack Dougherty As we saw in the previous section, housing discrimination did not occur solely due to private individuals, but often as a result of deliberate actions by public policymakers. Yet in some cases, different levels of government came into direct conflict over this issue. During World War II, the Roosevelt administration clashed with West Hartford political leaders over the right of African-American workers to reside in federal wartime housing. To manufacture weapons to defeat Germany and Japan, the United States Housing Authority (USHA) created shelter for thousands of wartime workers who migrated to work in factories in the city and suburbs of metropolitan Hartford. In comparison to the Federal Housing Administration, the USHA took a racially progressive stance in favor of housing blacks workers wherever need and space existed, even if that meant government-funded housing in virtually all-white neighborhoods. But in West Hartford, racism trumped patriotism. Suburban political leaders mobilized against federal authority to block African-American workers from moving into their community. Even when Washington DC pushed back, local leaders prevailed by finding a legal loophole to block non-whites from moving in. In 1943, a dispute arose in West Hartford over the Oakwood Acres public housing development, shown in Figure 2.23.68 Federal housing officials and West Hartford leaders clashed on whether or not African Americans should be allowed to live in this World War II public housing development, located in a virtually all-white town. During this period, public housing tracts were created to shelter the many war workers and their families drawn to the Hartford area by the availability of defense-related jobs. The United States government funded these developments; therefore, local housing officials needed to abide by federal laws regarding occupancy. Federal Housing authorities eventually did require West Hartford to admit African Americans; however, town residents and leaders prevailed by specifying residency criteria in such a way as to maintain the racial homogeneity of their community. Racist actions such as these, even when they occurred decades ago, have been factors in shaping the present-day demographics of West Hartford and other towns in the state. Figure 2.23: Photo of Oakwood Acres public housing in West Hartford, from the Hartford Times, February 17, 1954, digitized by the Hartford History Center, Hartford Public Library. The advent of World War II brought significant changes to a country that had been in the grip of a deep financial depression. Across the nation, as people moved into cities looking for jobs in wartime defense industries, demand for housing soared. Often, that demand far exceeded the availability of properties to purchase or even rent. In 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the United States Congress established the United States Housing Authority (USHA) and authorized it to build public housing units with the goal of providing adequate living quarters for war workers.69 An influx of war laborers, both white and African American, and their families came to the greater Hartford area in the 1940s. They worked in defense factories, such as the Pratt & Whitney Machine Tool plant and the newer Pratt & Whitney Aircraft Company. As a result, housing options were limited in the Hartford area. By August of 1943, 8,000 new housing units had been developed in Hartford and New Britain to accommodate the growing population. These apartment-style homes were built under the Hartford Housing Association (HHA) and paid for with federal funding from the USHA.70 According to a 1943 Hartford Courant report, “Connecticut has about half of all the government war housing constructed in New England. Half of the government housing in this state has been put up in the Hartford-New Britain area…” With these statistics, one might think that workers’ need for housing in Greater Hartford had been met. However, families and single African American war workers found it more difficult to procure homes. The Courant noted that “400 housing units for white in-migrant families” were being constructed and, in “the case of Negroes,” it was thought that “temporary dormitories” might be built if additional government grants could be obtained. Berkley Cox, chairman of the HHA called this situation “satisfactory.”71 Figure 2.24: Headline from 1943 Metropolitan News stated that “Negroes may not move into Oakwood” wartime public housing in West Hartford. Digitized by West Hartford Public Library. One unit developed under the HHA was the Oakwood Acres Housing Tract. Located on Oakwood Avenue in West Hartford, it spanned the area between St. Charles Street and Seymour Avenue. Contemporary descriptions present the Oakwood Acres’ living spaces as new, simplistic, and affordable. In 1943, only 14 out of the 300 apartments in the building were occupied at a time when many African Americans either had no place to live or could only find substandard accommodations. The federal government planned to use the complex to provide housing for these workers and their families.72 Figure 2.25: Aerial images of Oakwood Acres Housing Tract, in 1951 and today, on the West Hartford border with Hartford, from MAGIC UConn Libraries. Because the government funded Oakwood Acres, the unit needed to abide by federal law, which stated that officials could not legally reject African Americans applying for housing. West Hartford homeowners, living near Oakwood Acres, were quoted in a September 1943 issue of the Metropolitan News as being “alarmed” and “horrified” at the idea of “Negroes” living in their neighborhood. One woman said she and her family would move out the day after any African Americans moved in. The paper itself described the situation in harsh, racist language, calling it an “infiltration,” and reported the prevailing sentiment among community homeowners as being: “We don’t want them here.” The consensus among West Hartford realtors and homeowners, the newspaper reported, was that real estate values would show “an immediate and sharp” drop if “Negroes in any considerable number moved into town.”73 Furiously, homeowners wrote to the HHA and West Hartford Housing Authority (WHHA) asking if African Americans would indeed be admitted to Oakwood Acres. When the Hartford Courant posed the question to WHHA chairman Richard F. Jones, he equivocated, saying, “I won’t say we are and I won’t say we’re not going to admit Negroes… At the present time that is a topic we’d rather not publicize too much.” This prompted West Hartford residents to send petitions to their senators, Francis Maloney and John A Danaher, and congressman, William Miller. Miller responded that he would look into the issue.74 The United States Housing Authority responded with an ultimatum. They stated that it was unlawful to exclude occupants from Oakwood Acres based on race. Local housing officials were advised that unless the race restrictions were lifted, the federal government would step in. Under this decision, African Americans would be admitted if they applied for a unit. This angered many West Hartford homeowners, prompting the town’s housing officials to find a loophole. They decided to accept applications only from “Negroes with essential West Hartford industry jobs.” Officials made this ruling knowing that, at the time, only six African American families fit this criterion–and they had not expressed interest in living in Oakwood Acres. Ultimately, with this restrictive technicality in place, no African American war workers moved into the housing tract. The white West Hartford housing officials and their supporters had trumped the federal government. They found a way to circumvent federal guidelines and discourage African Americans from living in publicly funded housing within the town’s borders.75 In 1956, Oakwood Acres was demolished. It had become dilapidated and the people of West Hartford feared it made their neighborhood look like a “slum.”76 By destroying the unit, West Hartford also erased the physical remnants of this racist chapter in the town’s housing history. Today, West Hartford remains a predominately white community. One can argue that its demographics have been shaped, in part, by discriminatory housing practices of which the standoff over Oakwood Acres is but one example. About the authors and contributors: Emily Meehan (Trinity 2016) wrote the first draft of this essay in the Cities Suburbs and Schools seminar, and published it in ConnecticutHistory.org.77 Jack Dougherty expanded the essay for publication in this book. Hartford Times, “Oakwood Acres Temporary Housing, West Hartford” (Photograph, Hartford History Center, Hartford Public Library, February 17, 1954), https://www.flickr.com/photos/cthistoryonline/5717411442/in/set-72157626521582021.↩︎ Kristin M Szylvian, “The Federal Housing Program During World War II,” in From Tenements to the Taylor Homes: In Search of an Urban Housing Policy in Twentieth-Century America, ed. John F Bauman, Roger Biles, and Kristin M Szylvian (University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000), 121–38, https://books.google.com/books?id=YZ9mO3NLP90C&pg=PA121#v=onepage&q&f=false.↩︎ “1877 Worker Visits New Tool Plant,” Hartford Courant, October 29, 1941, http://www.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/559524037/abstract/AC77F88C6CE3454EPQ/1; “Housing Reaches 8000 Mark in City and New Britain,” Hartford Courant, August 14, 1943, https://www-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/historical-newspapers/housing-reaches-8000-mark-city-new-britain/docview/559829506/se-2?accountid=14405.↩︎ “Housing Reaches 8000 Mark in City and New Britain”.↩︎ “Negroes May Occupy Oakwood Acres to Solve Rental Lag,” The Metropolitan News, September 30, 1943.↩︎ “Negroes May Occupy Oakwood Acres to Solve Rental Lag”.↩︎ “Housing Official Noncommittal on Racial Question,” Hartford Courant, October 21, 1943, https://www-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/hnphartfordcourant/docview/559844453/4279A3CDE13D4FE9PQ/1?accountid=14405; “Residents Ask Congressmen’s Aid on Negro Housing Threat,” Metropolitan News, November 4, 1943, https://history.westhartfordlibrary.org/items/show/420.↩︎ “Negroes May Not Move Into Oakwood War Housing Tract,” Metropolitan News, December 16, 1943, https://history.westhartfordlibrary.org/items/show/421; Katherine Ellen Winterbottom, “Beneath the Veneer,” The Spectator [West Hartford Historical Society Newsletter] Autumn (1998): 1, 10–14.↩︎ Tracey M. Wilson, “Resistance to Public Housing and Integration During World War II,” in Life in West Hartford (West Hartford, CT: West Hartford Historical Society and Noah Webster House, 2018), http://lifeinwesthartford.org/world-war-ii-era.html#resistance-to-public-housing-and-integration-during-world-war-ii.↩︎ Emily Meehan, “The Debate Over Who Could Occupy World War II Public Housing in West Hartford” (ConnecticutHistory.org, January 2014), http://connecticuthistory.org/the-debate-over-who-could-occupy-world-war-ii-public-housing-in-west-hartford/.↩︎ "],["excluding.html", "Chapter 3 Excluding Through Zoning Lines", " Chapter 3 Excluding Through Zoning Lines This chapter makes the hidden history of zoning more visible, and explains how decisions made by elected leaders, real estate developers, and property owners shaped the suburban landscape in metropolitan Hartford. Zoning is key to understanding the history of where people live in our segregated US metropolitan areas today. In general, zoning refers to rules governing how land can be used. Some policies have progressive goals, such as separating industrial factories from residential neighborhoods. In present-day debates, exclusionary zoning refers to policies that favor expensive single-family home construction that requires large amounts of property, over more affordable multi-family homes that use less land per resident. In Connecticut, the origins of exclusionary zoning can be traced back to efforts by the West Hartford town government to block a Hartford Jewish grocer from building a store in a residential neighborhood in the early 1920s. Although suburban town leaders failed to block this store, they helped spark a statewide political movement to create stronger legal tools to control future real estate development in order to exclude certain types of property–and people that suburban residents deemed undesirable. West Hartford’s role in this history matters, because in 1924 the town raced to become Connecticut’s first municipality to enact local zoning ordinances enabled by a new state law. West Hartford also hired national experts to design a town-wide exclusionary zoning plan that set precedents followed by other suburbs in subsequent decades. Exclusionary zoning laws intentionally made it more expensive to build homes in suburban neighborhoods, which effectively deterred lower-income people from living there. Unlike other discriminatory barriers of this era—such as mortgage redlining, restrictive covenants, and segregated public housing—exclusionary zoning did not directly refer to race, religion, or nationality. Instead, exclusionary zoning cleverly carved up suburban neighborhoods using minimum-land rules that segregated residents by their wealth. In this way, exclusionary zoning became a more sophisticated tool for housing discrimination that largely resisted the fair-housing legislation of the 1960s-1970s civil rights era and continues to divide Connecticut residents into the present day. "],["origins-zoning.html", "A Jewish Grocer and the Origins of Zoning in Connecticut", " A Jewish Grocer and the Origins of Zoning in Connecticut When Jacob Solomon Goldberg returned home to Hartford after military service in World War I, he sought to advance himself from a butcher to a businessman. Jacob partnered with his brother Barney and their brother-in-law Hyman M. Cohen to buy a small grocery store in downtown Hartford, near their East Side neighborhood, which they managed together during the early 1920s. Like other entrepreneurs of their era, they “followed the trend of business to the west,” they told local reporters, and dreamed of opening a second grocery store in the rapidly-growing suburb of West Hartford. This town’s population grew at a faster rate than Hartford during the 1910s, nearly doubling in size to almost 9,000 residents during that decade. West Hartford town officials granted more than 300 building permits for single- and two-family homes in 1922, more than any other town in Connecticut that year. Linked by convenient trolley lines to the capital city with its corporate headquarters for the nation’s leading banks and insurance companies, West Hartford was quickly becoming an ideal destination for the rising middle class. The emerging suburb, adjacent to Hartford’s premier West End neighborhoods, was politically independent, and its real estate opportunities became a magnet for the elite.78 Goldberg and his family searched for the perfect location to open a second grocery store. With funds from Jacob’s father David, who previously owned a kosher meat market in Hartford, they bought two valuable parcels of undeveloped land on Farmington Avenue at the corner of Ardmore Road, on the trolley line about halfway between the Hartford border and West Hartford’s town center. In the early 1920s, only a dozen grocers served all of West Hartford’s population, including several small shops where owners sold food products out of their homes. Customers typically made frequent purchases from neighborhood grocers during the week due to limited transportation and refrigeration. Goldberg’s closest competitors were located about a half-mile in opposite directions: West Hill Grocery (also on Farmington Avenue, closer to the Hartford border) and M.J. Burnham’s (a larger store in West Hartford Center). Although the immediate area around Goldberg’s property had only 60 houses in 1923, real estate developers and town officials had subdivided the land into smaller lots, and were building side streets and sewer lines, in anticipation of many more homebuyers. Next door to Goldberg’s vacant lots stood the only non-residential building in the vicinity: the West Hartford Armory for the Connecticut National Guard Troop B Cavalry, built in 1913. Perhaps the odor from its horse stables helped explain why no one had yet built a home on Goldberg’s empty property lots.79 But when Goldberg applied for a building permit in January 1923, the West Hartford building inspector refused to grant it. Instead, the inspector called a public hearing, where reporters described how “a score of property owners in the Ardmore Road section appeared and protested” against Goldberg’s plan to build a grocery store. In their eyes, it made no difference that Goldberg had hired a well-known local architect whose design followed every legal requirement in the town building code. It made no difference that his proposed store would be facing the busier Farmington Avenue or occupy much less space than the Armory building next door, as shown in Figure 3.1. What mattered was that property owners objected to Goldberg’s right to build a store in their neighborhood, and the town government took their side by declining to grant a permit. Goldberg eventually prevailed and opened the Kingswood Market grocery store, as shown in Figure 3.2. He probably chose the name to identify with the Kingswood School, an elite private country day school for boys that opened three blocks away in 1922, and did not generate controversy among property owners. Although Goldberg won this battle, the dispute over property rights and the exclusionary climate surrounding it helps to explain how zoning happened in Connecticut in the 1920s.80 Figure 3.1: In 1923, West Hartford property owners and town officials objected to Jacob Goldberg’s application to build a grocery store at the corner of Farmington Avenue and Ardmore Road (shown in blue), which would be much smaller than the West Hartford Armory next door (shown in red). Source: Sanborn fire insurance maps digitized by the Library of Congress. Interactive map developed by Ilya Ilyankou and Jack Dougherty, with sources and code on GitHub. Figure 3.2: Jacob Goldberg eventually won the legal battle to open Kingswood Market in November 1924, pictured here on its third anniversary (bottom left) and also in 2004. Other first-floor storefronts included the Kingswood Pharmacy and Dettenborn Hardware, with small shops and offices on the second floor. Images from Hartford Courant (1928); Noah Webster House & West Hartford Historical Society (2004), used with permission. Opposing Goldberg and Urban Influences Why did West Hartford property owners and town officials block Goldberg’s building permit? Were they opposed to a grocery store in their residential neighborhood—or to the presence of a Jewish grocer from Hartford? The best answer is both. During this period of rapid growth, challenging Goldberg’s grocery was a way for West Hartford neighbors and leaders to share their fears about “undesirable” urban influences infringing on their suburb and threatening their property values. Some objected to business development, some resented immigrant outsiders, and Goldberg symbolized both. To fully tell Goldberg’s story and explain how it fits into the origins of zoning, we need to consider both aspects of opposition. On the surface, there is no evidence of overt anti-Semitism against Goldberg in this 1923 dispute. No one publicly uttered an anti-Jewish slur against him, nor did he publicly charge that his permit was rejected due to his religion, according to available documents. Similar opposition arose against Fred Kenyon, a local Protestant real estate businessman, who in December 1922 proposed to build a public garage for residents to park their automobiles, to be located in the rear of Lancaster Road, only one block away. The West Hartford building inspector refused to grant Kenyon a permit due to objections from property owners at a public hearing. Two months later, homeowners on nearby Fern Street went to court to stop Kenyon’s real estate company from removing a deed restriction that guaranteed only single-family homes would be built on property in their neighborhood, since they feared that multi-family apartment buildings would lower their property values. Since West Hartford residents and town officials blocked both Goldberg (a Jew) and Kenyon (an Episcopalian), we can conclude that religion was not the sole factor. Both cases reveal a common fear that real estate development would threaten residential property values.81 But we also need to understand that the controversy over Goldberg’s store arose during a period of intense anti-Jewish and anti-immigrant fervor. Around 30 percent of Hartford’s population were foreign-born immigrants between 1910 and 1920, with Russians, Italians, Irish, and Poles as the largest groups. In the aftermath of the first World War and the Russian Revolution, a “Red Scare” prompted many native-born Americans to fear that anarchists and Communists were spreading their ideas among US immigrant workers. In Hartford, when 2,000 people attended an anti-capitalism rally led by the International Workers of the World in 1919, the city council voted unanimously to prohibit the IWW and Communists from holding public meetings, distributing literature, or raising the Red flag. The Palmer Raids, organized by the US Attorney General, targeted cities like Hartford to arrest and deport immigrant labor activists. Governor Marcus Holcomb launched Connecticut’s Department of Americanization in 1919 with a mission to convert “our foreign-born and illiterate population.” He sought to adopt what former President Theodore Roosevelt envisioned as “one common language, one country, one allegiance, one loyalty and one flag.” The state-funded Connecticut Americanizer reminded readers not to forget Roosevelt’s warning that Americans should live as one nation, “not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding house.” The US Congress passed the Emergency Immigration Act of 1921 with quotas that sharply reduced migration from Eastern and Southern Europe. Amid all of this, US automaker Henry Ford and others widely circulated anti-Jewish conspiracy theories. Newspapers announced that the Ku Klux Klan had established a “small but well-organized local chapter” in Hartford, and its members declared that “You have to be a Protestant to belong to this organization… And you can’t be a half-hearted Protestant either.” In Protestant-led small towns like West Hartford, even if no one publicly uttered an anti-Jewish slur against Goldberg, some local officials and property owners most likely perceived him as a Jewish Hartford outsider to their community.82 Decades earlier, Hartford Jews had to push state leaders to grant them religious freedom. Connecticut began as a Christian colony, with no separation of church and state. After Reverend Thomas Hooker and his followers broke away from the Massachusetts Bay Colony and settled Connecticut in the 1630s, they interwove their local churches with town government, and required residents to pay taxes to support them. Despite the promise of freedom of religion in the First Amendment to the US Constitution in 1789, Connecticut did not officially remove the Congregational Church as the state religion until three decades later. Delegates to Connecticut’s Constitutional Convention in 1818 debated the topic of religious freedom, but deliberately voted to extend it only to “every society or denomination of Christians,” not other faiths. Jews were not permitted to form their own congregations or worship publicly until 1843, when a delegation of German Jews persuaded the state legislature to grant this right by statute (though the state’s laws remained overtly Christian until another constitutional convention in 1965).83 When Jacob’s parents, David and Rachel Goldberg, migrated from Latvia to England to Hartford in 1884, they established one of the city’s first kosher meat markets, and helped to settle many of the Eastern European Jews who came after them. In the 1920s, Hartford became home to Connecticut’s largest Jewish community, estimated to be about 11 percent of the city’s population. Most of the recent Jewish immigrants lived in crowded tenements in the Front Street and Windsor Street neighborhoods near the Connecticut River, which experts had declared to be “the worst housing conditions in the country” among cities of Hartford’s size. Photographs of multi-family tenement buildings appeared in the pages of Progressive-era reformers’ reports, as shown in Figure 3.3, and visually represented the “undesirable” urban elements that suburban leaders strongly sought to avoid. To earn a living, Jewish men commonly became peddlers who vocally advertised their goods up and down the streets, and maybe after gaining a foothold, opened a retail storefront. They sometimes came into conflict with Hartford police over noise complaints in the streets, or doing business on Sundays in violation of Connecticut’s Blue Laws, intended to protect the Christian sabbath.84 Figure 3.3: Photo with the caption, “Hartford - A Type of Tenement House,” appeared in Lawrence Veiller’s 1903 report on Housing Conditions and Tenement Laws, and visually symbolized urban influences that suburban leaders sought to avoid. Most Jews who climbed up the economic ladder moved out of Hartford’s crowded East Side. In 1912, the Goldberg family had earned enough money from their retail business to purchase a home in Hartford’s North End. “The poor Jews still lived in the Third Ward” along the Connecticut River, recalled Joseph Klau, one of Goldberg’s contemporaries, while many middle-class Jews in the 1920s bought property along Albany Avenue, heading west from downtown. “Every little Jewish builder was given a [property] lot and a construction loan,” Klau remembered, “and the two- and three-family houses went up like mushrooms…with central heating and electric lights, and real bathrooms.” Some middle-class Jews moved further away from the central city and rented apartments or bought homes in West Hartford.85 Owning a retail business was the best route to the middle class for Jacob Goldberg, because Hartford’s most prestigious institutions in finance, medicine, and law generally refused to employ Jews in higher-status positions. Although the city was one of the nation’s centers of banking and insurance, companies such as The Hartford, Aetna, and Travelers only hired a few Jews to serve as bookkeepers or sales agents, and did not allow them to rise into positions of authority until the 1950s. According to a survey of 800 officers and directors employed at Hartford’s ten largest insurance companies and six largest banks in 1967, only 1 percent were Jewish (and most of them were concentrated in one institution, Constitution National Bank). Both the Protestant-run Hartford Hospital and the Catholic-run St. Francis Hospital barred nearly all Jewish doctors, with rare exceptions, from practicing medicine at their facilities until World War II. These hospital hiring policies were “never written and seldom articulated,” but clearly understood. Similarly, Hartford’s top three corporate law firms at that time—Robinson, Robinson & Cole; Day, Berry & Howard; and Shipman & Goodwin—refused to employ Jews through the 1950s. Joseph Klau recalled how he earned his undergraduate and law degrees from Harvard University, then came back to Hartford in 1927 but couldn’t get a job. “I went for all of them, knocking on doors… nobody was taking in a Jew as their [lawyer]” at any of the city’s major law firms. Exclusion from upper-status employment was based on unwritten but widely recognized “gentleman’s agreements” that Jews should not apply, nor would they be considered.86 Although “unwritten rules” against Jews typically did not appear in public, occasionally we can find them in private documents that their creators believed would remain secret, such as minutes of closed-door board meetings. At Trinity College, Hartford’s preeminent institution of higher education, Rev. Flavel S. Luther served as president from 1904 to 1919, and also was elected by Hartford voters as a Progressive-era Republican in the Connecticut State Senate, where his key accomplishment was to consolidate rural school districts and solidify town-level governance. But in Trinity’s Board of Trustee meetings from 1915 to at least 1922, Luther and his contemporaries strongly expressed anti-Semitic views and implemented strategies to reduce the number of Jewish students, and reject all Black applicants, according to minutes that were long hidden from public view, as shown in Figure 3.4 and described in more detail in the “Uncovering Unwritten Rules Against Jewish and Black Students at Trinity College” chapter in this book. The prevalence of anti-Jewish policies at Hartford’s most respected academic institution—established in 1823 on the grounds of religious tolerance by Episcopalians who objected to the Congregational Church’s dominance in Connecticut—demonstrates that over the course of a century, its leaders had become skilled in hiding their own prejudices from the public eye.87 Figure 3.4: Read more about the words and actions of Trinity’s leaders in the supplemental chapter on “Uncovering Unwritten Rules Against Jewish and Black Students at Trinity College” in this book. To be clear, anti-Jewish or anti-immigrant views among the Protestant leadership in Hartford’s preeminent colleges, banks, insurance companies, hospitals, and corporate law firms does not prove that they were also held by West Hartford’s Protestant property owners and town officials who objected to Jacob Goldberg’s building permit in 1923. But the evidence from Trinity College demonstrates how hateful biases were hidden behind closed doors. Oral history also reveals that anti-Semitism was not far beneath the surface in West Hartford. In 1925, Rabbi Abraham Feldman arrived in Hartford to lead Congregation Beth Israel, a Reform synagogue whose members were considering moving to West Hartford, and had purchased land on Farmington Avenue, not far from Goldberg’s store. Feldman reflected on some of his early, unpleasant encounters with West Hartford town leaders while speaking with an oral historian in 1974. “West Hartford was a closed community politically,” Feldman recalled, labeling it “the most Republican town in the US” in the 1920s. Although Jews were just beginning to move from the city to the suburb, “there was no chance for a young Jew, or a Jewish lawyer… who wanted to enter the political life of the community,” he remembered, adding that West Hartford’s Protestant leaders “didn’t want any Catholics, either.” Overall, while there is no direct evidence of overt anti-Semitism during the Goldberg controversy, the widespread prevalence of these views means we cannot ignore them when telling the story of an urban Jewish grocer and the origins of exclusionary zoning in the suburbs.88 Fighting Back Faced with these anti-Semitic barriers, many Hartford Jews fought back by gathering resources to create their own institutions during this era. Jewish doctors opened Hartford’s Mount Sinai Hospital in 1923, and proudly declared that their doors were open “to all citizens regardless of race or creed.” Connecticut’s only Jewish-led hospital both served the needs of immigrant patients who were viewed as second-class citizens by other hospitals, and created employment opportunities for Jews in medical professions. Jacob’s sister, Celia Goldberg Pessin, earned her nursing degree at New York City’s Mount Sinai Hospital, and became the first Jewish woman to enter nurse’s training in Hartford. When Jewish lawyers were refused jobs at Hartford’s corporate law firms, some opened their own smaller law offices. Another one of Jacob’s sisters, Dora Goldberg Schatz, married attorney Nathan Schatz, who partnered with his brother Louis (a Jewish graduate of Trinity College) to create the Schatz and Schatz law firm in Hartford in 1917. Decades later, in higher education, Rabbi Feldman also played an instrumental role in the founding of the University of Hartford, open to all students, in 1957.89 Jacob Goldberg also fought back. When the West Hartford building inspector refused to grant him a permit to construct his grocery store in January 1923, Goldberg hired an attorney and filed a lawsuit. (Perhaps he received informal advice from his brother-in-law Nathan Schatz, the Jewish attorney who was a rising figure in the Connecticut Republican party.) Goldberg’s lawsuit challenged the constitutional authority of the local government to block construction of a building on the arbitrary grounds that “neighbors do not want it.” The lawsuit spelled out how Goldberg employed a respected local architect, William T. Marchant, to design the 80 by 60 foot store to conform with all aspects of the West Hartford building code, and also to be an attractive building. While Goldberg could have hired one of several Jewish architects in Hartford, he probably selected Marchant, a Gentile who resided in West Hartford, because he was well-known to town officials and had recently designed the high school and several other public buildings. Goldberg’s lawsuit claimed that West Hartford’s building inspector was “exceeding his constitutional rights” by rejecting the project, even if the town government had delegated him “with such arbitrary powers.” This fight over issuing a building permit to a Jewish Hartford grocer grabbed large headlines, as shown in Figure 3.5, especially when compared to a similar rejection of local Protestant businessman Fred Kenyon two months earlier, which barely made it into the news.90 Figure 3.5: The controversy over granting a building permit to Jewish Hartford grocer Jacob Goldberg grabbed larger headlines than a similar conflict involving local Protestant real estate businessman Fred Kenyon. Source: Hartford Courant, February 7, 1923. Initially, West Hartford leaders fought back against Goldberg. Town Council members voted in March 1923 to task their attorney, and also to retain the services of a second attorney, to defend their building inspector’s refusal to grant a permit. Behind the scenes, West Hartford’s attorneys realized that Goldberg had a strong case. Without a clearly-defined policy, a court might rule that the Town had refused to grant him a permit for arbitrary reasons, and might reduce the Town’s authority to reject other buildings in the future. Perhaps they also discussed the potential risks of bad press over a Protestant-led town government fighting to block a Jewish-owned grocery. In any case, the Town Council eventually relented. At the end of their June 1923 meeting, the Council went into a closed-door executive session, away from the press and the public. They quietly voted to approve Goldberg’s building permit, and also created a committee to review local ordinances on building restrictions in residential areas, to ensure they were on stronger legal footing next time. The Council succeeded in keeping the Goldberg controversy out of the headlines, at least temporarily. The following day’s news did not mention Goldberg by name, and only hinted at the end of the story that it was “unofficially rumored” that a permit would be granted.91 For a second time, West Hartford residents spoke out against Goldberg’s proposed store. A group of 14 local property owners protested at the next Town Council meeting, and were represented by a spokesperson: real estate businessman M. Martin Kupperstein, who also was one of the few Jewish residents in the neighborhood. Perhaps he was selected to counter any perceptions that their opposition was anti-Semitic. After Kupperstein urged the Council to reverse its decision, the Town Council’s attorney informed the protesters that they had examined Goldberg’s case “from every possible angle” and decided “it would be a poor policy for the town to attempt to withhold the permit.” To put it more simply, another council member stated that the Town would not prevail in court.92 Who were these West Hartford property owners, and what motivated their protests against Goldberg’s grocery store? With the exception of Kupperstein, none of their names appear in official minutes or news accounts of the two public hearings in 1923, nor do we have a record of the words they spoke. Furthermore, while the Hartford Courant referred to this neighborhood as “one of West Hartford’s exclusive residential sections,” that description did not match Ardmore Road, where nearly every building was a two-family duplex, in contrast to several other nearby streets with more expensive single-family homes. Perhaps the relative affordability of two-family homes explained why Ardmore Road developed so rapidly, growing from 1 household in 1922 to over 40 households by 1926, according to city directory listings as shown in Table 3.1. Interestingly, the proportion of households with Jewish names rose from 0 out of 13 in 1923 to 8 out of 43 (nearly 20 percent) by 1926, meaning that Ardmore Road also attracted a larger percentage of Jewish residents than probably any other street in West Hartford at that time. Moreover, the Catholic Church purchased a large parcel of land in October 1923 on Farmington Avenue, near the Ardmore Road intersection, where they built St. Thomas the Apostle Church, a structure nearly as large as the nearby Armory. To be clear, we do not know precisely which families lived on Ardmore Road in early 1923, nor could they predict the future, but the Goldberg store controversy may have symbolized that their neighborhood was rapidly changing.93 Table 3.1: Households on Ardmore Road, 1922-26 Year Households Percent Jewish 1922 1 1923 13 1924 34 1925 41 1926 43 19% After Jacob Goldberg finally won his building permit, Kingswood Market opened its doors for business in November 1924. He incorporated the business with his brother Barney and two brothers-in-law: attorney Nathan Schatz and Hyman M. Cohen, who managed the market. Jacob Goldberg also moved into the West Hartford neighborhood and purchased a single-family home on nearby Outlook Avenue. Two years later, the Goldberg family sold the business, and a series of owners continued to operate Kingswood Market for decades, until it was unable to compete against a much larger and more modern Whole Foods grocery store that opened four blocks away in 2005. Neighborhood residents mourned when Kingswood Market closed its doors in 2007.94. The Town Council concluded this episode by announcing the creation of a new Zoning Commission in July 1923, to find a better way to deal with decisions over what kinds of buildings should be constructed in the future. But zoning was still a new concept, and the council did not yet have a clear idea of how it would work. At that same meeting, the attorney for Fred Kenyon, the local Protestant businessman whose public garage permit also had been rejected, sought to re-open the issue for his client. Since the Town granted a building permit to Goldberg, he argued, shouldn’t they also grant a permit to Kenyon? One Council member moved to refer the request to the brand-new Zoning Commission they had created a few minutes earlier, but Kenyon’s attorney objected because this entity “had not yet consulted any regulations.” The Council agreed with him, but then voted to refer Kenyon’s request back to the building inspector who had previously rejected it, which meant it went nowhere.95 Pressure continued to mount to define what zoning would mean for West Hartford. Simply put, town leaders were searching for a legally defensible framework for preventing what they deemed to be undesirable urban elements from entering their rapidly-growing suburb. When West Hartford property owners complained about grocery stores, public garages, and apartment buildings, these types of buildings symbolized their larger fears about Hartford city life—especially its growing population of immigrants in crowded tenements—invading their small town. Very soon, zoning would be designed primarily to protect them and their property values. Jacob Solomon Goldberg (1891-1939) and his wife Anna Miller Goldberg should not be confused with other Hartford residents with similar names. Jacob and his partners purchased and re-named the Guilfoil City Hall Grocery at 42 State Street, Hartford, in 1919. “Second Anniversary: City Hall Grocery Celebrate Event with Special Sale,” Hartford Courant, March 4, 1921, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/556910904/citation/EE1EE7C7950F4DE3PQ/1; “Kingswood Market Has Opening Today,” Hartford Courant, November 22, 1924, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/553827702/abstract/805AA50C69BD44BAPQ/1; “Jacob S. Goldberg Obituary,” Hartford Courant, December 20, 1939, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/559263239/citation/62D945CA6CE44030PQ/3; Connecticut State Board of Education, A Survey of the Schools of West Hartford (Hartford, 1923), https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100787377, p. 103.↩︎ When David Goldberg died in 1924, his estate valued the property at $40,000, and Jacob and his mother Rachel became its administrators. “David Goldberg Obituary,” Hartford Courant, April 25, 1924, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/553648639/citation/8B13F3407C8F4BA6PQ/1; “David Goldberg [Estate],” Hartford Courant, October 29, 1924, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/historical-newspapers/mary-g-bingham-estate-333-694/docview/553830321/se-2?accountid=14405; “In Probate Court [Goldberg],” Hartford Courant, May 11, 1924, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/553742314/citation/49D98236446F4D8FPQ/1; Morris Silverman, Hartford Jews, 1659-1970 (Hartford: Connecticut Historical Society, 1970), https://www.google.com/books/edition/Hartford_Jews_1659_1970/Llk8AAAAIAAJ, p. 170. West Hill Grocery was located at 765 Farmington Avenue, near the corner of Whiting Lane, and M.J. Burnham’s was located at 19 South Main Street in West Hartford Center. Sanborn Map Company, Hartford Connecticut Insurance Maps, 4 Volumes (New York: Sanborn Map Co, 1922–1961), https://github.com/ontheline/otl-sanborn-1961-hartford-vol1; Geer’s Hartford Directory, Including West Hartford and East Hartford, Connecticut (Hartford, Conn: Hartford Printing Company, 1923), https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/2469/images/1338432; Geoffrey Louis Rossano and Mary M. Donohue, Built to Serve: Connecticut’s National Guard Armories 1865-1940 (Hartford, Conn.: Connecticut Historical Commission, 2003), http://worldcat.org/oclc/52455387; “West Hartford Armory (1913)” (Historic Buildings of Connecticut, April 21, 2015), https://historicbuildingsct.com/west-hartford-armory-1913/.↩︎ “Legal Fight For Store In Exclusive Section,” Hartford Courant, February 7, 1923, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/553358624/abstract/BB63B923AF094563PQ/1. Goldberg and his partners probably selected the name “Kingswood Market” to identify with the private Kingswood School, which opened in 1922 on nearby Outlook Avenue, “Kingswood School’s Proposed New Home in West Hartford,” Hartford Courant, July 17, 1921, http://www.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/556946596/abstract/10F9686609B84ACAPQ/2; “Kingswood School Home Completed,” Hartford Courant, September 21, 1922, http://www.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/557110097/abstract/10F9686609B84ACAPQ/1. Images of Kingswood Market originally appeared in “Kingswood Market 3rd Anniversary [Advertisement),” Hartford Courant, March 28, 1928, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/557481790/citation/805AA50C69BD44BAPQ/2; and courtesy of the Noah Webster House & West Hartford Historical Society in Wilson H. Faude, West Hartford (Arcadia Publishing, 2004), https://books.google.com?id=ernPkuTE1N8C; “Kingswood Market: West Hartford’s ’Thursday Throwback’” (We-Ha: West Hartford News, January 8, 2015), https://we-ha.com/west-hartfords-thursday-throwback-15/.↩︎ No evidence of overt anti-Semitism appears in the newspaper accounts of public meetings, nor in the sparse minutes from town council meetings on the matter. Thanks to local historian Jeff Murray for his research and analysis on Fred Kenyon. West Hartford, “Town Council Meeting Minutes” (Town Clerk, West Hartford, Connecticut, June 1923); “West Hartford Has Zoning Commission,” Hartford Courant, July 18, 1923, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/553441491/abstract/76D50A7CBB164588PQ/5; “Land and House Restriction Case Heard in Court,” Hartford Courant, February 9, 1923, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/553346686/abstract/89BA266AD5FD4663PQ/13; “[Fred H. Kenyon] Dies at His Home In West Hartford,” Hartford Courant, October 1, 1937, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/558957948/citation/89BA266AD5FD4663PQ/10.↩︎ Bruce M. Stave, “Making Hartford Home: An Oral History of 20th Century Ethnic Development in Connecticut’s Capitol City,” in Hartford, the City and the Region: Past, Present, Future: A Collection of Essays, ed. Sondra Astor Stave (West Hartford, CT: University of Hartford, Division of Adult Educational Services, 1979), 31–43, http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/6088095; US Census Bureau, “Table 13: Country of Birth of Foreign-Born White for Cities, Volume 3: Composition and Characteristics,” in Census of Population: 1920 (Government Printing Office, 1922), https://www.census.gov/prod/www/decennial.html; Bruce B. Shubert, “Palmer Raids in Connecticut, 1919-1920,” Connecticut Review 5, no. 1 (October 1971): 53–69, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.$b221679&view=1up&seq=61; Glenn Weaver and Michael Swift, Hartford, Connecticut’s Capital: An Illustrated History (American Historical Press, 2003), https://www.google.com/books/edition/Hartford_Connecticut_s_Capital/Jo8eVaMqarkC, pp. 113-114; Jeffrey J. White, “Stamping Out the Reds: The Palmer Raids in Connecticut,” Connecticut Explored, Autumn 2005, https://www.ctexplored.org/stamping-out-the-reds-the-palmer-raids-in-connecticut/; Steve Thornton, A Shoeleather History of the Wobblies: Stories of the Industrial Workers of the World in Connecticut (Shoeleather History, 2013), https://www.google.com/books/edition/A_Shoeleather_History_of_the_Wobblies/KGIpngEACAAJ; Steve Thornton, “The \"Red Scare\" in Connecticut” (Connecticut History, November 7, 2020), https://connecticuthistory.org/the-red-scare-in-connecticut/; “Good Luck Says Governor,” Connecticut Americanizer, January 22, 1919, http://hdl.handle.net/11134/30002:21739255; “Americanization Is Urged by Roosevelt in His Last Message,” Connecticut Americanizer, January 22, 1919, http://hdl.handle.net/11134/30002:21739255; “Ku Klux Klan Activity in Conn. To Be Probed by State Police Dept,” Hartford Courant, September 3, 1921, http://www.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/556975111/abstract/1A40A3B582D945FAPQ/14; “Ku Klux Klan Is Well Organized in Hartford,” Hartford Courant, May 23, 1922, http://www.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/557047297/abstract/C7304FCE07CB4FCDPQ/1; “Ku Klux Klan in Monster Meeting Near New Haven,” Hartford Courant, May 21, 1922, http://www.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/557046344/abstract/1A40A3B582D945FAPQ/19.↩︎ David G Dalin and Jonathan Rosenbaum, Making a Life, Building a Community: The History of the Jews of Hartford (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1997), http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/502317401, pp. 10-13; Henry S. Cohn, “Civil Rights of Jews in Connecticut,” in A History of Jewish Connecticut: Mensches, Migrants and Mitzvahs, ed. Betty N. Hoffman (Arcadia Publishing, 2010), 21–24, https://www.google.com/books/edition/A_History_of_Jewish_Connecticut/o2l2CQAAQBA; Wesley W. Horton, The Connecticut State Constitution (Oxford University Press, 2011), https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Connecticut_State_Constitution/Du9MAgAAQBAJ, pp. 11-13; Nancy Finlay, “The Importance of Being Puritan: Church and State in Colonial Connecticut” (ConnecticutHistory.org, September 2015), http://connecticuthistory.org/the-importance-of-being-puritan-church-and-state-in-colonial-connecticut/; Rebecca Furer, “Church and State in the ’Land of Steady Habits’” (Teach It, 2018), https://teachitct.org/lessons/church-state-in-the-land-of-steady-habits/.↩︎ Silverman, Hartford Jews, 1659-1970, p. 170; Sandra Hartwell Becker and Ralph L Pearson, “The Jewish Community of Hartford, Connecticut, 1880-1929,” American Jewish Archives 31, no. 2 (November 1979): 184–214, http://americanjewisharchives.org/publications/journal/PDF/1979_31_02_00_becker_pearson.pdf; Lawrence Veiller, “Housing Conditions and Tenement Laws in Leading American Cities,” in The Tenement House Problem, Volume 1, ed. Robert Weeks DeForest (New York: MacMillan, 1903), https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100857263, p. 155; Susan Pennybacker and Nancy Albert, “East Side Story: Life and Death in the Front Street Neighborhood, and the Tricks of Collective Memory,” Hartford Courant: Northeast Magazine, July 2, 1995, https://www.newspapers.com/clip/77146292/; Dalin and Rosenbaum, Making a Life, Building a Community, ch. 4; Peter Baldwin, Domesticating the Street: The Reform of Public Space in Hartford, 1850-1930 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1999), https://www.google.com/books/edition/Domesticating_the_Street/8aRAtAEACAAJ, ch. 7↩︎ The Goldberg family moved to 47 Clark Street, according to Geer’s Hartford Directory (Hartford, CT: Hartford Printing Company, 1912), https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/2469/images/885752?ssrc=&backlabel=Return, p. 263; Joseph E. Klau, “Oral History Interview by Joseph D. Hurwitz” (Jewish Historical Society of Greater Hartford, April 17, 1974), https://jhsgh.org, cited in Hutton, A Brief Look Back, p. 12; Sanborn Map Company, Hartford Connecticut Insurance Maps, 4 Volumes. See also Joan Walden, ed., Remembering the Old Neighborhood: A Compilation of Memories by and About Residents of Hartford, Connecticut’s North End Covering the Early and Middle Decades of the 20th Century (Jewish Historical Society of Greater Hartford, 2010), https://www.google.com/books/edition/Remembering_the_old_neighborhood/bRJOAQAAIAAJ; Joan Walden, ed., Revisiting Our Neighborhoods: Stories from Hartford’s Past (Jewish Historical Society of Greater Hartford, 2013), http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/864356686.↩︎ Silverman, Hartford Jews, 1659-1970, p. 86; Barry A. Lazarus, “The Practice of Medicine and Prejudice in a New England Town: The Founding of Mount Sinai Hospital, Hartford, Connecticut,” Journal of American Ethnic History 10, no. 3 (1991): 21–41, http://www.jstor.org/stable/27500839, p. 24; Dalin and Rosenbaum, Making a Life, Building a Community, pp. 59, 78-82, 174-75; Klau, “Oral History Interview by Joseph D. Hurwitz”, p. 14; Hutton, A Brief Look Back.↩︎ 18 June 1915 Report by President Luther, read aloud at 21 June 1915 meeting, Trinity College, Board of Trustees Minutes, Volume 3 (1908-1926), 1926, https://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/trustees_mins/12, p. 169.↩︎ “May Build Temple in West Hartford,” Hartford Courant, April 16, 1924, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/553660370/citation/DCFCECD65A734AD3PQ/1; Rabbi Abraham Feldman, “Oral History Interview” (The Peoples of Connecticut, Center for Oral History Interviews Collection, University of Connecticut Archives, October 21, 1974), http://hdl.handle.net/11134/20002:860341946, p. 19.↩︎ Mount Sinai Hospital opening in Hartford Times 3 March 1923, cited in Lazarus, “The Practice of Medicine and Prejudice in a New England Town”, p. 36; Leon Chameides, “Mount Sinai: Connecticut’s Only Jewish Hospital,” in A History of Jewish Connecticut: Mensches, Migrants and Mitzvahs, ed. Betty N. Hoffman (Arcadia Publishing, 2010), 32–35, https://www.google.com/books/edition/A_History_of_Jewish_Connecticut/o2l2CQAAQBA; “Nursing Pioneer Dies at Age 86,” Hartford Courant, June 7, 1975, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/543929256/abstract/86070A0BE45B46EBPQ/2; Dalin and Rosenbaum, Making a Life, Building a Community, pp. 62, 78; Silverman, Hartford Jews, 1659-1970, p. 86; “Rabbi Abraham J. Feldman Interview” (University of Hartford Early History Collection, June 12, 1967), http://hdl.handle.net/11134/550002:arch011av0006c; “Rabbi Abraham Feldman Interview” (Jewish Historical Society of Greater Hartford, May 10, 1972), https://jhsgh.org/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=29.xml; “University of Hartford Early History Collection” (University of Hartford Special Collections and Archives, 2005), http://archives.hartford.edu:8081/repositories/2/resources/166.↩︎ “Legal Fight for Store in Exclusive Section”; “William T. Marchant Collection” (Connecticut Historical Society eMuseum, 2021), http://emuseum.chs.org/emuseum/people/8245/william-t-marchant; “Marchant, 68, Dies,” Hartford Courant, May 8, 1948, http://www.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/561038029/abstract/42F5A775969E471EPQ/1; Silverman, Hartford Jews, 1659-1970, p. 258. By comparison, the rejection of Fred Kenyon’s public garage permit at a December 14, 1922 public hearing was not reported at the time, and appeared near the bottom of a story six months later in “West Hartford Has Zoning Commission”.↩︎ “Demand Economy in West Hartford,” Hartford Courant, March 7, 1923, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/553376988/abstract/BB63B923AF094563PQ/42; West Hartford, “Town Council Meeting Minutes”, June 5, 1923, p. 210; “West Hartford Tax to Be Collected,” Hartford Courant, June 6, 1923, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/553457937/abstract/9D000C8C14E448AEPQ/2.↩︎ West Hartford, “Town Council Meeting Minutes”, June 19, 1923, p. 211; “West Hartford Store Causes Protests,” Hartford Courant, June 20, 1923, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/553416053/abstract/BB63B923AF094563PQ/3; “Morris Martin Kupperstein Obituary,” Hartford Courant, June 22, 1938, https://www.newspapers.com/image/369879010/. Kupperstein resided at 847 Farmington Avenue, West Hartford, Geer’s Hartford Directory, Including West Hartford and East Hartford, Connecticut, p. 466.↩︎ “Legal Fight for Store in Exclusive Section”. Out of 54 buildings on Ardmore Road today, all appear to have been constructed as 2-family units except two addresses: 10 and 14. See Ardmore Road household data from Geer’s City Directory listings, 1922-26, and West Hartford Voting Registration Records for Ardmore Road (1920-1926; transcribed by Jeff Murray in 2017 from West Hartford Historical Society archives), both available at https://github.com/OnTheLine/otl-ardmore-road-wh.↩︎ “Kingswood Market Has Opening Today”; “[Kingswood Market] Corporation Papers Filed for Record,” Hartford Courant, November 21, 1924, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/553847758/abstract/BB63B923AF094563PQ/15; “City Hall Market and Kingswood Market (Ad),” Hartford Courant, November 28, 1924, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/553818328/citation/805AA50C69BD44BAPQ/7; “Kingswood Market 3rd Anniversary [Advertisement)”; “Kingswood Building on Farmington Avenue Sold For $100,000 to Willis J. Gengras West Hartford,” Hartford Courant, September 2, 1926, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/557252686/abstract/805AA50C69BD44BAPQ/5; “West Hartford Men Buy Two Buildings [Kingswood Market],” Hartford Courant: III, February 3, 1952; WFSB Eyewitness News, “Kingswood Market Closing?” (WFSB television broadcast video, Hartford CT, October 19, 2007), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDrOjqPBSAg; “Kingswood Market Closing Doors” (The West Hartford Blog, October 19, 2007), https://whdad.wordpress.com/2007/10/19/kingswood-market-closing-doors/. Jacob Goldberg resided at 17 Outlook Avenue in late 1924, “Building Permits Worth $367,098,” Hartford Courant, November 6, 1924, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/553867283/abstract/9D21989B47CB4455PQ/1.↩︎ “West Hartford Has Zoning Commission”.↩︎ "],["bringing-zoning.html", "Bringing Zoning to Connecticut", " Bringing Zoning to Connecticut How did Connecticut’s suburban leaders define what zoning would look like in their local communities? West Hartford’s history matters because it hired national experts to design a town-wide plan and became Connecticut’s first municipality to enact local zoning in 1924, and set precedents followed by many other suburbs. Zoning in West Hartford did not only separate industrial, commercial, and residential areas. The plan went further by economically segregating residential areas through minimum-land rules that favored neighborhoods with more expensive single-family homes, and physically distanced them from less expensive multi-family housing and apartment buildings. Although Connecticut state law justified zoning on the basis of public health and welfare, suburban leaders refined its purpose to attract higher-income homebuyers and protect their property values. Moreover, in the aftermath of the Goldberg grocery store controversy, town leaders turned to zoning as a legally defensible strategy that enabled suburbs to segregate or exclude what they viewed as “undesirable” urban influences—on the basis of wealth—without directly referring to their race, religion, or nationality. In this way, zoning became a powerful and long-lasting tool of government-sponsored housing discrimination that continues into the present day. Across the US, when local governments began to adopt zoning laws during the 1910s, state and federal courts were still sorting out what types of restrictions they would permit. Traditionally, US law had been established to defend individual property owners and courts were reluctant to infringe on their rights in the free market. In this context, some cities defended their zoning policies on the grounds that local governments had a responsibility to exert some authority over the real estate market to protect the interests of their residents. For example, New York City’s 1916 zoning code separated industrial and residential land for health reasons, and limited the height of skyscrapers to ensure that air and sunlight reached people in smaller buildings nearby. Zoning advocates carefully justified New York City’s right to exercise limited “police powers” over land use in order to protect the “public health, safety, order, and general welfare” of its residents. The courts gradually seemed to accept this rationale.96 But US courts objected to other forms of zoning, such as race-based zoning that explicitly separated residents into Black or White neighborhoods. The US Supreme Court’s ruling in the 1917 Buchanan v. Warley case overturned race-based zoning, but not on the civil rights grounds that we might expect today. Three years earlier, the city of Louisville, Kentucky approved a zoning law that prohibited Blacks from living in residential blocks that were more than 50 percent White, and vice versa. William Warley, the Black president of the local NAACP chapter, tested the zoning law by purchasing vacant property in a White-majority block from Charles Buchanan, a White real estate agent. Warley cleverly inserted a clause that required him to complete the contract only if the law allowed him to occupy the property as a residence, which the zoning law did not permit. Buchanan went to court to demand his right to sell the property to Warley, and the scenario reversed traditional roles, by forcing the White real estate agent to argue against the segregationist housing policy. The US Supreme Court agreed and overturned Louisville’s racial zoning on grounds that it interfered with the White agent’s constitutional right to sell his property as he pleased—which also happened to protect the Black buyer’s right to live in a White-majority neighborhood.97 In West Hartford, town councilman Josiah B. Woods stood out among his peers as the strongest advocate for zoning in the early 1920s, and served continuously on its zoning commission until 1945. Educated at Amherst College and employed in the business world, he recognized the need for a long-term strategy to manage real estate development in his rapidly growing suburb. Woods witnessed the heated conflict between Goldberg, property owners, and the building inspector who refused to grant the permit, and sought to replace arbitrary decision-making with a town-wide land-use policy that promoted efficient and orderly economic growth. Up to this point, land owners occasionally inserted restrictions into property deeds, such as requiring homes to be built above a minimum size or sold above a minimum price, to increase its value. But deed restrictions relied on individual actions, in contrast to a more comprehensive town-wide policy that Woods desired. Zoning seemed promising, but the concept was still new across the nation, and relatively unknown in Connecticut. Woods persuaded other members of the town council to create a zoning committee in the fall of 1922, and to appoint him as chair. Months later, his photo appeared prominently in local newspaper coverage that explained how zoning would solve West Hartford’s problems, as shown in Figure 3.6.98 Figure 3.6: Josiah B. Woods, West Hartford town councilman and zoning committee chair, appeared prominently in newspaper coverage in support of Connecticut’s zoning enabling act. Source: Hartford Courant, March 13, 1923. To figure out how zoning might work for West Hartford, Josiah Woods and his colleagues sought advice from national leaders. Herbert Hoover, the US Secretary of Commerce (and future US President), led the most activist federal agency of his era by promoting a zoning framework for states and local governments to adopt. The Commerce Department actively circulated the Standard Zoning Enabling Act, drafted by New York City attorney and zoning advocate Edward M. Bassett in late 1921. The document offered legally defensible language for state governments to grant zoning authority to local municipalities to achieve multiple objectives. The first few lines introduced zoning in benevolent terms, such as making land-use decisions to reduce street congestion, ensure fire safety, and prevent overcrowding “for the purpose of promoting health, safety, morals, or the general welfare of the community.” But the document also mentioned that zoning regulations would consider “the character of the district… with a view to conserving the value of buildings.” In other words, the federal government’s Standard Zoning Enabling Act gave legal cover to local municipalities: if they acted under the pretense of public health and community welfare, they could write zoning laws to exclude undesirable types of housing (and their undesirable occupants) in order to raise property values for more desirable homes. Hoover’s strategy quickly succeeded. When his Commerce Department began working on this issue, only 48 US cities and towns had enacted zoning in late 1921, but that number grew to 218 by late 1923.99 Connecticut lawmakers latched onto Hoover’s language and considered a bill modeled on the Standard Zoning Enabling Act in March 1923, during the peak of the Goldberg controversy. Josiah Woods publicly urged other West Hartford town council members to support the bill, which would grant decision-making authority to West Hartford and seven other municipalities that it specifically listed. Zoning would solve West Hartford’s long-term problems, Woods declared, by giving the town the power “to protect the residential character” of designated areas. Woods testified on behalf of the Town Council in favor of the zoning enabling act at the Connecticut legislature, as did New York City zoning advocate Edward Bassett. Their advocacy helped Connecticut’s first zoning bill sail through the legislature without controversy, and the governor signed it on June 1923.100 Designing Zoning to Exclude Josiah Woods pushed West Hartford to move as quickly as possible to become Connecticut’s first municipality to act on its new local zoning powers. With the Goldberg controversy still hanging over their heads, the Town Council quickly appointed a Zoning Commission (chaired by Woods), and allocated funds to hire zoning attorney Edward Bassett to advise them on next steps in the summer of 1923. Bassett cautioned Woods and his colleagues that “all zoning must be constructive and not arbitrary,” in order to avoid legal challenges in court. Furthermore, zoning policies affected only future construction in this fast-growing suburb, and would not apply retroactively to existing buildings.101 West Hartford also hired Robert Harvey Whitten, an urban planner who helped Bassett create New York City’s zoning code, and also served as a zoning consultant for Cleveland, Ohio; Atlanta, Georgia; and several cities in New England states. In each of these places, Whitten’s job was to design the details of a zoning plan and draft them into a public document to persuade local leaders and their constituents to support it. His 1921 Cleveland Zone Plan featured many visual elements, including diagrams of the dangers of mixing residential and commercial buildings, and photographs of apartment buildings intruding on single-family homes, as shown in Figure 3.7. Whitten’s vision of urban planning emphasized homogeneity, with uniform building types in the same neighborhood. Zoning is “like good housekeeping,” he quipped. “It provides a place for everything and tries to keep everything in its place.”102 Figure 3.7: Whitten illustrated his zoning reports to praise neighborhoods with only single-family homes (left image), and to oppose mixing them with apartment buildings and small businesses (center and right images). Source: Cleveland Zone Plan, 1921, hosted by HathiTrust. Whitten’s dream of purely homogeneous housing led him to propose a racially-segregated zoning plan for Atlanta, Georgia. Despite the US Supreme Court’s 1917 Buchanan v. Warley ruling against this policy, his 1922 Atlanta Zone Plan, published by city officials, directly called for “Race Zoning” to divide residential areas into “white”, “colored”, and “undetermined” districts. Under Whitten’s plan, Black families were not permitted to move into homes in White zones that they did not occupy prior to the passage of the proposed zoning law, and vice versa. “Race zoning is essential in the interest of the public peace, order and security,” Whitten wrote, “and will promote the welfare and prosperity of both the white and colored race.” Although the Georgia Supreme Court ruled that this plan was unconstitutional, Atlanta’s city planners relied on Whitten’s race-based zoning maps in future decades. Whether they explicitly called for racial separation (as Whitten did in the South), or discreetly avoided any direct mention of race, religion, or nationality (as Whitten did in the North), urban planners of the 1920s commonly used zoning as a tool for social separation.103 Whitten crafted the 1924 West Hartford Zoning report to blend the soft rhetoric of inclusion with hard rules of exclusion. The introduction promised that zoning would bring “orderliness” and “efficiency” to the town’s rapid growth, with “an increase of health, comfort and happiness for all people.” It recognized that the suburb’s primary function was to provide housing for people who worked in the adjacent city of Hartford and to serve “all classes and all grades of economic ability,” including “factory workers, office employees, and the various business and professional groups.” But deep inside the body of the report, Whitten devised a system to sort residents into economically segregated homogeneous neighborhoods.104. Whitten’s zoning plan divided West Hartford into five residential areas—A, B, C, D, and E—based on new rules that required a minimum amount of land per family to construct housing, as shown in Table 3.2. The most exclusive A zones were designated for upper-income single-family homes because they required at least 9,000 square feet of land (1/5 of an acre) per family. At the opposite end were the C, D, and E zones, set aside for more affordable multi-family duplexes, triples, and apartments, where the rules required significantly less land per family. Additional rules also increased the amount of land needed to build in more exclusive areas: A-zone homes could occupy no more than 30 percent of the property lot, and also must be 60 feet wide on the street-facing side in order to spread them further apart. While these 1920s rules may seem modest by today’s standards, Whitten recommended nearly twice the amount of land per family in West Hartford’s most exclusive zone compared to similar zones in Cleveland and Atlanta. Connecticut’s suburbs offered more space for large-lot zoning requirements.105 Table 3.2: Minimum Land Required Per Family in West Hartford Zoning, 1924 Zone Intended use Min. land per family Land cost per family Scale diagram A 1-fam home 9,000 sq ft $$$$$ B 1-fam home 6,000 sq ft $$$$ C 2-fam duplex 3,000 sq ft $$$ D 3-fam triple 1,500 sq ft $$ E apartments 750 sq ft $ Each zone set a minimum land requirement per family, shown in green, which intentionally made it “uneconomic” to build affordable multi-family housing in the A and B areas. Icons by Georgiana Ionescu. Overall, West Hartford’s 1924 zoning formula relied on minimum-land rules to create separate neighborhoods for expensive single-family homes and affordable multi-family homes, and to physically distance these residents from each other. Whitten’s report bluntly stated its objectives. Zoning policy would make it “uneconomic to build two-family houses” in A and B areas because real estate developers needed to buy twice as much land compared to the amount needed for a single-family home, as shown in Figure 3.8. Given the same land costs, developers would generate more profits by building and selling two single-family homes, rather than one two-family home. While “three-family houses and apartment houses are not prohibited in the A, B, or C area districts,” Whitten clarified, his zoning laws would influence the marketplace by removing incentives to build mixed-income housing. In short, the new rules rewarded developers who built economically exclusionary neighborhoods.106 Figure 3.8: Whitten’s zoning plan for West Hartford demonstrated how local governments could create minimum-land rules that made it “uneconomic” for private real estate developers to build multi-family housing in areas designated for single-family homes, thereby creating powerful incentives for exclusion. Source: West Hartford Zoning, 1924, hosted by Google Books. Exclusionary zoning was designed to sharply reduce the amount of multi-family housing that developers would build. Although West Hartford’s zoning plan did not prohibit multi-family housing, it pushed lower-income families into lower-rated C, D, and E areas—the only zones where duplexes, triples, and apartments could be constructed economically—which sharply limited the supply of affordable housing in the suburb. Whitten’s 1924 report cautioned readers about multi-family housing taking over suburban space that, in his view, should be reserved for single-family homes. It featured photographs with captions warning that “large apartment houses are spreading farther west along Farmington Avenue and into side streets,” the same areas as the Goldberg grocery store controversy the prior year, as shown in Figure 3.9. Through minimum-land rules, Whitten promised that “crowded tenement house conditions [that] exist in many larger communities,” such as the city of Hartford, “will be effectively prevented in West Hartford.” It’s unclear whether Whitten knew that one of the buildings pictured in his report was The Packard, originally designed by Jewish builders in 1917 to become upscale apartments, though it was not a financial success when it finally opened in 1922. In any case, Whitten’s words and images were intended to stir up anxieties among suburban homeowners about multi-family urban tenements and their “undesirable” occupants.107 Figure 3.9: The 1924 West Hartford Zoning report warned that “large apartment houses are spreading farther west along Farmington Avenue” from the city into the suburb, where town leaders and their zoning experts believed single-family homes belonged. On the right side is The Packard, originally designed by Jewish builders to become upscale apartments. The true power of zoning was revealed in Whitten’s 1924 map and its vision for future real estate development in West Hartford. The policy envisioned that most property would become single-family housing, as shown in the darker green shades on top of the original black-and-white map in Figure 3.10. Zoning assigned more than 80 percent of West Hartford property to zones A and B combined, the most exclusive areas that required the highest minimum amount of land per family, as shown in Table 3.3. Furthermore, the vast majority of the town’s undeveloped property (to the north and the west) was labeled zones A and B, which Whitten’s report acknowledged “would assume a single-family development through this entire area” if no changes were made in years to come. By contrast, less than 20 percent of West Hartford’s property was intended for multi-family housing in C, D, and E zones. Moreover, much of the C and D areas were assigned to the town’s southeast corner, which Whitten’s zoning plan also designated as the industrial area (shown in dark cross-hatch on the original map), making housing less desirable. Apartment buildings were only intended for the thin strip of E zone on Farmington Avenue from the Hartford border to West Hartford Center. Finally, C, D, and E zones had already been mostly developed, which limited new opportunities for multi-family construction. Overall, the zoning policy guaranteed that West Hartford’s future housing would be more expensive and exclusive.108 Figure 3.10: Explore the interactive map. When West Hartford became the first Connecticut municipality to enact zoning in 1924, leaders followed Robert Harvey Whitten’s recommendation to divide the town into five residential zones (A to E), shown here in dark-to-light shades of green overlaid on top of the original black-and-white map for clarity. Zone A required at least 9,000 square feet of property per family, and was intended for more expensive single-family homes, while making multi-family housing “uneconomic” to build there. Over 80 percent of the town’s land—and nearly all of its undeveloped land to the north and west—was assigned to zones A and B to ensure the dominance of single-family housing across the suburb. Follow zoning maps over time by changing the background layers. Map developed by Ilya Ilyankou (Picturedigits) and Jack Dougherty, with MAGIC UConn Libraries. View historical sources and code on GitHub. Table 3.3: Land Assigned by Zone, West Hartford, 1924 Zone Land (acres) Percent A 6,430 45% B 5,540 39% C 1,825 13% D 435 3% E 109 1% Total 14,339 100% Josiah Woods and his colleagues embraced Whitten’s zoning plan for West Hartford. As the Zoning Commission chairman, Woods wrote the foreword to the published report, which called attention to the need for an “orderly” process to develop the suburb’s “large unbuilt areas” in the near future. After public discussions and some minor adjustments, the Town Council voted to approve nearly all of their consultant’s recommendations in March 1924, and became Connecticut’s first municipality to enact local zoning ordinances, only nine months after the state enabling act. New York City zoning attorney Edward Bassett sent his compliments to West Hartford on their fast adoption of Whitten’s recommendations. The Connecticut Chamber of Commerce brought Bassett back the following year, to advise more towns that sought to be granted the same zoning powers as West Hartford. Bassett persuaded them to drop their individual petitions for zoning, which he argued would be found unconstitutional, and instead to support a state-wide comprehensive bill that he assured them would “stand the tests of the court.” Local leaders followed Bassett’s advice, and Connecticut passed its second enabling act in 1925, a more comprehensive bill that expanded zoning power to nearly all 169 municipalities across the state.109 Bassett’s prediction was accurate. In its landmark 1926 Euclid v. Ambler decision, the US Supreme Court shifted its interpretation of individual versus governmental property rights. The test case came the Cleveland suburb of Euclid, Ohio, which created residential zoning that blocked landowners from selling their property for industrial use. Previously in the 1917 Buchanan case, the Court ruled against racial zoning on the grounds that local government infringed on individual rights to sell property to whomever they chose. But less than a decade later in the Euclid case, the court’s 6-3 majority agreed that local governments could limit individual rights to property as long as they “find their justification… for the public welfare.” Zoning laws are constitutional, the Court ruled, unless they are “clearly arbitrary and unreasonable, having no substantial relation to the public health, safety, morals, or general welfare” of the community. This language precisely matched the state zoning enabling bill that Bassett, Hoover, and other zoning advocates had recommended. Also, while the Euclid case involved industrial versus residential zoning, and did not directly address exclusionary minimum-land zoning that towns like West Hartford had implemented, the Court made its views on multi-family housing very clear: “very often the apartment house is a mere parasite, constructed in order to take advantage of the open spaces and attractive surroundings” created by single-family homes, which are threatened by the growth of multi-family homes.110 The US Supreme Court’s Euclid decision emboldened local governments to enact more exclusionary zoning. Back in West Hartford, the fast-changing real estate market led some developers to test the boundaries by buying sufficient land to meet the minimum requirements to build 6-family and 12-family apartments in A and B zones, which Whitten intended for single-family homes. In response, the Town Council made zoning even more restrictive in 1927, by voting to outright prohibit the construction of “houses for more than one family” in A and B areas, regardless of the amount of land per family. Once again, local government protected single-family housing and prevented multi-family housing, with little justification on how its laws served the general welfare of the community.111 Although West Hartford initially justified its zoning policy on the grounds of public health and welfare, this soft rhetoric steadily slipped away and was replaced by harder rules of economic exclusion over time. We can see this shifting rhetoric in Josiah Woods, West Hartford’s long-time zoning commissioner. Back in 1923, Woods defended zoning on the grounds that it was deigned to “protect the residential character” of neighborhoods. But in 1944, during a local dispute over the scope of the town’s zoning authority, he spoke more bluntly about its true purpose. “It is wise to go back to the fundamentals of zoning,” Woods reminded his audience. The underlying goal is “to make West Hartford a suburban town ‘for real homes’,” meaning single-family owner-occupied dwellings, rather than multi-family housing for renters. “The Town is given the authority to make zones for the preservation of existing [property] values,” he reasoned, and “zoning exists to protect those values.” If suburban property owners simply understood that the zoning was created to defend their common economic interests—and to protect them from urban intrusions—there would be no antagonism in West Hartford, he believed.112 Around the same time, some prominent urban planners who had been early advocates of zoning recognized that its purpose had shifted over time. William Munro, a former professor of municipal government at Harvard, called out this problem in his 1931 article titled “A Danger Spot in the Zoning Movement.” Back in the early 1900s, Munro recalled how US city planners first discussed the concept, adopted from progressive German cities, as a means to control private property for the public good. Looking back, “the chief argument in favor of zoning… was a means of promoting the welfare of the whole community and guiding its growth along orderly lines.” Zoning solved municipal design problems, Munro argued, by preventing industrial intrusions into residential neighborhoods, and promoting thoughtful planning about where to construct public schools. But zoning “quickly became popular” because “real estate agents and promoters throughout the country got behind the movement” as “an opportunity to boom their business” by separating residential areas for higher profits. Nowadays, Munro observed that people think about zoning “as merely a matter of maintaining or increasing property values.” In local disputes over rezoning, Munro lamented that “the issue is not usually approached from the standpoint of what the city needs.” Instead, property owners “have come to feel that they have a vested right” to preserve single-family zoning in which they have invested, and to prevent changes that would permit the construction of a two-family duplex on their street. “We seem to be in danger of forgetting the original purpose of the zoning process as a whole,” Munro concluded, because we have placed private interests over the public good.113 While Munro’s interpretation describes how the zoning movement veered away from the goals of progressive urban planners, it does not explain what happened in suburban communities in Connecticut. When West Hartford adopted zoning in 1924, its rhetoric briefly referenced the public welfare, but its rules were clearly designed to separate and stratify neighborhood residents by income. There was no early progressive phase to zoning in West Hartford, as its original intent was to be exclusionary. In fact, Josiah Woods and other local leaders defined the public good in West Hartford as distancing itself from urban elements they deemed as undesirable. This is the story of how exclusionary zoning began in one Connecticut suburb, and quickly spread to other suburban towns that surrounded its major cities. Robert H. Whitten, “The Building Zone Plan of New York City,” National Municipal Review 6, no. 3 (1917): 325–36, https://heinonline.org/HOL/P?h=hein.journals/natmnr6&i=359, p. 334; Michael Allan Wolf, The Zoning of America: Euclid v. Ambler (Lawrence, Kan.: University Press of Kansas, 2008).↩︎ Buchanan v. Warley, “Decision” (US Supreme Court 245 US 60, November 5, 1917), https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/245/60.html; Garrett Power, “Apartheid Baltimore Style: The Residential Segregation Ordinances of 1910-1913,” Maryland Law Review 42, no. 2 (1983): 289–329, http://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/mlr/vol42/iss2/4, pp. 311-313↩︎ “West Hartford Hopes for Zoning Bill,” Hartford Courant, March 19, 1923, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/553376669/abstract/76D50A7CBB164588PQ/3; “J. B. Woods To Leave West Hartford Town Plan Commission Leadership,” Hartford Courant, December 7, 1945, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/560468247/abstract/94D526928229421FPQ/3; “J. B. Woods Dies, Was Member Of Plan Commission: Services Friday,” Hartford Courant, July 28, 1948, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/561043124/abstract/BEEB76AEB6514C00PQ/1.↩︎ US Department of Commerce, A Standard State Zoning Enabling Act (Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1924), http://archive.org/details/standardstatezon05bass, pp. 4, 6; Ruth Knack, Stuart Meck, and Israel Stollman, “The Real Story Behind the Standard Planning and Zoning Acts of the 1920s,” Land Use Law and Zoning Digest, February 1996, 3–9, https://planning-org-uploaded-media.s3.amazonaws.com/legacy_resources/growingsmart/pdf/LULZDFeb96.pdf.↩︎ Josiah Woods most likely obtained an early draft of US Commerce Department’s Standard Zoning Enabling Act by spring 1923, because the 1924 edition stated it was first distributed as a mimeograph in August 1922, revised and made public in the same form in January 1923, then printed for wider distribution. US Department of Commerce, A Standard State Zoning Enabling Act. Indirect quote of Woods on “protect the residential character” in “Demand Economy in West Hartford”. US Department of Commerce, A Standard State Zoning Enabling Act; “W. HARTFORD HOPES FOR ZONING BILL”; “Expert Favors General Zoning Bill for Conn.” Hartford Courant, April 14, 1923, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/553384922/citation/13E0D686BAE24FA2PQ/6?accountid=14405; “Plans To Apportion Population Of Cities,” Hartford Courant, May 29, 1923, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/553403648?accountid=14405; “Ballot Probe Bill Signed by Governor,” The Hartford Courant, June 8, 1923, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/553472092/citation/13E0D686BAE24FA2PQ/11?accountid=14405; Connecticut General Assembly, “Public Act 279: An Act Concerning Zoning in Certain Cities and Towns,” in Public Acts Passed by the General Assembly of the State of Connecticut, January Session, 1923, 3790–92, https://heinonline.org/HOL/P?h=hein.ssl/ssct0160&i=318.↩︎ “Zoning Commission to Be Appointed,” Hartford Courant, June 21, 1923, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/553415093/abstract/259F4C144CC44403PQ/1; “West Hartford Has Zoning Commission”; “Money for West Hartford Zoning,” Hartford Courant, August 9, 1923, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/553505479/abstract/25FC2CA0205C4D31PQ/1; “Zoning Commission Ready for Work,” Hartford Courant, September 21, 1923, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/553475423/abstract/A0FC04626954B44PQ/1.↩︎ “Expert on Zoning Engaged by Town,” Hartford Courant, November 7, 1923, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/553559655/abstract/439FAAE8A904982PQ/1; “Robert Whitten, City Planner, Dies,” New York Times: General News, 1936, http://search.proquest.com/hnpnewyorktimes/docview/101877162/citation/60094A1DAEEF4AB3PQ/1; Robert Harvey Whitten, The Cleveland Zone Plan (Cleveland, OH, 1921), http://hdl.handle.net/2027/yale.39002044619519.↩︎ Robert Harvey Whitten, The Atlanta Zone Plan (Atlanta GA: City Planning Commission, 1922), https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Atlanta_Zone_Plan/MmNAAQAAMAAJ, p. 10; Christopher Silver, “The Racial Origins of Zoning in American Cities,” in Urban Planning and the African American Community: In the Shadows, ed. June Manning Thomas and Marsha Ritzdorf (Sage Publications, 1997); Rothstein, The Color of Law, pp. 46-53↩︎ Robert Harvey Whitten, West Hartford Zoning (West Hartford CT: Zoning Commission, 1924), https://www.google.com/books/edition/West_Hartford_Zoning/bdKsAAAAMAAJ, pp. preface, 1, 2, 10↩︎ Whitten, pp. 10, 13. Whitten recommended a minimum of 5,000 square feet of land per family in A-1 zones in Cleveland and Atlanta, Whitten, The Cleveland Zone Plan, p. 12; Whitten, The Atlanta Zone Plan, p. 13↩︎ Whitten, West Hartford Zoning, p. 10.↩︎ Whitten, pp. 10, 12, 16, 17. Thanks to Mary Donohue for her research on The Packard, an upscale apartment building originally designed in 1917 by Jewish architect Harry Beckanstin, on land purchased by Barnet Sharfman and his partners, which was resold several times. Mary Donohue, “West Hartford House Tour” (Noah Webster House and West Hartford Historical Society, November 11, 2018); “West Hartford: Ask for Changes in Building Lines at Selectmen’s Meeting [Packard],” Hartford Courant, January 20, 1917, http://www.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/556428448/abstract/6FF848EE3CBB485APQ/1; “Hartford’s Largest Apartment Block for Farmington Ave,” Hartford Courant, May 25, 1919, http://www.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/556691467/abstract/D668B64BA808413EPQ/1; “Packard Apartments Sold at Auction,” Hartford Courant, July 12, 1923, http://www.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/553442168/abstract/B24B2EF08631464DPQ/2; Ray Routhier, “Bank to Foreclose on Vintage Buildings [Packard],” Hartford Courant: Connecticut, August 22, 1992, http://www.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/1981515333/abstract/B24B2EF08631464DPQ/16.↩︎ Robert Harvey Whitten, “Tentative Zoning Map, West Hartford, Connecticut” (Zoning Commission, Town of West Hartford, 1924), https://mapwarper.net/maps/56736; Whitten, West Hartford Zoning, p. 14. See 1924 zoning geodata and land calculations in Ilya Ilyankou and Jack Dougherty, “Map: Exclusionary Zoning in West Hartford, CT, 1924-Present” (On The Line, 2021), https://github.com/OnTheLine/otl-zoning-west-hartford. Even with a more refined estimate of land assignment that removes parcels that were or became non-residential (schools, parks, cemeteries, streams, industrial areas, commercial-only areas, etc.), the percentage of A and B property combined is more than 80 percent.↩︎ Whitten, West Hartford Zoning, p. 1; “Framing Zoning System for Town,” Hartford Courant, February 13, 1924, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/553684816/abstract/7642B87823624487PQ/1; “Zoning Plan for West Hartford Announced by Town Commission,” Hartford Courant, March 9, 1924, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/553716586/abstract/141192AC6E83BE6C3C8/1?accountid=14405. See seven minor adjustments listed in “Zoning Commission Plan Is in Force,” Hartford Courant, March 24, 1924, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/553717249/abstract/19ED20ED98F74683PQ/22; “Vote to Support Zoning Measure,” Hartford Courant, March 26, 1925, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/553965338/citation/93A704BA781E41E8PQ/1; Connecticut’s 1925 zoning act specifically exempted the city of New Haven. Connecticut General Assembly, “Public Act 242: An Act Concerning Zoning,” in Public Acts Passed by the General Assembly of the State of Connecticut, January Session, 1925, 4037–43, https://heinonline.org/HOL/P?h=hein.ssl/ssct0161&i=241.↩︎ Euclid v. Ambler, “Decision” (272 US Supreme Court, 365, November 22, 1926), https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=8376015914752485063; Freund, Colored Property, pp. 81-87; Rothstein, The Color of Law, pp. 52-53. Prior to the 1926 US Supreme Court decision, a 1924 Federal District Court ruled against Euclid’s zoning ordinance as an overreach of governmental power, but accurately recognized that its true purpose was “to classify the population and segregate them according to their income or situation in life. The true reason why some persons live in a mansion and others in a shack, why some live in a single-family dwelling and others in a double-family dwelling, why some live in a two-family dwelling and others in an apartment, or why some live in a well-kept apartment and others in a tenement, is primarily economic. It is a matter of income and wealth, plus the labor and difficulty of procuring adequate domestic service.” Ambler v. Euclid, “Decision” (Federal Reporter 297 F. 307 [Federal District Court of Ohio], 1924), https://heinonline.org/HOL/P?h=hein.cases/fedrep0297&i=329&a=dHJpbmNvbGwuZWR1, p. 316. See also the CT Supreme Court’s reasoning about crowded housing creating immoral people in its 1920 Windsor v. Whitney decision, which recognized the Town of Windsor’s right to lay out streets and claim eminent domain while taking private property for the public good. “Streets of reasonable width add to the value of the land along the street, enhance the general value of land and buildings in the neighborhood and greatly increase the beauty of the neighborhood. These are all facts of universal knowledge…Narrow streets in congested industrial centers breed disease. Too many houses crowded upon a lot without sufficient space for light and air menace health. Such a neighborhood affects the morals of its people.” Windsor v. Whitney, “Decision” (Connecticut Supreme Court, 95 Conn. 357, August 5, 1920), https://heinonline.org/HOL/P?h=hein.statereports/cadscect0095&i=369&a=dHJpbmNvbGwuZWR1, p. 365↩︎ “12-Family Apartment Under Way,” Hartford Courant, November 6, 1926, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/557279717/abstract/89BA266AD5FD4663PQ/7; “Apartments Banned In A And B Areas,” The Hartford Courant (1923-1995), March 26, 1927, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/557325139/abstract/AA121907A7BE4D68PQ/1; West Hartford, “Report of the Zoning Commission,” in Annual Report of the Town of West Hartford, Connecticut, 1928, https://lci-mt.iii.com/iii/encore/record/C__Rb1497880, p. 83↩︎ “Demand Economy in West Hartford”; “Protection Of Property Values Aim: Chairman Woods of Zoning Commission,” Hartford Courant, May 22, 1944, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/559985482/abstract/94D526928229421FPQ/6.↩︎ William B. Munro, “A Danger Spot in the Zoning Movement,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 155, no. 2 (May 1, 1931): 202–6, https://doi.org/10.1177/000271623115500226; Marc A Weiss, The Rise of the Community Builders: The American Real Estate Industry and Urban Land Planning (Columbia University Press, 1987), p. 99↩︎ "],["expanding-zoning.html", "Expanding Zoning Across Suburbs", " Expanding Zoning Across Suburbs After Connecticut legislators allowed town governments to enact zoning regulations in 1923, local land-use policies spread quickly across the state. While each town made its own decisions, the growth of zoning was tracked by the Connecticut Development Commission, a state agency created in 1939 to promote economic growth and efficient planning for industry and housing. The Commission published a series of maps to illustrate the growth of local planning and zoning agencies in Connecticut, as shown in Figure 3.11 from its 1944-1946 report. Towns that enacted local zoning policies tended to be clustered in the rapidly-growing suburbs around the state’s major cities of Hartford, Bridgeport, and New Haven. By 1957, 77 percent (131 out of 169) of town governments had established some type of planning and/or zoning agency, as shown in Figure 3.12. Nearly every town within a 20-mile radius of Hartford—including outlying rural areas far from the city center—enacted some type of land-use agency to exert control over what kind of housing could be built in their community. During the 1950s, suburban towns began to compete against one another by establishing more exclusive zoning requirements – such as a minimum of 87,000 square feet of land (about 2 acres) to construct a single-family home – to attract higher-income homebuyers. Similarly, many suburban towns began to expressly prohibit the construction of more affordable multi-family homes to keep out lower-income residents. Uncovering the roots of our state’s zoning history helps us understand present-day political battles to end exclusionary practices, led by statewide advocacy groups such as the Connecticut Fair Housing Center, the Open Communities Alliance, and Desegregate Connecticut.114 Figure 3.11: A Connecticut Development Commission employee reviews a 1938 map of local planning and zoning agencies in order to create an updated version in this photo from their 1944-1946 report. Zoning grew most quickly in suburban towns clustered around the major cities of Hartford, Bridgeport, and New Haven. Figure 3.12: Explore the full-size interactive map. By 1957, more than 77 percent of town governments had established some type of planning and/or zoning agency, including nearly every town within a 20-mile radius of Hartford, according to the Connecticut Development Commission. View historical sources and open-source map code, developed by Jack Dougherty and Ilya Ilyankou. How and why did zoning expand across Connecticut? How did exclusivity vary in different communities? This chapter compares how zoning grew in three adjacent but very different suburban towns: Avon, Bloomfield, and West Hartford. Although West Hartford acted first to enable zoning in 1924, the neighboring town of Bloomfield hired its own expert to catch up in the late 1920s, and zoned its land with more exclusive minimum requirements than West Hartford during its 1950s building boom. Meanwhile, residents in the farming town of Avon initially opposed zoning in the 1930s, but changed course by hiring its own expert in the 1950s and approved even more exclusive minimum-land requirements than its neighbors. To some degree, the differences in the timing of zoning across these three towns can be explained as local government responses to population growth. West Hartford enacted zoning in response to its high growth rate during its housing boom of the 1920s, when the population increased 182 percent. Similarly, Bloomfield actively expanded its zoning policies during its peak growth decade of the 1950s, when its population climbed 137 percent, as shown in Figure 3.13.115 Figure 3.13: Explore the full-size interactive chart, which uses a logarithmic scale to better compare growth rates for small and large communities. Each suburban town experienced sharp population growth (West Hartford in the 1920s, Bloomfield and Avon in the 1950s) as the population of the central city of Hartford peaked in 1950. Source: US Census. View historical data. But zoning was not merely a response to population growth…. TODO contextualize… Figure 3.14.116 Figure 3.14: Explore the full-size interactive map of property development in suburban West Hartford, which shows two key periods of activity. The 1920s construction boom on the east side and town center filled up 15 percent of all parcels available today, and 1950s growth on the north, west, and south sides filled up 31 percent of all parcels. Also, the total land area of developed property increased from the 1920s (6 percent of all available acres) to the 1950s (24 percent of all available acres), when parcel sizes grew larger. By the late 1960s, the town was almost entirely built out. Source: Property assessment data provided by the Town of West Hartford and AppGeo, only for properties that currently exist. Also, “year built” means the most recent year of construction recorded, which is missing for about 3 percent of nearly 20,000 parcels. Map developed by Jack Dougherty (Trinity College CT) and Ilya Ilyankou (Picturedigits). View data and code on GitHub. Source: US Census. View historical data. TO COME in this section This section will trace the growth of exclusionary zoning during the twentieth century, as Hartford-area suburbs competed against one another to attract higher-income families… Across these three suburbs, the most restrictive minimum-land requirement for a single-family home increased from 9,000 square feet in the 1920s to over 87,000 square feet in the 1950s, as shown in Table 3.4.117 Table 3.4: Most Exclusive Minimum-land-per-family Zoning Rules in Three Hartford Suburbs, mid-1950s Town Zone Min. land per family Scale diagram Avon East 87,000 sq ft Bloomfield R-40 40,000 sq ft West Hartford AAA 18,000 sq ft In the mid-1950s, the minimum amount of land required per single-family home in Avon’s most exclusive zone (87,000 square feet) was more than two times larger than Bloomfield’s most exclusive zone (40,000 square feet), and more than four times larger than West Hartford’s most exclusive zone (18,000 square feet). Icons by Georgiana Ionescu. TODO: Describe how the three towns decided to zone land for future residential growth that would attract higher-income families. To draw meaningful comparisons between suburbs, we digitized and stitched together mid-1950s paper zoning maps from their three separate town governments, and converted their minimum-land rules into a common scale with modern labels. For example, the most exclusionary zone in this map, R-87, represents a residential zone that requires at least 87,000 square feet of land (about 2 acres) to construct a single-family home…as shown in Figure 3.15. Figure 3.15: Explore the interactive map by floating your cursor to view mid-1950s minimum-land zoning rules in three suburban towns: Avon, Bloomfield, and West Hartford, Connecticut. TODO: … How much land did each town assign to exclusionary residential zones in the mid-1950s? …summarize data as shown in Table 3.5. Table 3.5: Percent of Land Area by Town and Zone Type, mid-1950s Zone equivalent Avon Bloomfield West Hartford R-87 26% R-40 32% R-30 72% 27% R-20 14% R-18 31% R-15 10% R-10.5 19% R-10 5% R-9 24% R-6 11% R-3 6% R-1 2% non-residential 2% 12% 7% Total acres 14979 16943 14333 TODO: Note that a strict calculation might manually remove park areas (such as Pennfield state park in Bloomfield) from residential zone calculations, but towns did include them in zoning maps, so left as-is. Connecticut Development Commission, Report (Hartford, 1946), https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015079960137, p. 19; Connecticut Development Commission, “Legislation Passed at 1957 Session of the General Assembly of Planning and Zoning Interest” (State of Connecticut, 1957), http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1140223706; Connecticut Development Commission, “Department of Economic and Community Development Records” (Connecticut State Library Archives, 2019), https://cslarchives.ctstatelibrary.org/repositories/2/resources/635. See historical sources for 1957 map at https://github.com/ontheline/otl-planning-zoning-ct↩︎ See 1900-1960 population data at https://github.com/ontheline/otl-datawrapper. See similar use of logarithmic scale for comparative population growth across metropolitan Hartford towns in Technical Planning Associates and Connecticut Development Commission, Wethersfield, Connecticut Plan of Development for Southwest Section: Report to the Town Plan Commission, Wethersfield, Connecticut Plan of Development for Southwest Section (New Haven, Connecticut: Technical Planning Associates, 1950), https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/102602086, PDF p. 18.↩︎ See West Hartford property development data and tables from pre-1900s to 2010s at https://github.com/ontheline/otl-year-built.↩︎ TODO FIX: Avon Zoning Regulations (amended Oct 19, 1951, and Fall 1953); Bloomfield (adopted March 15, 1950); West Hartford (amended to Dec 3, 1951); adapted from Avon, “Present Zoning Fact Sheet [Map of Avon and Adjacent Towns]” (Joseph Moschner and Avon Town Planning Committee, Connecticut, January 1954), https://www.avonct.gov/planning-community-development/files/1956-pocd-maps-908; see also Bloomfield 1958 and West Hartford 1958 zoning map legends. Assume 1958 Bloomfield R-40 minimum lot width of 150 ft based on present-day requirements.↩︎ "],["selling.html", "Chapter 4 Selling and Shopping the Lines", " Chapter 4 Selling and Shopping the Lines This chapter explores the pivotal relationship between public schooling and private housing, which fundamentally reshaped metropolitan life and upward mobility strategies in Connecticut in the latter half of the twentieth century. By contrast, in the early 1900s, when a smaller proportion of youth pursued secondary education and beyond, most families did not choose their homes based on the boundary lines of desirable public schools. Prior to the 1950s, schools were relatively weak in attracting middle-class families to the suburbs, but in post-war human capital markets, education became a powerful magnet. Pro-suburban government, real estate interests and prospective homebuyers converged to create the practice commonly known today as “shopping for schools.” Agents began to advertise private homes by their location in higher status public school areas. Local school leaders competed for upper-class families by offering curricular extras. State legislators invested in suburban schools, and legitimized school-by-school rankings by publishing standardized test results. Upwardly mobile families with children sought more desirable school attendance areas, and paid higher prices for private homes that included access to this public good. Overall, the rise of shopping for schools unites the twin narratives of credentialism and consumerism in American metropolitan history. MORE TO COME… This chapter expands on themes that previously appeared in Jack Dougherty, “Shopping for Schools: How Public Education and Private Housing Shaped Suburban Connecticut,” Journal of Urban History 38, no. 2 (March 2012): 205–24, http://juh.sagepub.com/content/38/2. "],["challenging.html", "Chapter 5 Challenging the Power Lines", " Chapter 5 Challenging the Power Lines This chapter tells the stories of everyday families and civil rights activists who sought to cross over, redraw, or erase schooling and housing boundaries in metropolitan Hartford, focusing primarily on the past five decades. When comparing these stories, we learn that the tools of privilege do not stand still, but evolve when confronted by civil rights challenges. In turn, this requires newer generations of activists to continually rethink and revise strategies to address the limited successes of prior years. After Connecticut civil rights advocates won legislative bans against overt racial discrimination in public housing in the late 1940s, and most private housing in the 1960s, they needed to create more sophisticated strategies to combat racial steering and redlining practices, since these were more difficult to prove without direct testing and quantitative studies. Similarly, although activists won a 1965 state constitutional amendment for equal public schools, initial efforts to implement this law were equally challenged in moving students or dollars across city-suburban district lines. This portion concludes with the 1996 courtroom victory of the Sheff v O’Neill school integration plaintiffs, where Connecticut’s highest court outlawed the segregation of Hartford minority students, but left the specifics of the remedy to be determined by a suburban-dominated political process. "],["mobilizing.html", "Mobilizing Against Racial Steering and Redlining", " Mobilizing Against Racial Steering and Redlining by Jasmin Agosto, Vianna Iorio, and Jack Dougherty In the early 1970’s, Julia Ramos, Ben Dixon, and Boyd Hinds gathered in a small storefront office at 1170 Albany Avenue, located in a predominantly Black neighborhood in the North End of Hartford. Armed with scissors, glue, and string, they cut, pasted, and connected the names of board members from leading corporations and government: the big banks, insurance companies, real estate firms, and regulatory agencies. On their office wall, the trio mapped out the interconnected lines of power between a handful of wealthy White men who “sat on each other’s boards, who knew each other, and who were comfortable with each other.” This “spider web” visually depicted a concept that was difficult for many people to grasp: institutional racism. Collectively, these power brokers drew the lines that racially and economically segregated metropolitan Hartford, by deciding which neighborhoods received home mortgages and insurance, where different groups of people would be allowed to buy or rent property, and how everyone played the rules of the game. This was the beginning of Education/Instrucción, and its mission was to mobilize people to “eliminate racism wherever it existed.”118 Ramos, Dixon, and Hinds co-founded Education/Instrucción, an innovative team with an intentionally bilingual name, designed to teach Hartford communities and organizations to use their power to challenge institutional racism. Originally, this multicultural trio met as teachers at Westledge, a private school in suburban Simsbury, Connecticut. Although the school promoted racial equality, none were fully satisfied in this isolated setting, as they dreamed about tackling broader political and economic issues beyond the classroom. Hinds asked Ramos and Dixon to join him, on equal footing as co-directors, to start a new Hartford-based organization to take on larger challenges of institutional racism in housing, education, and employment.119 The trio came from starkly different backgrounds but shared a common moral compass that drove their activism. Julia Ramos, a Puerto Rican woman and recent graduate of the University of Hartford, had learned to speak Spanish, English, German, and French by living in various bases with her father, who served in the US military. She worked as a translator at Travelers Insurance, one of Hartford’s largest corporations, then later became the assistant director for an anti-poverty organization, the Poor People’s Federation. Ben Dixon, who grew up in Hartford’s North End, learned about inequality and power as a Black student during the 1950s at Hartford Public High School. When he was assigned to the vocational track, his mother marched into the superintendent’s office and insisted that he be moved up to the college preparatory track. He later earned his degree from Howard University and returned to Hartford to become a music teacher. Boyd Hinds, a White man who graduated from Amherst College, developed his organizational skills in the telecommunications business world and also as an educator. Later, he and his wife Wendy moved their family from an all-White suburb to live in Blue Hills, a racially-mixed neighborhood in Hartford’s North End. People called their trio, as pictured in Figure 5.1, the “Mod Squad,” referring to the late-1960s television show starring three multicultural undercover crime fighters, because as Ramos recalls, “when they saw us coming, they always expected some kind of problem or issue to arise.”120 Figure 5.1: Education/Instrucción Co-Directors Boyd Hinds, Julia Ramos McKay, Ben Dixon, circa 1974. When Hinds, Ramos, and Dixon initially launched Education/Instrucción (EI) as a non-profit organization in July 1971, they pitched their “consulting services” to advance “cultural pluralism” in educational, governmental, and business organizations across the Hartford region. EI conducted training sessions and anti-racism workshops, and offered Spanish/English translation and program evaluation, to help their clients identify and eliminate institutional bias within their organizations.121 Hartford’s demographics were rapidly changing, with the city’s combined Black and Puerto Rican population reaching 30 percent in 1970. “You need to get ready for it,” Julia Ramos recalled telling business leaders, because “you are not going to have that many White people to turn to… [If] you want to continue to make money as an organization, you need to pay attention to that. Not only… to get employees, but to sell products.” Yet even when EI emphasized profits, Hartford’s business leaders were not receptive. So the trio found more creative and assertive approaches to push their agenda. For example, they bought one share of stock in several of Hartford’s largest corporate employers—such as Aetna, Travelers, and United Technologies—in order to attend the annual meeting of shareholders. “We would stand up and talk about the institutional racist practices of the company,” Julia Ramos recalled, and “people started coming out of the woodwork. We would get calls from some of the employees from some of these companies to give us information about what was going on.”122 Overall, Education/Instrucción mobilized both city and suburban residents to document and directly challenge the discriminatory lines that divided metropolitan Hartford, with two major successes. First, their “¡Ya Basta!” (Spanish for “Enough already!”) campaign organized the area’s first mass-participant investigation of racial steering by the real estate industry, by sending pairs of White, Black, and Puerto Rican testers to local offices, to compare differences in the properties shown and how they were treated. When EI publicized the damning evidence of discrimination that they had collected, the US Justice Department prosecuted Hartford’s leading real estate firms for violating the 1968 Fair Housing Act. Second, EI creatively publicized deeper levels of discrimination in the home mortgage and insurance industries, and lack of enforcement by Connecticut state regulators. Its series of “Fair Housing at its Worst” reports translated these complex issues into easier-to-understand text and graphics for everyday readers. But EI’s successes were tempered by limitations. Working with the US Justice Department, their out-of court settlement against Hartford’s leading real estate agencies yielded no financial penalties for decades of damages to Black and Puerto Rican families. Furthermore, although the “Mod Squad” was innovative, their work was not part of a sustainable institution, and EI eventually folded as its founders went their separate ways. ¡Ya Basta!: Taking Real Estate Racism to Court In 1973, the EI trio launched its ambitious campaign against racial steering in the Hartford-area real estate industry. They titled the project “¡Ya Basta! Sue the Bastards,” and defined their goal: “to bring statewide attention to the dual housing market problem and to strike deep at the institutionally racist and elitist causes.” This investigative study was motivated by local residents’ experiences with real estate agents who “steered” Black and Latino home buyers into predominantly minority or racially-mixed neighborhoods in Hartford and Bloomfield, but guided White homebuyers to nearly all-White suburbs such as Avon or West Hartford. Past attempts by Hartford-area activists to challenge housing discrimination from the 1940s through the 1960s were relatively isolated and short-lived. By contrast, EI and its ally, the Open Housing Coalition, systematically documented bias at Hartford’s largest real estate firms, using methods adopted from organizations such as National Neighbors. They trained dozens of White, Black, and Puerto Rican couples to become “testers,” who posed as clients during visits to real estate agencies, where they used the same script: “Tell us about what kinds of homes and communities are available through the $40,000 range.” As shown in 5.2, testers carefully listened to how real estate agents spoke about different areas, especially racially-coded phrases such as “bad neighborhoods” or “poor schools” or “those people.” The testers wrote detailed accounts of what agents told them. In total, EI mobilized over 100 volunteers from activist and religious networks to conduct 600 hours of testing, and produce 150 pages of testimonial evidence on racial steering.123 Figure 5.2: Scroll the full-screen document to read instructions for housing discrimination testers in the Ya Basta: Sue the Bastards project, 1973. To demonstrate persistent racial steering by real estate firms, volunteer testers wrote testimonials that provided damning evidence. For example, when Barbara and Richard Benson, a White couple, phoned the Hartford office of the Barrows & Wallace Company in August 1973, the receptionist directed them to the suburban Wethersfield branch. The Bensons arrived for their appointment, met real estate agent Tom Ryan, and told him that they had no preference about the location of homes, as long as it was within their price range. The agent explained that “there were three problems with living in Hartford:… high taxes… the poor school system… and integration.” If they wanted to live in Hartford’s West End neighborhood, the agent warned that “we would want our children out of the city by the time they were ready for middle school,” and that people already living there “sent their children to private school.” He also warned the Bensons against the Blue Hills neighborhood in Hartford’s North End, which he said “used to be all Jewish, and now it was all Black…” and “he said flatly that we did not want to live there.” Hartford’s South End also should be avoided, the agent told them, because “as the Puerto Ricans moved in, Italians moved out.” As the agent continued talking about the city, he shared his personal theory of “ethnic blocks that reacted like molecules bumping into one another.” Finally, he recommended to the Bensons that “West Hartford was obviously the kind of place where we wanted to be, but that we could not afford it” within their current budget “because he could not get us out of the city for that price.” Using a combination of overtly racial scare tactics and more subtle coded warnings, the agent clearly steered this White couple out of racially-mixed city neighborhoods to a White suburb.124 To compare discriminatory treatment by race, organizers also arranged for Charles and Shirley Gray, a Black couple, to visit the same real estate office in August 1973, and offer the same price range. Real estate agent Larry Poulin sat them down and thumbed through a book of listings. First, he suggested “a broken down house” in Hartford’s South End, which he described as “a good neighborhood… [with] good schools… and a good buy.” Next, he pointed out a house in Hartford’s West End that “needed a little work” but “he said the schools were good,” the opposite of what his co-worker told the White couple. Even though their meeting took place in the suburban Wethersfield office, the agent solely recommended listings inside the city of Hartford. Only after persistent questioning about his occupation did Charles Gray reveal that he was a deputy commissioner for child and youth services, a state government agency. But even with new information about the client’s status and income, the agent did not offer to show homes in White suburbs. Instead, he referred the Grays to the Windsor branch of their firm, located to the north of Hartford, near the increasingly Black suburb of Bloomfield. After the Grays left the agent’s office, they looked through the newspaper and found several real estate listings that matched their desired home description and price range, which were located in White suburbs such as Newington and Simsbury. Most likely, the agent knew about these homes through the Multiple Listings Service, a clearinghouse for sharing information between real estate firms. But he never mentioned them to the Grays, to avoid violating the real estate industry’s prevailing but unwritten rule to steer Black homebuyers away from White neighborhoods and suburbs.125 Organizers also invited residents of the Hartford region to share personal accounts of racial discrimination they encountered in the real estate industry, and these individual stories became more powerful when compiled into a comparative document. For example, real estate agents steered White and Black faculty from Trinity College in opposite directions. When Andrew and Toni Gold, a White couple, visited the J.W. Beach real estate office in West Hartford in December 1973, they told agent Gloria Winans that they wished to buy a home and mentioned that Andy would be teaching economics at Trinity College in Hartford. The agent recommended that they look in suburban Wethersfield or Newington, or perhaps the Foster Heights area of Hartford because “it was up on a hill and isolated from the rest of the city.” She warned that the rest of that area “was not safe and was changing,” and told two stories about friends who had been attacked or robbed by “a colored man” in other parts of Hartford.126 By contrast, Ed Johnetta and James Miller, a Black couple, came to Hartford in 1972 when Jim accepted a position in the English Department at Trinity College. His wife called the Hurwit and Simons real estate firm to inquire about their ad for a home for sale in the Blue Hills neighborhood in the North End of Hartford. On the phone, a female agent responded, “Do you know anything about that neighborhood?… That it’s slowly turning into a Black ghetto?” The agent recommended homes outside of this area. In her account, Ed Johnetta stated that “It was clear to me that the Hurwit and Simons agent did not realized that I was Black. She assumed that because my husband was being hired by Trinity College, we were white buyers.” 127 In fact, EI collected so much damning evidence on racist real estate practices from testers’ reports that they devised creative strategies to publicize their findings. In early 1974, they compiled pages and pages of handouts that summarized the most glaring examples of racial steering, and mimeographed these for broader audiences. Later that year, EI organizers produced an audiotape with extended excerpts from rental apartment testers who carried recording devices. At one apartment building in West Hartford, near the Hartford border, a White male tester had this exchange with a White building superintendent, captured on a recorder: Tester: Tell me, what kind of neighborhood is it around here? Building superintendent: Oh, this is a really good section here. You can’t beat nothing here. There’s no Puerto Ricans, no niggers around here. When the tester asked how building remained all-White amid the growing minority population nearby, the superintendent explained techniques that he and the White owner developed to avoid Fair Housing laws. When prospective tenants phoned to ask about rentals advertised in the local newspaper, the superintendent explained that “we don’t put up the price over the phone unless we’re really talking to somebody that, you know, we’re sure that they are white.” In cases when Blacks show up to look at the rental, the superintendent described how “I just jack up [the price]… We’re sure they won’t take it because they can’t afford it.” If necessary, the superintendent required Blacks to fill out a “long form” with “all kinds of questions” about their occupation, to discourage them from renting. About 45 minutes after the White tester left, a Black female tester approached the same superintendent to ask if any apartments were available. “Not in this building here,” the superintendent replied. “You missed by a couple of hours.” He falsely claimed that the White tester already paid a deposit for the last unit. Then 5 minutes after the Black tester left, the White tester returned to ask if the unit is still available. “We had more people come in right after you,” the superintendent explained, “and I told… because she was a colored girl, I told her the place was already taken.” After capturing this blatant evidence of racial discrimination on audiotape, EI organizers played an edited recording, with narration, for audiences that included newspaper editors, churches, the metropolitan board of realtors, state lending regulators, and federal housing officials, as shown in 5.3.128 Figure 5.3: Scroll the full-screen document to read the transcript of housing tester secret tape-recordings in the Ya Basta: Sue the Bastards project, 1974. EI organizers and their allies shared their evidence with sympathetic lawyers at the US Department of Justice in early 1974, who requested that FBI agents launch an investigation. Front-page news on racial discrimination rattled the metro Hartford real estate industry. It also troubled Connecticut’s real estate commission, which publicly questioned EI’s tester evidence and complained that they should have brought the case to their state agency, rather than the federal government, despite their past inaction. Shortly afterwards, federal attorneys filed a lawsuit, US v Barrows and Wallace Company et al., which charged 7 of the 8 largest real estate brokerage firms in metropolitan Hartford with violating the Fair Housing Act of 1968. These real estate firms were: The Barrows and Wallace Co., Hartford The T.R. Preston Co., West Hartford The Heritage Group, Inc., West Hartford Bulkeley Realtors South, Inc. & Bulkeley Realtors West, Inc., Wethersfield Hurwit & Simons Realtors, a Partnership, West Hartford J. Watson Beach Real Estate Co., Hartford Colli-Wagner Realty Co., Hartford According to lawsuit, real estate firms “steered” White buyers away from racially mixed neighborhoods in Hartford and Bloomfield, and instead funneled in Black and Puerto Rican buyers. Together, these seven firms employed about 170 sales agents, who sold about 1500 homes annually in the region. Based on over 30 documented cases by housing testers, the government argued that discrimination did not arise merely by the actions of individual agents, but was caused systemically by these major real estate firms. In addition, activists from the region’s only racially-mixed suburb, Bloomfield, joined with the plaintiffs in US v Barrows and Wallace to challenge blockbusting, another real estate tactic that played on White racial fears to turn a quick profit.129 Although EI activists and their allies won an out-of-court settlement in US v Barrows and Wallace, the remedy focused on educational programs for real estate agents, with no financial penalties. All seven firms signed a consent decree in July 1974, which contained no admission of “unlawful conduct,” but instead a promise to obey the Fair Housing Act of 1968 and take affirmative measures to comply with the law. Specifically, the firms agreed to refrain from “refusing or failing to show” or “providing or volunteering different information about homes” or “influencing the residential choice of any person” on the basis of race, color, religion, or national origin. The decree expressly prohibited sales tactics such as “discouraging white prospective buyers from inspecting or purchasing homes in racially transitional areas” (one type of racial steering) and “‘cold canvassing’ in areas of racial transition” (also known as blockbusting). The real estate firms agreed to educate all employees about these rules, prominently display “Equal Housing Opportunity” slogans in their offices and advertisements, and to reach out to prospective minority home buyers in the future. Over the next few months, they submitted compliance reports and real estate sales activity data by race to the court, as required by the consent decree, until the US Justice Department moved to dissolve the order in 1977. But these real estate firms never admitted wrongdoing, nor did they pay any financial compensation to Black and Puerto Rican families who were blocked from moving to higher-opportunity suburbs. EI had won a victory, but only a partial one. They turned their attention to the next phase of the struggle.130 Exposing Institutional Racism through Fair Housing At Its Worst Education/Instrucción did not cease with its limited legal victory against racial steering by real estate firms. Instead, as Boyd Hinds led the expansion of EI’s scope in the mid-1970s, the organization challenged racial discrimination across what it described as an “overlapping, interlocking, and powerful” political and economic network. Segregation was caused not only by individual racism of one real estate broker toward a prospective buyer, but rather by a broader network of institutional racism where real estate firms collaborated with insurance companies, influential banks, and the state regulatory agencies that were supposed to serve as government “watchdogs” for the public interest. Together, EI charged this network with taking actions that favored the interests of White suburbanites over Black and Puerto Rican city residents, and thereby intensified the boundaries between them. To expand both their analysis and audience, Hinds and his EI colleagues published an innovative series of ten reports from 1974 to 1978, titled Fair Housing At Its Worst. This series of reports revealed how this powerful network intentionally maintained segregation in the metropolitan Hartford region by violating the federal Fair Housing Act (reports 1-8) and promoting mortgage and insurance redlining (reports 9-10). To help audiences make the conceptual leap from individual to institutional racism, Education/Instrucción creatively used 70s-style graphic design, data, and maps, as shown in @ref(fig:1974-fairhousingreports-ctda.png) and 5.5.131 Figure 5.4: Explore the “Fair Housing At Its Worst” series of ten reports, based on originals in the Boyd Hinds Papers at the Hartford History Center, and shared online through the Connecticut Digital Archive. Figure 5.5: Education/Instrucción creatively communicated its message by placing ads in the 1972 Hartford Courant Sunday real estate section to ask “What Creates, Maintains, and Condones over 99% White Population in the Hartford Suburbs?” and “Can You Understand Institutional White Racism?” (left). Its 1974 Fair Housing At Its Worst report 4 placed 1970s racial census data on a map to illustrate segregated housing (center), and report 2 showed layers of corporate and governmental control over the housing market (right). EI’s expanding analysis of the institutional networks that housing discrimination appears in the progression of topics in the Fair Housing At Its Worst reports. In the first set of reports (number 1-4, published in February 1974), EI outlined its investigation of racial steering by real estate firms. Complicit in this discrimination, EI claimed, were industry associations (such as the Greater Hartford Board of Realtors, which tolerated racist actions by many of its members) and state regulators (such as the Connecticut Real Estate Commission, which refused to enforce existing laws against racist sales practices). But after the 1974 Barrows case brought weak penalties against the real estate industry, EI activists pivoted their campaign to demonstrate complicity by larger corporations and the federal government. The second set of reports (numbers 5-8, published May 1974) criticized Hartford’s leading businesses (such as Travelers Insurance) for promoting employee relocation services that steered new hires out of the city, and encouraged them to buy homes in the suburbs. Also, EI charged the US Department of Housing and Urban Development with failing to reverse federal mortgage programs that favored all-White suburbs, such as Federal Housing Administration loans from the 1930s through the 1950s described in the Federal Lending and Redlining section in this book, as well as the Section 235 program of the 1970s. Furthermore, pointed out how Connecticut’s weak regional government failed to act against powerful White suburban interests. During the early 1960s, Hartford’s federally-certified development authority, the Capitol Region Planning Agency, warned how local land-use policies caused racial and economic segregation. But in 1971, this same agency opposed opposed state legislation to halt exclusionary zoning practices, and thereby blocked affordable housing programs in favor of more expensive (and racially exclusive) single-family home construction.132 In their third and final set of reports (numbers 9-10, which began in 1974 but were not published until 1977-78), Boyd Hinds and EI confronted Hartford banking and insurance corporations over “redlining.” Generally defined as denying mortgage loans or homeowner insurance due to an area’s racial composition—and depicted with red ink on a map—this discriminatory practice can be traced back to the infamous Home Owners’ Loan Corporation residential security maps of the 1930s, as described in the Federal Lending and Redlining section in this book. But since these Depression-era maps were hidden from the public, the phrase “redlining” (sometimes spelled “red-lining”) did not become popularized until the late 1960s, when civil rights activists began using the term, which then appeared in press reports and publications.133 Boyd Hinds most likely encouraged staff members of the US Commission on Civil Rights to investigate discriminatory home lending practices by Hartford-area banks in its 1974 report, Mortgage Money: Who Gets It?. This case study focused national attention on Hartford, a leading financial center, and revealed unfair treatment of racial minorities and women who applied for home loans. Although the federal report did not name specific lenders, local journalists soon revealed that the study was based on nine large banks that provided most of the conventional home loans in the Hartford region at that time: Hartford Home Savings & Loan Association Hartford National Bank & Trust Co. Windsor Federal Savings & Loan Association Mechanics Savings Bank State-Dime Savings Bank Hartford Federal Savings and Loan Association Connecticut Savings and Loan Association Connecticut Bank & Trust Co. Society for Savings Prior to its report, the US Commission on Civil Rights held public hearings, where Hartford residents described the redlining practices they witnessed. For example, real estate agent Mark Lawrence explained how banks simply refused to fund mortgages in racially “transitional” areas, such as the Asylum Hill neighborhood near downtown Hartford. Boyd Hinds charged that Connecticut’s regulatory agencies failed in their responsibility to prevent racial discrimination by the banking, insurance, and real estate industries. Sally Knack, who authored the report for the US Commission on Civil Rights, told local reporters that the Commission’s findings had been forwarded to Congress and the White House, and that “we expect some action on it.” The report contributed to the passage of a new federal law, the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act of 1975 (HMDA), which improved monitoring of discrimination by requiring lenders to publicly share data on mortgage applications and approvals.134 Armed with newly-available public HMDA data, Hinds and his colleagues published a 1977 report that challenged Hartford-area banks with “disinvestment” in urban areas. According to EI, the City of Hartford invested its employee pension funds in local banks, which in turn reinvested this money in home mortgages in predominantly White suburbs, thereby funneling funds away from urban neighborhoods. But others argued that HMDA data was insufficient to prove that the banks were guilty of redlining. Trinity College professor Andrew Gold, who had participated as a housing discrimination tester for EI in the early 1970s, wrote a report for the State Banking Commissioner in 1977 that challenged the civil rights organization’s analysis. Given that HMDA data for 11 Hartford-area banks only revealed the number of loans and their dollar amounts, Gold concluded that due to “the absence of information on the demand for loans, it is impossible to know if redlining (or disinvestment) occurred. Of those loans that were made, we do not know if, how or why the terms may have differed between the city and suburb.” In other words, although banks made more loans to suburbs than the city, that fact could be explained by other factors, and by itself did not prove discrimination.135 But even if federal HMDA data did not prove the existence of redlining, EI’s final report made a strong case against Hartford’s insurance industry by using testers. In order to qualify for a home loan, mortgage lenders typically required that applicants also obtain a homeowner’s insurance policy to cover any damages to the property in order to protect the bank’s investment. But EI charged that homeowners’ insurance policies were subject to discriminatory redlining by racial composition of the neighborhood. EI staff conducted homeowner’s insurance testing by phone. Testers contacted insurance agents about coverage for identical types of homes (by size, construction, and age) in different areas of the city: a predominantly Black neighborhood in the North End of Hartford, a White neighborhood in the South End, and a White neighborhood in West Hartford. Overall, the influence of location was unmistakable. In the Black neighborhood, 9 out of 13 agents denied home insurance coverage, but they approved it for an identical home in a White neighborhood. On the phone, agents affiliated with major insurance corporations typically offered these reasons for denial of coverage: “It’s simply because of the location… You have a problem being up in the North End…” —agent affiliated with Travelers Insurance Company “Well, I will be honest with you. We have very little available that our companies will let us write anywhere in the City of Hartford.” —agent affiliated with The Hartford insurance company Without homeowner’s insurance, mortgage lenders typically rejected buyers’ applications in Hartford neighborhoods, citing risks about the general location without considering the individual applicant or property. In the view of Boyd Hinds and EI, this evidence proved to them that the “spider web” network of real estate firms, leading banks, and insurance companies, with the approval of state regulators, favored investment in White suburbs, to the detriment of Black and Puerto Rican city neighborhoods. 136 Successes and Limitations Looking back, the Education/Instrucción leadership trio of Hinds, Dixon, and Ramos and their supporters deserve credit for their accomplishments in civil rights activism during the 1970s. First, EI mobilized large numbers of city and suburban residents to serve as testers to challenge racial discrimination by Hartford’s largest real estate firms, and collaborated with the US Justice Department to win a court-approved settlement. Second, EI expanded the Hartford region’s understanding of discrimination from individual actions by real estate agents to broader patterns of institutional racism. Through their creative public information campaigns, EI explained how real estate, banking, and insurance corporations—with the complicity of government agencies—intensified racial and economic divisions between the city and its suburbs. But the Education/Instrucción story also reveals the limitations of activism during this era. Fighting an ambitious civil rights struggle on multiple fronts, with few victories that delivered tangible results, would be difficult for any organization to sustain, especially a small one such as EI. By the mid-1970s, the trio began to move in different directions. Julia Ramos decided to focus her work in the field of psychology, and she eventually left Hartford to obtain her doctoral degree. Ben Dixon saw education as a lever for social change, and he moved his way up through educational administration posts in city and suburban school districts, the Capital Region Education Council, and later as Connecticut’s deputy commissioner of education. Boyd Hinds identified government inaction as the root cause of the problem, so he entered politics and won election to the 8th District of the Connecticut General Assembly to represent Hartford’s North End from 1976-80. While he soon became known as the most left-leaning representative in state government, his positions on issues limited his ability to form coalitions with moderate Democrats, and it diverted energy and funding away from the organization. While EI continued to exist on paper, it ceased operations in Hartford in 1979. “I am exhausted and overextended,” Boyd Hinds wrote to Julia Ramos and Ben Dixon, and explained that all staff positions had been terminated due to lack of grant funds. “I intend to let EI remain dormant for awhile until I get my political involvement completed and my brother’s business straightened out.” He had already moved to spend half his time in Greenfield, Massachusetts, and he and his spouse Wendy tragically died in a car accident Vermont in 1988.137 Did the work of Education/Instrucción produce lasting reforms against racism? One answer appeared in 1989, when the Hartford Courant newspaper sent a team of Black and White investigative reporters to pose as homebuyers at Hartford-area real estate agencies. Back in 1974 when EI conducted similar testing, 7 out of 8 of Hartford’s largest real estate agencies racially steered buyers. In this 1989 Courant study, only 6 out of 15 agencies racially steered buyers, a noticeable improvement. But the Courant also found that 14 out of 15 agencies treated White testers more favorably than Black testers. In half of these cases, real estate agents subjected Black testers to significantly more scrutiny of their personal finances before showing them homes. Judging from this 1974 to 1989 comparison, the frequency of racial steering declined but persisted, despite being expressly prohibited by the 1968 Fair Housing Act and the 1974 U.S. v Barrows settlement that mandated equal opportunity training for real estate firms and their employees. Moreover, the 1989 study revealed how White buyers continued to enjoy hidden privileges in over 90 percent of their encounters with real estate agents. The lesson is clear: Education/Instrucción definitely made a difference, but institutional racism did not disappear. Rather, racism continued to evolve and express itself in ways that still favored White suburban interests. Civil rights victories had been won, but the larger struggle remained unfinished, with new challenges to be taken up by the next generation of activists.138 About the authors and contributors: Jasmin Agosto (Trinity 2010) wrote the first draft as her senior thesis, researched additional sources, and conducted oral history interviews.139 Vianna Iorio (Trinity 2019) and Jack Dougherty expanded on her work for the final draft. Special thanks to Ben Dixon and Lisa Hinds Humphreys (daughter of Boyd Hinds), who both contributed their archives, which were combined into the Boyd Hinds Papers at the Hartford History Center, Hartford Public Library. Julia Ramos Grenier, “Oral History Interview on Education/Instruccion, Part 1” (Cities, Suburbs, Schools Project, Trinity College Digital Repository, November 14, 2009), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_ohistory/10.↩︎ Grenier↩︎ Grenier; Benjamin Dixon, “Oral History Interview on Education/Instruccion” (Cities, Suburbs, Schools Project, Trinity College Digital Repository, August 12, 2010), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_ohistory/3; Lisa Hinds Humphreys, Ben Hinds, and Bo Hinds, “In Memory: A. Boyd Hinds Jr. ’61” (Amherst College, 2011), https://www.amherst.edu/aboutamherst/magazine/in_memory/1961/aboydhinds; Education/Instruccion, “Co-Directors Boyd Hinds, Julia Ramos McKay, Ben Dixon” (Photograph, Boyd Hinds Papers, Hartford History Center, Hartford Public Library, [1974?]), http://hhc2.hplct.org/repositories/2/resources/29.↩︎ Education/Instruccion, Inc., “[Bilingual Pamphlet]” (Boyd Hinds Papers, Hartford History Center, Hartford Public Library, circa 1970s), http://hhc2.hplct.org/repositories/2/resources/29.↩︎ Grenier, “Oral History Interview on Education/Instruccion, Part 1”; Education/Instruccion, Inc., “[History of the Organization]” (Boyd Hinds Papers, Hartford History Center, Hartford Public Library, [1975?]), http://hhc2.hplct.org/repositories/2/resources/29.↩︎ Education/Instruccion, Inc., “Project Ya Basta” (Boyd Hinds Papers, Hartford History Center, Hartford Public Library, 1973), http://hhc2.hplct.org/repositories/2/archival_objects/10747; Musa Bish, Jean Bullock, and Jean Milgram, Racial Steering: The Dual Housing Market and Multiracial Neighborhoods (Philadelphia, Pa.: National Neighbors, 1973), http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/974253.↩︎ US v. Barrows and Wallace Company et al., “Documents Pertaining to Defendants (Discriminatory Evidence)” (US District Court, Connecticut, Civil Action H74-173, 1974), PDF pp. 12-13; US v. Barrows and Wallace Company et al., “Plaintiff’s Combined Answers to Interrogatories of Defendants” (US District Court, Connecticut, Civil Action H74-173, June 14, 1974), attachment I, paragraph 1a.↩︎ US v. Barrows and Wallace Company et al., “Documents Pertaining to Defendants (Discriminatory Evidence)”, PDF pp. 7-8; US v. Barrows and Wallace Company et al., “Plaintiff’s Combined Answers to Interrogatories of Defendants”, attachment I, paragraph 1b.↩︎ US v. Barrows and Wallace Company et al., “Documents Pertaining to Defendants (Discriminatory Evidence)”, PDF pp. 110-11; US v. Barrows and Wallace Company et al., “Plaintiff’s Combined Answers to Interrogatories of Defendants”, attachment I, paragraphs 6b, 4h. See also testimony by the Golds about their initial visit to find a home in Hartford in 1971, US v. Barrows and Wallace Company et al., “Documents Pertaining to Defendants (Discriminatory Evidence)”, PDF p. 86.↩︎ US v. Barrows and Wallace Company et al., “Documents Pertaining to Defendants (Discriminatory Evidence)”, PDF p. 94; US v. Barrows and Wallace Company et al., “Plaintiff’s Combined Answers to Interrogatories of Defendants”, attachment I, paragraph 5b.↩︎ Education/Instruccion, Inc., “Hartford Area Housing Horrors: Samples from a Cross Section of Real Estate Monitoring Tests Conducted 12/73 - 3/74” (Boyd Hinds Papers, Hartford History Center, Hartford Public Library, 1974), http://hhc2.hplct.org/repositories/2/archival_objects/10747; Education/Instruccion, Inc., “More Fair Housing At Its Worst, Project Ya Basta, Excerpts from Recent Real Estate Testing Patterns” (Boyd Hinds Papers, Hartford History Center, Hartford Public Library, December 1974), http://hhc2.hplct.org/repositories/2/archival_objects/10747; Education/Instruccion, Inc., “He’s Got A Secret: Excerpts from Recent Real Estate Testing Patterns” (Boyd Hinds Papers, Hartford History Center, Hartford Public Library, December 1974), http://hhc2.hplct.org/repositories/2/archival_objects/10747.↩︎ US v. Barrows and Wallace Company et al., “Plaintiff’s Memorandum in Support of Motion for Preliminary Injunction” (US District Court, Connecticut, Civil Action H74-173, May 2, 1974); “FBI Probes Charges of Racial Bias: Complaints Filed Against Realtors,” Hartford Courant, February 21, 1974, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/552094538?accountid=14405; Michael Regan, “Real Estate Unit’s Head Questions Bias Charges,” Hartford Courant, February 22, 1974, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/552111580?accountid=14405; Thomas D. Williams, “U.S. Sues 7 Area Realty Firms,” Hartford Courant, May 3, 1974, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/552284751?accountid=14405; US Congress, Public Law 90-284 (Civil Rights Act of 1968: Fair Housing Act) (Washington, D.C: Government Printing Office, 1968), https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/STATUTE-82/pdf/STATUTE-82-Pg73.pdf. Also, Education/Instruccion filed a state-level employment discrimination complaint against the Greater Hartford Board of Realtors and the seven firms, which counted only 3 minority workers among its 330 employees, in “Realtors Charged With Unfair Hiring,” Hartford Courant, June 29, 1974, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/552254027?accountid=14405.↩︎ US v. Barrows and Wallace Company et al., “Consent Decree” (US District Court, Connecticut, Civil Action H74-173, July 25, 1974); Bruce Kauffman, “7 Firms Sign Antibias Decree,” Hartford Courant, July 26, 1974, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/552259961?accountid=14405; Richard Lowenstein, “Real Estate Firms Settle Bias Suit, Ban Racial Steering,” The Hartford Times, July 26, 1974; Richard Goodman, “Letter to US District Court Judge T. Emmet Clarie on Motion to Dissolve Consent Decree” (US v Barrows court exhibit, case 741143, US District Court in Hartford, July 28, 1977).↩︎ Education/Instruccion, Fair Housing At Its Worst (Hartford, CT, 1974), http://hdl.handle.net/11134/120002:otl-ei-fairhousingworst. In Report 2, EI’s preliminary statement credited national networks of housing activists, such as Rose Helper, Racial Policies and Practices of Real Estate Brokers (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1969), https://jstor.org/stable/10.5749/j.cttttjd9. On creative advertising, see Education/Instruccion, Inc., “What Creates, Maintains, and Condones Hartford Suburbs?” Hartford Courant, February 13, 1972, http://search.proquest.com/docview/551070696/citation/3DE9E1C8303F48B2PQ/1; Education/Instruccion, Fair Housing At Its Worst: The Flagrant Violation of Title VIII of the 1968 Civil Rights Act in Greater Hartford, Connecticut, Report 4. (Hartford, CT, 1974), http://hdl.handle.net/11134/120002:246; Education/Instruccion, Fair Housing At Its Worst: The Flagrant Violation of Title VIII of the 1968 Civil Rights Act in Greater Hartford, Connecticut, Report 2. (Hartford, CT, 1974), http://hdl.handle.net/11134/120002:243.↩︎ Education/Instruccion, Fair Housing At Its Worst, 1974, report 5, p. 89; report 6, pp. 99-105; report 7, pp. 108-118.↩︎ See early instances of “red-lining” in the national press by New Jersey Governor Richard Hughes and National Urban League Executive Director Whitney Young in Robert B. Semple Jr., “U.S. Panel Prods Ghetto Insurers,” New York Times, September 16, 1967, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/117652693?accountid=14405 and “Insurers Are Warned on Slums: ’Red-Lining’ Cited,” New York Times: Business & Finance, December 13, 1967, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/118088780?accountid=14405.↩︎ U. S. Commission on Civil Rights, Mortgage Money: Who Gets It?: A Case Study in Mortgage Lending Discrimination in Hartford, Connecticut (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1974), http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/944502594; Michael Regan, “Leaders’ Policy Biased, HUD Panel Told,” Hartford Courant, May 21, 1974, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/552196476?accountid=14405; Michael Regan, “9 Area Banks Named Targets Of U.S. Discrimination Study,” Hartford Courant, July 18, 1974, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/552263901?accountid=14405; US Congress, “Public Law 94-200: Home Mortgage Disclosure Act” (Government Printing Office, December 31, 1975), https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/STATUTE-89/pdf/STATUTE-89-Pg1124.pdf.↩︎ Education/Instruccion, Fair Housing At Its Worst: Redlining in Hartford Connecticut, Report 9 (Hartford, CT, 1977), http://hdl.handle.net/11134/120002:251, pp. 185-192; Andrew J. Gold, “A Report to the State Banking Commissioner Regarding ’Redlining’ and Home Mortgage Disclosure” (Unpublished report, 1977), http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/3251054, p. 37↩︎ Education/Instruccion, Fair Housing At Its Worst: Insurance Redlining, Report 10 (Hartford, CT, [1978?]), http://hdl.handle.net/11134/120002:253, pp. 202-209↩︎ Boyd Hinds, “[Letter to Ben Dixon and Julia Ramos]” (Boyd Hinds Papers, Hartford History Center, Hartford Public Library, September 18, 1979), http://hhc2.hplct.org/repositories/2/resources/29; Dixon, “Oral History Interview on Education/Instruccion”; Grenier, “Oral History Interview on Education/Instruccion, Part 1”; Julia Ramos Grenier, “Oral History Interview on Education/Instruccion, Part 2” (Cities, Suburbs, Schools Project, Trinity College Digital Repository, July 1, 2010), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_ohistory/11; Humphreys, Hinds, and Hinds, “In Memory”.↩︎ The 1989 Courant study also found that Black and White testers received equal treatment in only 1 of the 15 real estate firms, Armstrong Realty in Bloomfield, which also employed the only Black agent that testers encountered in all of their visits. Lyn Bixby et al., “Some Real Estate Agents Discriminate Against Black Home Buyers: Two Connecticuts Series,” Hartford Courant, May 21, 1989, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/1637840117?accountid=14405.↩︎ Jasmin Agosto, “Fighting Segregation, Teaching Multiculturalism: The Beginning of the Education/Instruccion Narrative of the 1970s Hartford Civil Rights Movement” (Educational Studies Senior Research Project, Trinity College, 2010), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/10.↩︎ "],["jumping.html", "Jumping the School District Line", " Jumping the School District Line by Vianna Iorio, JiYun Lee, and Jack Dougherty In 1984, Saundra Foster, a Black single mother living in Hartford, was searching for a better school for her teenage son, Trevor. She described him as “a good kid” who liked to go to school and learned some topics faster than other students, but ran into problems at Hartford Public High School, which in her view was “geared for special education.” Saundra explained that it was “almost impossible” to get Trevor into more rigorous classes, and he was turned down when he tried to raise the issue with his teacher. Trevor was then referred to the district’s alternative education center for students it deemed not suited for regular classrooms. Faced with this bleak prospect, Trevor considered dropping out of high school altogether. This was the breaking point for the Foster family, and Saundra knew she had to take immediate action. “For a child like that to say that he is contemplating dropping out of school, it’s time to start thinking about alternatives,” she later told a reporter.140 Saundra Foster decided to “jump the line” by enrolling Trevor, a resident of the city of Hartford, in the suburban school district of Bloomfield, located immediately to the north. Registering her son to attend a public school outside of her legal residence, without permission, was a serious step; although many parents had done it before, her decision could interrupt his education if they were caught. Saundra decided on Bloomfield because he could live with his aunt, who legally resided in the district. Trevor transitioned well into Bloomfield High School by fall 1984 and even became a starting player in the boy’s varsity basketball team. There was no record of him getting in conflict with peers or teachers and Saundra believed “he was much better off in Bloomfield.” Although she had to live apart from her son, “jumping the line” was the right decision in her mind, because city-suburban school district boundaries were unjust. “I didn’t deal this deck of cards,” she later explained, “I just have to play them,” and her son Trevor “should be able to go where he can to get the best education.”141 Figure 5.6: Watch this 1985 television excerpt about how Saundra Foster, a Hartford resident, and three other Black parents were arrested by the suburban Bloomfield public school district for “stealing” a public education for their children. Although this video reveals her discomfort in discussing her case, local and national activists publicized her arrest to draw attention to broader issues of city-suburban inequity. Source: Mendoza and Saunders, The Public File, copyrighted by WVIT 1985, and included here under fair-use guidelines. Suburban districts referred to non-resident students like Trevor Foster as “line jumpers,” and school officials usually took administrative action to “disenroll” them from the district. But this case was different. In April 1985, Bloomfield police arrested Saundra Foster and three other parents, and charged them with a first-degree felony for larceny, for “stealing an education” worth $4,000, the average expenditure per pupil. This highly-publicized action was unprecedented in Connecticut, and perhaps the nation, as no one in recent memory had been charged as a criminal for enrolling their child in a public school outside of their home district. The arrests highlighted race and city-suburban boundaries. Of the four, three were Black parents from Hartford (Saundra Foster, Elizabeth Brown, and Claude Johnson), and the fourth was a White parent, Norma Wright, who had previously lived in Bloomfield but moved to the adjacent suburb of Windsor due to a divorce. The timing was intentional. Bloomfield town leaders had authorized the arrest warrants in the early spring, just before town residents were asked to approve the next year’s school budget. Furthermore, White Bloomfield residents became increasingly anxious as the town’s high school tipped from majority-White to majority-Black in the early 1980s. Bloomfield leaders’ decision to introduce a felony charge clearly was designed as a scare tactic to discourage Black Hartford families from “jumping the line” into their racially transitional suburban school district. Town leaders played on then-President Ronald Reagan’s racist “welfare queen” stereotype to portray Black Hartford parents like Saundra Foster as “stealing an education,” but looked the other way when White parents had done the same thing a generation earlier.142 While the arrests drew the public eye and may have intimidated some parents, they also sparked a civil rights debate on the growing disparity between city and suburban schools in metropolitan Hartford. Saundra Foster’s advocates and civil rights activists capitalized on her arrest to raise pivotal questions on one’s right to an education. Is it possible to “steal” a public education that the state is required to provide to all students? Did the growing inequality between Hartford and its suburbs prove that Connecticut was not meeting its constitutional obligations for equal educational opportunity for all students? These questions were not just important in the abstract. The arrests forced a closer public examination of education inequity across the Hartford region. During the 1980s, city-suburban school district boundaries became increasingly contested due to a combination of the rising disparities between urban and suburban schools, increasing costs of public education, and rising White suburban barriers against non-resident students of color, in contrast to more relaxed policies towards non-resident White students a generation ago. Although Saundra Foster’s case was eventually was dismissed in court, public criticism against these arrests helped set the context for the landmark Sheff v O’Neill school integration lawsuit four years later, in 1989, where plaintiffs directly challenged the legality of the public school boundaries that divided Hartford and suburban students. Figure 5.7: Boundary between the adjacent school districts of Hartford and Bloomfield CT. Line Jumping Over Time “Jumping the line” was a familiar issue in Bloomfield. When police arrested Saundra Foster in 1985, school leaders estimated that perhaps 100 other non-resident students also attended the Bloomfield School District (about 4 percent of the total enrollment), while others disputed that figure. Beginning in the early 1970s, Bloomfield school officials began to investigate suspected non-residency cases, and Bloomfield police officers photographed students as they stepped off city transit buses that rolled down Blue Hills Avenue from Hartford to the suburban high school. In the 1975-76 school year, Bloomfield school administrators held 58 non-residency hearings, and about half of those students were removed from the district. “Parents want a better education and they’re concerned about the discipline problem in city schools,” assistant superintendent Joseph O’Donnell told the Bloomfield Board of Education in 1976. “A few come from Windsor [a neighboring suburb], but most [come from] Hartford…We don’t get them from lily-white suburbs like Avon or Simsbury.”143 In prior decades, most line-crossers moved in the opposite direction, from poorly-resourced rural and early suburban schools to better-resourced city schools. As previously described in A Golden Age for City Schools in this book, Hartford Public High School acted as a magnet that drew 20 percent of its class from outside the city lines, with families paying tuition of about $3 per week, in 1882. Around the same time, Bloomfield town leaders lamented that so many families from their rural community sent their children by railroad each day to attend Hartford’s public schools. “The practice of sending scholars out of town to school-though entirely justifiable and desirable in many cases-has the effect to diminish the interest in our own schools,” Bloomfield leaders observed in 1888. “While it is admitted that the Hartford schools are, in every respect, excellent, there is a tendency among our people to undervalue our own schools.” In the town of Wethersfield, on Hartford’s southern border, a residency scandal arose at a school meeting in 1917. “It was brought out at the meeting that four members of the school board are sending their children to Hartford schools and have no real interest in Wethersfield schools ‘other than to lower the taxes as much as possible’,” the press reported. Decades later, in 1952, the Hartford school district enrolled at least 18 “out-of-town” students whose families paid $240 per year for them to attend the city’s public high schools, even though this tuition was about half of the actual cost per pupil. A family from the White rural town of Marlborough argued in 1959 that their daughter had the right to attend Hartford public schools, at no tuition, by claiming that they kept a residence above the father’s place of business in the city. Overall, Hartford’s widely-acclaimed city school district retained its desirable status among line-crossers through the middle of the twentieth century, and for the most part these non-resident students were allowed to attend Hartford schools, with the caveat that they had to pay tuition.144 But Bloomfield began to attract significant numbers of non-resident students in the 1960s, and as the racial and economic context shifted in the 1970s and 80s, town leaders began treating “line jumpers” very differently. Wayne Porter, the Bloomfield High School principal from 1962 to 1968, recalled in his 1985 letter to the editor that “the problem of non-resident students has existed for many years.” During the “racial unrest” of the 1960s, many White families pulled their children out public schools in Hartford’s North End, and enrolled them in nearby Bloomfield schools, long before they bought or rented property there. “The [Bloomfield] school administration elected to look the other way in order to avoid controversy,” Porter confided. “What seemed like a reasonable policy 15 years ago was definitely faulty. It made it appear there was no policy and that non-resident student enrollment was sanctioned by the Bloomfield public schools.”145 When Bloomfield’s non-resident students shifted from White to Black in the 1970s and 80s, town leaders took a more aggressive stance against “line jumpers,” by launching police investigations and pressing charges against parents like Saundra Foster. Although former principal Porter preferred to frame the events of 1985 primarily as an “economic matter” due to the rising costs of schooling, rather than a “racial issue,” looking back we cannot ignore this racial reality: the suburb criminally prosecuted Black Hartford parents in the 1980s for taking the same actions that they condoned by White Hartford parents in the 1960s. White racial anxiety at Bloomfield High was driven by the dramatic shift in racial demographics during this period, as shown in Figure 5.8.146 The school enrolled only 13 percent Black students in 1967, which rose to 37 percent by 1977, then climbed to 62 percent by 1984. But the primary driver of this racial change was plummeting White enrollments. Between 1967 and 1984, the number of Black high school students gradually rose from 160 to 421, while the number of White students sharply dropped from 1073 to 267. Furthermore, Bloomfield High had recently tipped from a White-majority to a Black-majority school in the early 1980s, setting into motion broader conflicts around the case of Saundra Foster.147 Figure 5.8: This chart of racial change at Bloomfield High School, 1967-84, shows how it tipped from a White-majority to a Black-majority student population in the early 1980s, just before Bloomfield town leaders authorized the arrest of Saundra Foster and other parents. Just as White parents left the city school district for the suburbs in the 1960s and ’70s, many Black parents sought to follow similar paths, using whatever means were possible. The Project Concern city-to-suburb desegregation program opened new doors in 1966, and enabled nearly 1200 Black Hartford students to attend predominantly White suburban schools at its peak in 1980. But suburban district participation was voluntary, and the total number of lotteried seats available declined to below 800 by 1984, making this strategy more difficult.148 Other Black Hartford parents who earned sufficient incomes sought to rent apartments or buy homes in suburban towns to purchase access into suburban public schools, as many Whites had done a generation earlier. But racial steering by real estate agents, and other forms of housing discrimination, continued to block many Black families from entering White towns or neighborhoods during the 1980s and beyond.149 Given these constraints, Saundra Foster and others registered their children under relatives’ addresses in affordable suburbs such as Bloomfield and Windsor, located on Hartford’s northern border, with growing numbers of Black residents. Both of these districts reported around 20-30 non-residency cases annually in the mid-1980s, though Windsor school administrators handled these through registration checks. By contrast, West Hartford, a wealthier suburb that historically kept out most Black renters and homebuyers, reported only 6 non-residency cases each year, despite having much larger student enrollments.150 Black Hartford parents had fewer familial ties in West Hartford, and their children would have clearly stood out in West Hartford high schools in 1984, each of which enrolled between 10 to 40 Black students.151 Moreover, Bloomfield dramatically shifted its stance on non-resident students when town leaders decided that the police department, rather than school administrators, should investigate and arrest violators. Police charged Saundra Foster and three other parents with first-degree larceny, a class B felony offense that could bring up to 20 years in prison and a fine up to $10,000 in Connecticut at that time. Initially, police planned to charge the parents with third-degree larceny for defrauding Bloomfield taxpayers of $4,001, the average expenditure per pupil in Bloomfield public schools. (If students had remained in Hartford schools, the average would have been around $3,700, or 8 percent less.) But Bloomfield police increased the charge to first-degree larceny on the grounds that the crime included an element of “extortion” by parents. When the story broke in March 1985, attorneys at the Connecticut Department of Education told reporters that they had never before heard of a case where local law enforcement pressed criminal charges in a school residency case.152 Through their highly-publicized scare tactics, the Bloomfield police adopted President Reagan’s racial and gendered stereotype of “welfare queens” who “stole” funds from more-deserving taxpayers. But Saundra Foster did not fit this description. She was a Black single mother who also held a white-collar job at Travelers’ Insurance in Hartford.153 Yet even if Saundra Foster had received government assistance, her son would still be entitled to a free, quality, public education. But suburban law enforcement did not care about the state’s constitutional rights to equal educational opportunity. Instead, by appealing to White suburban distrust of Black urban mothers, the police exploited racist and sexist images to uphold exclusionary school district lines. Some news reporters also played into suburban readers’ anxieties over non-resident students. In the Hartford Courant daily paper, journalists occasionally referred to Hartford residents in Bloomfield public school as “illegal students,” which conjured up popular images of “illegal aliens” on the US-Mexican border.154 The Courant’s political cartoonist highlighted this “illegal” theme by drawing Black Hartford students being smuggled into Bloomfield High School in the trunk of a car, as if they were crossing the US border, with Black suburban students posing questions about the identity of the intruders, as shown in 5.9.155 By labeling Hartford students as “illegals,” the media implied that Hartford students should be denied their state constitutional right to equal educational opportunity, and distanced suburban readers from the growing problem of city-suburban inequity. Figure 5.9: Amid the controversial arrest of Saundra Foster, Hartford Courant political cartoonist Bob Englehart portrayed Black Hartford students arriving at Bloomfield High School hidden in the trunks of cars, conjuring imagery of “illegal aliens” crossing the US-Mexico border. Source: Hartford Courant, copyrighted 1985, included here under fair-use guidelines. Criticizing the Arrests When police arrested Saundra Foster and three other parents, local and national activists seized this opportunity to call attention to the broader issues of city-suburban inequity and the state’s constitutional rights to equal education. State Senator Frank Barrows, who represented Hartford’s predominantly Black North End and Bloomfield, accompanied Foster when she turned herself in at the Bloomfield police station. Barrows publicly criticized Hartford’s “deplorable” educational system. “It’s a shame that someone has to be arrested while trying to educate their children,” he told reporters, and praised Foster as “the next Rosa Parks.” Reverend Jesse Jackson, the nation’s most prominent civil rights activist, publicly denounced the arrests while speaking in Hartford at the National Association of Black Mayors. “These parents have exposed… a two-tier educational system,” Jackson declared. “Other parents should be encouraged to take their children to Bloomfield or wherever good education exists.” Local television publicized the arrests and national newspaper headlines announced that the quality of city schools was on trial in Connecticut. Even Gerald Tirozzi, the State Commissioner of Education, acknowledged his growing concern over the “two Connecticuts” and the widening disparity between urban and suburban public schools.156 Foster’s attorney, M. Donald Cardwell, raised the most provocative question: “How does one steal a free public education?” The underlying issue was not larceny across school district lines, but the growing socioeconomic disparities between districts. The median household income in 1980 ranged from under $12,000 in the impoverished city of Hartford to over $24,000 in middle-class suburbs such as Bloomfield and West Hartford, to nearly $32,000 in upper-class suburbs such as Avon.157 “When you educate the poor people in one group, the middle class people in another group, and the upper-class people in the other third group, something unfair is happening,” Cardwell observed.158 When Saundra Foster’s case moved from Bloomfield into state criminal court in May 1985–and public scrutiny of the arrests intensified–the charges against her and the other parents were dropped. State’s Attorney John M. Baily recommended dismissal after he researched Bloomfield’s recent shift on school residency cases from administrative action to police enforcement. Singling out Foster and the other parents, he warned, would appear to be highly selective and “could be looked upon as malicious prosecution.” Furthermore, the Foster case spoke “to the core of the issue of the constitutional right to a free education,” Baily cautioned. “These questions should be litigated. But this is not the right forum.” Judge Joseph Purtill agreed with the State’s Attorney and dismissed the case.159 After the court dropped the charges against Foster and other parents, Bloomfield leaders recognized their mistake in authorizing the arrests, but devised a more acceptable means to heighten enforcement of residency requirements. The Bloomfield Town Council and the Board of Education jointly adopted a resolution to allot more funds to check residency status and enforce policies through school administrative action before resorting to criminal proceedings.160 Also, the Bloomfield Board of Education began charging tuition to non-resident students, which gave the district a legal basis to pursue civil suits to recover costs.161 As educational costs continued to rise during the 1980s, Bloomfield and other suburban districts began to routinely hire residency officers – and private investigators in some cases – to actively police their boundaries. “The student expulsion business is booming,” read the news story that tracked the number of cases identified by school residency officers in towns bordering Hartford, such as Bloomfield, East Hartford, West Hartford, and Wethersfield. “It’s very cost efficient,” noted one suburban school superintendent, who explained that identifying and removing nearly 30 non-resident students saved the district over $130,000, well worth the $30,000 annual salary of the school residency officer, who previously was a town police officer. Local journalists wrote stories about accompanying residency officers on “stakeouts” to catch lime-jumpers. Suburban districts created tougher requirements for new students during school registration, such as showing a property deed, lease, or utility bill as proof-of-residency. Heightened enforcement of rigid city-suburban school boundaries – with administrative enforcement rather than criminal prosecution – became the new norm.162 Saundra Foster gladly stepped away from the spotlight when her case was dismissed in 1985. But the activists who came to her defense continued to raise public awareness of city-suburban inequity, and questioned whether it is possible to “steal” an education that Connecticut is constitutionally obligated to provide to all students. Four years later in 1989, a coalition of Black, White, and Puerto Rican parents from city and suburban schools, along with a creative team of civil rights attorneys, filed their lawsuit to challenge racial and economic segregation in metropolitan Hartford, which came to be known as the Sheff v. O’Neill case. About the authors and contributors: Vianna Iorio (Trinity 2019) and JiYun Lee (Trinity 2017) both wrote essays on this topic for the Cities Suburbs and Schools seminar, which Vianna later merged and revised for this book, in collaboration with Jack Dougherty. Also, Jasmin Agosto (Trinity 2010) and Richelle Benjamin (Trinity 2015) researched school residency sources. William Mendoza, “Jumping the Line” (The Public File, WVIT Channel 30 television broadcast video, August 31, 1985), http://www.criticalcommons.org/Members/jackdougherty/clips/jumping-the-line/.↩︎ Dave Drury, “Bloomfield Cracking Down on Non-Residents in Schools,” Hartford Courant, March 21, 1985, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/758745359?accountid=14405; Paul Bass, “Case on Residency and Schools Halted,” New York Times: Connecticut Weekly, June 9, 1985, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/111144867?accountid=14405.↩︎ Drury, “Bloomfield Cracking Down on Non-Residents in Schools”; Dave Drury, “2 City Parents Are Charged in Residence Case,” Hartford Courant, April 2, 1985, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/755821077?accountid=14405; Dirk Johnson, “Quality Of City Schools Tested in Trial On Residency: Equity of Schools Tested in Arrests,” New York Times: Connecticut Weekly, May 12, 1985, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/111304566?accountid=14405; Mendoza, “Jumping the Line”.↩︎ “Residency Rule Called Good, If Done by Book: Bloomfield,” Hartford Courant, July 18, 1976, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/544588627/1D33A73396B64DADPQ/1?accountid=14405; Chauncey Bailey, “Non-Resident Students Again Attending Bloomfield Schools,” Hartford Courant: City/Town, September 16, 1976, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/544716872?accountid=14405. Dorothy Billington, the only Black member of the Bloomfield Board of Education in 1985, disputed the estimate of 100 non-resident students, in Drury, “Bloomfield Cracking Down on Non-Residents in Schools”.↩︎ Bloomfield, Town of Bloomfield Annual Report. (Bloomfield, Conn.: Bloomfield Town Clerk, 1888–89AD), https://cscu-csl-primo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/f/148en6t/01CSCU_NETWORK_ALMA991001105679703452, p. 20, Connecticut State Library; “Kicks on Schools in Wethersfield: Dissatisfaction Expressed at Parents’ Meeting: City Gets Sons of Board Members,” Hartford Courant, April 11, 1917, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/556458859?accountid=14405; “Schools Jump Tuition Fees For Out-Of-Town Residents,” Hartford Courant, January 4, 1952, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/561696118/6D35FCF5D55B4EACPQ/1?accountid=14405; “Couple Ask Tuition-Free Schooling For Girl But Residency Is Disputed,” Hartford Courant, February 6, 1959, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/553011819/18F2091DEB304451PQ/1?accountid=14405.↩︎ Wayne Porter, “Non-Resident Students Long a Problem,” Hartford Courant: B, May 21, 1985, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/758689031/fulltextPDF/2FA3B34AF5BD4A2EPQ/1?accountid=14405.↩︎ CT State Department of Education, Fall 1967, 1977-1984, with data interpolated for missing years. TODO: Link to raw data.↩︎ Connecticut State Department of Education, The Distribution of Negroes in the Public Schools of Connecticut, 1967-68 (Hartford, 1967); Connecticut State Department of Education, “School and Grade Enrollment by Race, 1977-1984,” n.d.↩︎ Jack Dougherty, Jesse Wanzer, and Christina Ramsay, “Missing the Goal: A Visual Guide to Sheff v. O’Neill School Desegregation: June 2007” (Hartford, Connecticut and Storrs, Connecticut: The Cities, Suburbs and Schools research project at Trinity College and the University of Connecticut Center for Education Policy Analysis, 2007), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/6/.↩︎ Bixby et al., “Some Real Estate Agents Discriminate Against Black Home Buyers”.↩︎ Dave Drury, “’Line Jumping’ Is Issue Statewide, Officials Say,” Hartford Courant: B, April 7, 1985, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/758695451?accountid=14405.↩︎ Education, “School and Grade Enrollment by Race, 1977-1984” for Hall and Conard High Schools, respectively, October 1984↩︎ Drury, “Bloomfield Cracking Down on Non-Residents in Schools”; Drury, “2 City Parents Are Charged in Residence Case”. Dollar amounts were reported by the press in spring 1985. A year later, educational cost reports for the 1984-85 academic year became available and were higher. Net current expenses per pupil were $4,522 in Bloomfield, and $4,216 in Hartford. Connecticut Public Expenditure Council, Local Public School Expenses and State Aid in Connecticut (Hartford: CPEC, n.d.), http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/3498569, 1986.↩︎ Drury, “2 City Parents Are Charged in Residence Case”.↩︎ Drury, “Bloomfield Cracking Down on Non-Residents in Schools”.↩︎ Bob Englehart, “Editorial Cartoon: Bloomfield High School,” Hartford Courant: C, April 5, 1985, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/755822125?accountid=14405.↩︎ Drury, “2 City Parents Are Charged in Residence Case”; Johnson, “Quality Of City Schools Tested in Trial On Residency”; Mendoza, “Jumping the Line”.↩︎ US Census, Table 57a: Summary of Economic Characteristics for Towns, 1980.↩︎ Mendoza, “Jumping the Line”.↩︎ Bass, “Case on Residency and Schools Halted”.↩︎ Dave Drury, “Bloomfield Alters Its Policy For School Residence Cases,” Hartford Courant, August 16, 1985, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/758752577?accountid=14405.↩︎ Jane Latus Jones, “Schools Will Accept Tuition Non-Residents,” The Bloomfield Journal, August 16, 1985.↩︎ “Residency Officer’s Job Is in Full Swing,” The Bloomfield Journal, November 1, 1985; Jon Elsen, “Bloomfield Officials Laud School Officer’s Work,” The Hartford Courant (1923-1991): SECTION B, April 12, 1986, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/899845262?accountid=14405; Rick Green, “Not In His Town: If You Don’t Live in Bloomfield, William Mahoney’s Job Is to Make Sure You Don’t Go to School There,” Hartford Courant, February 23, 1992, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/1976803002?accountid=14405; Linda B Hirsh, “Schools To Use New Policies to Exclude Out-Of-Town Residents,” Hartford Courant, July 9, 1992, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/1984955026?accountid=14405.↩︎ "],["choosing.html", "Chapter 6 Choosing to Cross the Lines", " Chapter 6 Choosing to Cross the Lines This chapter describes the present-day political compromises that have emerged from battles over schooling and housing boundaries. When civil rights activists finally pressured Connecticut leaders to deliver on the promise of integration with the Sheff remedies, beginning in 2003, the agreement hinged on voluntary public school choice that did not require participation by any individual, or initially, any suburban district. Instead, state leaders agreed to expand interdistrict magnet schools, with highly-desirable curricular offerings in the arts, sciences, and other specialties to attract white suburban families to voluntarily enroll their children in the same school as urban students of color. The Sheff remedy signals a tangible civil rights victory. As of 2015, state funding for 48 interdistrict magnet schools and the Open Choice city-suburban transfer program enrolls about 12,000 Hartford minority students (or 45 percent of the total) in racially integrated settings. But compromises come at a cost. Interdistrict schools merely blur the boundary lines, rather than erase the root causes of inequality. Furthermore, this voluntary integration plan protects suburban white privilege, and our data analysis shows how it favors more privileged Hartford families. The Sheff remedy has attracted critics from all sides, but the suburban-dominated state government has resisted change and threatened to unilaterally drop all support, despite the judge’s order. At present, the Sheff schooling compromise—and related housing voucher policies that promise greater choice—are caught in a standoff, with suburban interests holding the upper hand. MORE TO COME… This chapter will expand on themes that previously appeared in: Jack Dougherty, Jesse Wanzer, and Christina Ramsay, “Sheff v. O’Neill: Weak Desegregation Remedies and Strong Disincentives in Connecticut, 1996-2008,” in From the Courtroom to the Classroom: The Shifting Landscape of School Desegregation, ed. Claire Smrekar and Ellen Goldring (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press, 2009), 103–27, http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/3/. Jack Dougherty, Jesse Wanzer, and Christina Ramsay, “Missing the Goal: A Visual Guide to Sheff v. O’Neill School Desegregation: June 2007” (Hartford, Connecticut and Storrs, Connecticut: The Cities, Suburbs and Schools research project at Trinity College and the University of Connecticut Center for Education Policy Analysis, 2007), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/6/. Dana Banks and Jack Dougherty, “City-Suburban Desegregation and Forced Choices: Review Essay of ‘The Other Boston Busing Story’ by Susan Eaton,” Teachers College Record 105 (2004): 985–98, http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/facpub/21/. Jack Dougherty et al., “School Information, Parental Decisions, and the Digital Divide: The SmartChoices Project in Hartford, Connecticut,” in Educational Delusions? Why Choice Can Deepen Inequality and How to Make Schools Fair, ed. Gary Orfield and Erica Frankenberg (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013), 219–37, https://books.google.com/books?id=x9AlDQAAQBAJ&lpg=PR1&pg=PA219. "],["conclusions.html", "Chapter 7 Where Do We Draw the Line?", " Chapter 7 Where Do We Draw the Line? Next Steps TO COME "],["teaching-researching.html", "Chapter 8 Teaching and Researching On The Line", " Chapter 8 Teaching and Researching On The Line This chapter describes how the book emerged through working with liberal arts undergraduates and Hartford-area community partners in the Cities Suburbs and Schools seminar at Trinity College. For educators, this chapter offers lesson ideas to help students of all ages explore key questions about past and present topics raised in the book. For historical researchers, this chapter describes some of the methods and source materials consulted in creating this book, and some questions that remain unresolved. By making our work process more transparent, we hope to inspire people to educate others and engage in further research on topics in this book. "],["investigating.html", "Investigating Spatial Inequality with the Cities Suburbs and Schools Project", " Investigating Spatial Inequality with the Cities Suburbs and Schools Project I wrote this essay as an introductory overview to Hartford-area education and housing research, featuring studies conducted with students and faculty involved in the Cities, Suburbs, and Schools Project at Trinity College. It originally appeared in the 2011-12 preview edition of On The Line, and was later published in Xiangming Chen and Nicholas Bacon’s 2013 edited volume on Hartford. This version has been revised and expanded to include more recent works and digital features.163 For over a decade, Trinity College students, colleagues, and I have worked together on the Cities, Suburbs, and Schools Project to better understand the past and present relationship between public education and private housing in metropolitan Hartford, Connecticut.164 The CSS Project refers to the collective work done by undergraduates in the interdisciplinary seminar I teach, as well as independent studies, summer research assistantships, and other presentations and papers with student and faculty co-authors. Together, we formulate research questions from provocative readings from literature in history and the social sciences, and design studies using historical, qualitative, and/or quantitative methods to test these ideas in the Hartford region. Several leading scholars have kindly provided guidance and critical feedback via conference calls and professional meetings. Inspired by Trinity’s broader Community Learning Initiative, we also have conducted several research projects in collaboration with local partner organizations, which help us to frame questions, identify sources, and interpret our findings.165 In its broadest sense, our work explores spatial inequalities arising from the increasingly tightening bonds between schooling and housing in the city-suburban Hartford region over the last century. Looking back, our past has been shaped by the lines we have drawn to separate ourselves. Real estate agents maintained the color line. Mortgage lenders engaged in discriminatory redlining. Locally elected officials drew exclusionary residential zoning lines. Suburban homebuyers shopped for better opportunities on the other side of public school attendance lines. As these boundaries became more powerful over time, civil rights activists fought to cross over, redraw, or erase these lines. The story of schooling and racial inequality in Greater Hartford has attracted many scholars and journalists, most notably Christopher Collier’s encyclopedic history, Connecticut’s Public Schools, and Susan Eaton’s close examination of one classroom amid the Sheff v O’Neill segregation case in The Children in Room E4.166 The work of the CSS Project expands upon this literature by analyzing how the relationship between schooling and housing became more influential from the late nineteenth century to the present, generating the contemporary policy challenges of voluntary desegregation remedies and public school choice. Specifically, this chapter highlights and synthesizes research conducted by Trinity students who have worked with me to answer two questions. First, when and how did the most desirable schools shift from the city to selected suburbs, and what role did the real estate industry play in this transformation? Second, under growing pressure from civil rights activists, state and local government have implemented voluntary desegregation remedies and public school choice. Whose interests have been served by these policies—and whose have not? To answer those questions, we need to understand the historical evolution of the marketplace commonly known today as “shopping for schools,” and recent policy reforms that have attempted to decouple public education and private housing. Follow the Money from City to Suburbs Trinity students encountering this topic for the first time are astounded to learn about the stark economic disparity surrounding their campus. According to 2009 estimates from the US Census Bureau shown in the tables below, Hartford ranks as the 4th poorest city among those with populations over 100,000 in the United States (excluding Puerto Rico), with an average family income of only $42,775 in 2009. Nearly three out of ten families in Hartford live below the current federal poverty line, currently around $22,000 for a family of four. But what is most striking is that this impoverished city is located inside the 13th richest metropolitan statistical area, ranked by more than 350 such areas across the United States. In the Hartford metropolitan region (currently defined by the Census as Hartford, Middlesex, and Tolland counties), the average family income reached $99,597 in 2009. When comparing the two columns in the table below, an income gap of over $56,000 separates the average family living inside the Hartford city boundary from those residing in the Hartford metropolitan area.167 Table: Lowest Average Family Income in US Cities over 100,000 (excluding Puerto Rico), 2009 Rank City Avg Fam Income 2009 1 Flint city, Michigan $40,368 2 Cleveland city, Ohio $40,600 3 Detroit city, Michigan $41,443 4 Hartford city, Connecticut $42,775 5 Dayton city, Ohio $43,406 6 Hialeah city, Florida $45,010 7 East Los Angeles CDP, California $45,320 8 Brownsville city, Texas $45,507 9 Paterson city, New Jersey $46,954 10 Toledo city, Ohio $48,846 11 Rochester city, New York $49,072 12 South Bend city, Indiana $49,691 13 Allentown city, Pennsylvania $50,105 14 Syracuse city, New York $50,220 15 Laredo city, Texas $51,152 Table: Highest Average Family Income in US Metropolitan Statistical Areas, 2009 Rank Metro Statistical Area Avg Fam Income 2009 1 Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk, CT Metro Area $150,336 2 Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV Metro Area $127,167 3 San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA Metro Area $120,407 4 Trenton-Ewing, NJ Metro Area $119,590 5 San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA Metro Area $118,713 6 Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA-NH Metro Area $113,192 7 Boulder, CO Metro Area $110,988 8 Napa, CA Metro Area $106,579 9 NY-Northern NJ-Long Island, NY-NJ-PA Metro Area $105,680 10 Baltimore-Towson, MD Metro Area $101,836 11 Oxnard-Thousand Oaks-Ventura, CA Metro Area $100,854 12 Naples-Marco Island, FL Metro Area $100,466 13 Hartford-West Hartford-East Hartford, CT Metro Area $99,597 14 Santa Cruz-Watsonville, CA Metro Area $98,712 15 Anchorage, AK Metro Area $98,290 But the region did not always look this way. In 1876, national headlines declared Hartford to be “the richest city in the United States,” relative to its number of inhabitants, as shown in 8.1. When tabulating the value of all bank deposits, insurance company assets, and taxable property of homes and businesses, Connecticut’s capital city outperformed more famous competitors such as New York and Chicago. To be clear, this claim defined “richest” based on corporate (rather than individual) wealth. By 1903, scholars such as Hartford Seminary sociologist Alexander Merriam pointed out that local wealth varied widely in Hartford, between residences of “wealthier citizens…scattered in different parts of the city” and “a slum of almost the first magnitude” along the Connecticut river. Nevertheless, the central city of Hartford served as an economic engine for the capital region well into the first few decades of the twentieth century.168 Figure 8.1: Scroll the full-screen document from Scribner’s Monthly in 1876, which declared Hartford as “the richest city in the United States,” relative to its population. Digitized by Google Books. Where did the money go? One way to visualize the spatial redistribution of wealth from the City of Hartford to its suburbs is to track home values by town during the twentieth century. For each decade in the map below, the average dwelling or single-family home value is indexed to the region to correct for historical price inflation, with higher values represented by darker shades of green. While not a precise measure, the rough differences over time are striking. In 1910, the region’s highest home values were located in the City of Hartford and its neighboring suburb of West Hartford, as shown in 8.2. In second place were inner-ring suburbs with manufacturing jobs (such as East Hartford, Manchester, Windsor, and New Britain), followed by outlying farming towns to the west and southeast. In 1910, the average home value in Hartford was nearly $5,000, four times more than the average $1,200 home value in the agricultural community of Avon.169 A century later, that relationship had reversed, as home values in the city fell to nearly the lowest in the region, while some outlying farm towns—known today as elite suburbs—climbed to the top. In 2010, the average sales price for a single-family home in Avon climbed to $536,000, more than three times the average $178,000 sales price in Hartford. In some eyes, the once-powerful city-based economic powerhouse had become a doughnut—a fiscally depressed center surrounded by an affluent suburban ring—though with wide variation in the middle. A closer look at recent data reveals wider variation across suburbs than most assume. The Connecticut Metropatterns report dispelled “the myth of the affluent suburban monolith” by illustrating how some suburbs face high levels of fiscal stress, based on the cost of educating their population of needy children relative to their local capacity to raise tax revenues.170 Figure 8.2: Explore the full-screen interactive map of home values in Hartford County, 1910-2010. The most valuable single-family homes (in dark green) shifted from the capital city to selected suburbs over time. Click the tabs or use arrow keys to advance years. Hover over towns for details. Home values have been indexed (where county average = 1.0) to adjust for rising prices over time. Missing values appear in gray. Sources: 1910-1980 from Connecticut Tax Commissioner, author’s calculation of average dwelling value from equalized assessments; 1990 from Capital Region Council of Governments, median single-family home sales price; 2000-10 from State of Connecticut, Office of Policy and Management, average single-family home sales price (2000-2010). Learn more in “Calculating Wealth and Poverty in Past and Present” chapter, TO COME in this book. View historical sources and code for this map, developed by Ilya Ilyankou and Jack Dougherty, based on an earlier version with UConn MAGIC. The Rise of “Shopping for Schools” The status of Hartford’s city and suburban school districts also reversed trajectories during this same period. A century ago, Hartford Public High School, shown in 8.3, offered what nearly all agreed to be the best secondary education in the entire region, attracting students into the city. According to HPHS student records, one out of five students resided outside of Hartford, many in bordering towns, and paid tuition to enroll. Emerging suburbs typically had no high school or one that some viewed as substandard. In nearby Wethersfield in 1917, parents strongly objected to plans to eliminate Latin in their fledgling high school, while four members of the local school board sent their children to Hartford city schools. Two decades later, a prominent survey by Columbia University Teachers College praised Hartford’s public high schools for “maintaining the ‘gold standard’ of its college preparatory students,” with a reputation “widely and favorably known through eastern collegiate circles.” As late as 1958, surveys of Hartford teachers reported it to be “common knowledge in education circles that the city of Hartford and its school system have enjoyed an excellent reputation as a good place in which to live and work over the past 20 years,” according to Trinity researcher Eric Lawrence. At the same time, ten miles west of the city, the rural town of Avon ceased busing its older students to a neighboring district and began constructing their own high school building. By the late 1990s, after decades of urban decline nearly caused Hartford Public High School to lose its accreditation, Avon High School claimed title to the most prestigious public secondary education in the Hartford region.171 Figure 8.3: Scroll down this interactive storymap to view images of Hartford Public High School as it moved to different locations over time. View historical sources and code for this map, developed by Ilya Ilyankou and Jack Dougherty. What attracted white middle-class families to move from the cities to the suburbs? Ken Jackson’s Crabgrass Frontier, which paved a way of thinking for a generation of suburban historians, boiled down the causes of post-war mass suburbanization to “two necessary conditions…the suburban ideal and population growth—and two fundamental causes—racial prejudice and cheap housing.” Indeed, there is supporting evidence for Jackson’s thesis in the Hartford region, particularly the influence of discriminatory public policy decisions on private housing markets. For instance, my colleagues at the University of Connecticut Libraries MAGIC Center and I reconstructed Hartford area maps, originally created by the federal Home Owners’ Loan Corporation and private lenders in 1937 to assess mortgage risks by neighborhoods, as shown in 8.4.172 Officials coded the best investments in green, and the worst in red, which led them to be known in later years as “redlining” maps. But rather than evaluate only the physical property conditions, field agents were instructed to record the racial, ethnic, and social composition of current residents, based on the prevailing White standards of the time. The reports discouraged lenders from offering mortgages to neighborhoods with an “infiltration” of “Negro,” “Foreign-born,” and “Relief families,” thereby favoring mortgage lending to White middle-class areas. Similarly, during the early 1940s, suburban West Hartford officials blocked African-Americans from moving into federally subsidized wartime public housing.173 Figure 8.4: Click on color-coded areas in this interactive map to view neighborhood appraisals by the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) in the Hartford area, 1937. HOLC prioritized neighborhoods to receive mortgage lending from the highest level (A, in green) to the lowest (D, in red). This federal agency worked with local banks and lenders to evaluate Hartford and over 200 other cities during the Great Depression. They measured not only physical conditions, but also the “social status of the population,” and downgraded neighborhoods with non-white, immigrant, and poor residents. In later decades, activists labeled these discriminatory lending practices as “redlining.” View historical sources and code for this map, developed by Ilya Ilyankou and Jack Dougherty, based on an earlier version with UConn MAGIC and the Kirwin Institute. Around the same time, some West Hartford real estate developers wrote racially restrictive covenants into deeds that prohibited residents “other than the white race” from renting or buying property, which remained legally enforceable until 1948. Based on the research of Trinity alumna Tracey Wilson and student researcher Katie Campbell, we uncovered the hidden history of these racist covenants, as shown in 8.5.174 These and other hidden chapters of Northern racial injustice, as well as activists’ efforts to overturn them, have been recounted by Trinity researchers in a special section of ConnectictHistory.org. See also Writing Greater Hartford’s Civil Rights Past with ConnecticutHistory.org with Elaina Rollins and Clarissa Ceglio, and Restricting with Property Covenants with Tracey Wilson and Vianna Iorio, both in this book.175 Figure 8.5: Click on colored rectangles in the full-screen interactive map of restrictive covenants in the Hartford area in the 1940s. Real estate developers wrote restrictions into property deeds that prohibited occupants “other than the Caucasian race.” The U.S. Supreme Court approved these restrictions in the 1926 Corrigan v. Buckley ruling, but later declared them unenforceable in the 1948 Shelley v. Kraemer decision. Yet these restrictions still exist in official property records. To date, we have found 5 race restrictive covenants in West Hartford. If you know of similar restrictions, by race or religion, anywhere in Connecticut, contact the author. View historical sources and the code for this map, developed by Ilya Ilyankou and Jack Dougherty, based on an earlier version created with UConn MAGIC. But Jackson does not explain how public schools fit into his equation, because their role shifted over time. During the immediate post-war years, doubts about the quality of schools in new suburbs meant that they did not serve as a primary motivator for leaving Hartford. Yet by the late 1950s and 1960s, suburban schools became powerful magnets that, on their own, began to attract White middle-class families. How do we explain this shift? The story of post-war metropolitan history needs to address how real estate interests, suburban homebuyers, and government officials contributed to the rise of a relatively new practice known as Selling and Shopping for Schools, as described in more detail elsewhere in this book.”176 Migration out of Hartford was not driven by a perception of higher-quality suburban schools in the late 1940s and early 1950s. In several oral history interviews that Trinity researcher Jacqueline Katz conducted with former Hartford residents who moved to suburbs in the immediate post-war era, none mentioned educational quality as a deciding factor. Clifford Floyd, a Hartford insurance accountant who moved to Avon in 1952 with his spouse and three young children, gave a typical response. “We didn’t come to Avon because of the schools,” he explained. “We just thought it would be better to have a lot more land for the kids to play around in.” Even in West Hartford, where suburbanization began decades before the war, local newspaper editor Bice Clemow found low standards in school facilities, curriculum, and teacher salaries when using a survey drawn from Life magazine. “If we lived in a mill town, where the income level was modest, it would not be startling to find that we could not afford the best in public education,” wrote Clemow. “To document that we have grade B- secondary education available in West Hartford is a shock of another order.”177 The rise of suburban schools can be attributed partly to the actions of real estate firms, which promoted selected private suburban homes by marketing their access to more desirable public schools. In West Hartford, as school enrollments grew with the post-war baby boom, a heated controversy arose at a 1954 school board meeting over a proposal to address overcrowding by redistricting neighborhoods to less crowded schools. Parents who objected based their views on the real estate market. “Whenever real estate men sell property, they tell their clients that they are in the Sedgwick, Webster Hill, or Bugbee areas,” attendance zones on the newly-constructed western side of town. Superintendent Edmund Thorne responded by blaming real estate agents for creating “social class consciousness” in the suburb, and asked, “Doesn’t it boil down to some people thinking there is more prestige to going to one school than another?” But what Thorne perceived as an imaginary distinction was becoming very real for suburban homebuyers.178 Newspaper advertisements reflect the rise of “branding” marketing by real estate firms during the 1950s and 1960s, as shown in 8.6.179 Trinity researcher Kelli Perkins and other students compiled a sample of real estate ads in the Hartford Courant Sunday edition from 1920 to 1990. We tabulated the proportion of ads that mentioned a specific school by name, rather than a generic description such as “near school.” Compared to other suburbs, West Hartford had the highest proportion of school-specific ads, peaking at 38 percent of all residential ads in the town in 1965. Through marketing, real estate firms sought to increase the dollar value of a private home by signaling its location within what homebuyers perceived as a more desirable public school attendance zone. Simply moving into the suburb of West Hartford was no longer sufficient: success also entailed buying into the “right” neighborhood” to attend a “good” public school.180 Figure 8.6: Three West Hartford private real estate ads in 1960, with public schools highlighted in red. Copyrighted by the Hartford Courant, reprinted here under Fair Use guidelines. But real estate firms did not treat all suburbs equally. Most agents refused to sell homes to Blacks in any suburb in the region during the 1950s, but they eventually shifted their stance on one town, Bloomfield, located on the northern border of Hartford and West Hartford. Middle-class African Americans such as Spencer Shaw, a librarian from the city of Hartford, reported having had “several refusals before from real estate people,” yet finally succeeded in purchasing a home through an agent in the early 1960s, from a Greek couple in Bloomfield. The sale sparked a racial transition. “I think within about two months, four or five of the other families moved out,” Shaw told Trinity interviewer Jacqueline Katz.181 Figure 8.7: Spencer Shaw, a Black Hartford resident, successfully purchased a home in a White neighborhood in Bloomfield in the early 1960s. Photo by Jacqueline Katz. Real estate firms engaged in two discriminatory practices—block-busting and racial steering—that shaped the composition of Bloomfield and neighboring suburbs during the late 1960s and 1970s. In block-busting, a real estate agent introduced Black homebuyers into a White neighborhood to scare owners into selling their homes below market value to the agent, who immediately resold them above market value to Black buyers. This sales technique played on White racial fears to make a quick profit. Trinity researcher Aleesha Young compared city directory listings for selected streets where block-busting occurred in Bloomfield, and found some, such as Alexander Road, experienced a residential turnover rate of 41 percent from 1970 to 1975. In the related practice of racial steering, real estate firms diverted Black buyers to home sales in areas such as Bloomfield, while redirecting White buyers to places such as Avon and West Hartford. According to witnesses such as John Keever, a White homebuyer who asked to view homes in Bloomfield, real estate agents “made innuendos about the school system” there and warned about racial attacks against his daughter, but spoke about White suburban school districts in “glowing terms.” Together, busting and steering contributed to the racial population of the Bloomfield school district changing at a much faster rate than the town at large, illustrating a strengthening bond between public schools and private real estate, in the opposite direction.182 Local organizations, with assistance from National Neighbors, a multi-racial advocacy group, led different challenges against real estate firms in the Hartford region. Adelle Wright, chairwoman of Bloomfield’s Human Relations Committee, recalled the “snowstorm of signs” on streets visited by block-busting real estate agents. The signs “reminded the people going into that neighborhood, every day of their lives [that], ‘My neighborhood is turning. I might be the last one here’,” she recalled in an interview with Trinity researchers. In 1973, Wright’s committee persuaded the Bloomfield town council to pass an ordinance against door-to-door and telephone solicitation by real estate agents, and a ban against “for sale” and “sold” signs being posted in front of private homes.183 Figure 8.8: Adelle Wright organized Bloomfield residents against real estate block-busting in the early 1970s. Meanwhile, a Hartford-based organization known as Education/Instrucción, led by a trio of activists —– Ben Dixon, Boyd Hinds, and Julia Ramos — mounted a broader challenge against discriminatory practices across the entire real estate and lending industry, as shown in 8.9.184 In 1973, they organized teams of testers to visit real estate firms and pose as buyers to document racial steering, which was a violation of the 1968 Fair Housing Act. As Ramos explained in an oral history interview with Trinity researcher Jasmin Agosto, she and a Latino male “posed as a couple that barely spoke English, you know, our English was supposedly very minimal to a West Hartford real estate company. We walked in and basically made known through gestures and a little bit of English that we wanted to buy a house in West Hartford.” After some back and forth with the real estate office staff, “we were steered to the North End of Hartford and the South End of Hartford, shown houses and given listings in these two locations. All of this we taped.” With dozens of detailed accounts like this, activists built a legal case against eight large real estate firms in the Hartford area, and persuaded the US Justice Department to prosecute them for racial steering. In addition, Education/Instrucción published a series of reports, Fair Housing at its Worst, which extended charges of discrimination to mortgage lenders, downtown insurance corporations, and complicit government regulators. Although the court case resulted in a settlement against the real estate firms, they denied all wrongdoing and received a relatively mild penalty: monitoring and mandatory training on fair housing law. See also Mobilizing Against Racial Steering and Redlining with Jasmin Agosto and Vianna Iorio, also in this book.185 Figure 8.9: Education/Instrucción Co-Directors Boyd Hinds, Julia Ramos McKay, Ben Dixon, circa 1974. The only large realty firm not to be charged with discriminatory practices was The R. W. Barrows Company. Former co-owner Larry Barrows spoke about real estate sales during this period during oral history interviews with Trinity researcher Cintli Sanchez. Barrows never used racial scare tactics nor had first-hand knowledge of those who did, but he conceded that, “We said some stuff we couldn’t say now.” He openly discussed racial, religious, and other qualities of neighborhoods and schools with clients. “I’m an old time liberal Democrat, so I would tell them, ‘Mixed neighborhood, mixed schools,’ and so forth,” Barrows explained, to help his clients identify the social composition of the neighborhood they desired. Sometimes he had candid discussions with Jewish homebuyers, to help them break into neighborhoods that had previously excluded them. Barrows acknowledged that when real estate agents talked about schools, “we were making judgments on the teachers and principals, which we had no business doing.” Still, Barrows emphasized that agents needed to be responsive to the needs of clients, especially Hartford’s large insurance corporation employees, who transferred into the region and “were brainwashed before they even looked at houses,” by co-workers who coached them to buy into a particular neighborhood. ” As he remembered, “People used to call an agent, and they would say, ‘I want to be in a certain school district’… They wanted somebody who really knew quite a bit about the schools and the districts and so forth. So that was how you got business.”186 By the late 1980s, real estate firms had discovered how to respond to clients’ requests about neighborhood school quality without violating fair housing laws. Rather than voicing their opinions, agents began distributing packets of school data, which became more widely available after Connecticut passed a 1985 law to create standardized student achievement tests (such as the Connecticut Mastery Test (CMT) and the Connecticut Academic Performance Test (CAPT), and subsequent requirements for uniform reporting of district data (the Strategic School Profiles). “Agents get so many questions from buyers about schools, and they are very conscious and concerned about giving out misleading information,” Lynda Wilson, President of the Greater Hartford Association of Realtors, told a reporter in 1993. “They are afraid if they give wrong information, they can be accused of steering.” Margaret O’Keefe, who had previously served as PTO president of two West Hartford schools, added that she understood new federal restrictions to mean it was permissible to share objective education data with clients, but not her own subjective judgments about the quality of individual schools. “You’re treading on very dangerous ground,” she concluded, “unless you have facts.”187 The politics of the school accountability movement, combined with growing access to the Internet, fueled this data-driven wave of “shopping for schools” in the suburban housing market. In 1995, the Prudential Connecticut Realty Company opened its first experimental “computerized library,” located at their West Hartford office, for potential buyers to browse photographs of homes and “information on communities’ demographics and school systems.” The Connecticut Department of Education launched its own website in 1996, and began to include test score data for individual schools for the first generation of web surfers in 1997. By the year 2000, homebuyers with computer access could easily and instantly view details about local schools, whether located around the corner or across the country. Part of the data revolution was driven by state education agencies, to comply with the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. But private real estate firms and non-profit education advocates also harnessed the Web to deliver school-level test scores and demographics to millions of families who eagerly consumed it.188 How much money were families willing to pay to purchase a private home on the more desirable side of a public school boundary line? Trinity Professor Diane Zannoni and her team of econometrics students collaborated with me to answer this question. We compiled public records for single-family home sales in the West Hartford Public School district (to avoid differences between suburbs), and mapped them inside the eleven elementary school attendance zones, which varied by test scores and racial composition. We limited our study to a ten-year period (1996 to 2005) where test formats and attendance zones remained relatively stable, which we split into two halves to gauge the growing influence of school data available via the Internet. Furthermore, we controlled for characteristics of the house (such as interior square footage and lot size), and also the neighborhood, by identifying sales within a very close distance of boundary lines that were drawn through the middle of residential areas, rather than along major roads or parks. Overall, we found that the test-price relationship was positive and significant: a one standard deviation in elementary school test scores produced a 2 percent increase (about $3,800) in the price of an average home during this decade. But we also discovered the increasing significance of race in this predominantly White suburb. During the latter half of our time period (2002-05), the racial composition of the school became much more influential: a one standard deviation in the percentage of minority students led to a 4 percent decrease (about $7,500) in the cost of an average home. In other words, as homebuyers in this predominantly White suburb make decisions about where to live, the sales data suggest that they are becoming more sensitive to the racial composition of their children’s future classmates than their test scores.189 Figure 8.10: Our study compared home prices on opposite sides of public school attendance zones in West Hartford over time. In this suburb, how do we explain why test scores mattered, but the school’s racial composition became more influential on single-family home prices over time? Part of the answer comes from a parallel qualitative study conducted by Trinity researcher Christina Ramsay and co-authors in the CSS seminar, based on door-to-door interviews conducted with 89 recent homebuyers in West Hartford. Fewer than 35 percent of those homeowners with (or expecting) children reported directly “researching” schools by searching for school information online or visiting schools in person. By contrast, over 50 percent found information about school quality through indirect means: their social networks of family, friends, and co-workers. Another part of the answer appears in a Washington DC study, which monitored how users actually conduct searches with an online school information site. They found that users were strongly biased toward checking demographic data on schools, and when making comparisons, tended to reject those with higher percentages of Black students. Together, these three studies suggest that while not all homebuyers directly access school information online, the expansion of the Internet may amplify the power of racial and test data as it travels through their social networks.190 Challenges of Desegregation and Choice For nearly half a century, school desegregation advocates have pushed for a metropolitan Hartford solution to lift urban minority students up to the same quality of education as white suburban students. Advocates lobbied for voluntary interdistrict busing in the 1960s, then pressed for stronger desegregation mandates across the entire metropolitan region in the 1989 Sheff v O’Neill lawsuit. Victory finally arrived for the Sheff plaintiffs in the Connecticut supreme court’s 1996 decision, by a 4-3 vote, that racial and socioeconomic isolation deprived Hartford schoolchildren of their state constitutional right to an equal education opportunity. Yet the court did not specify any remedy or timetable to address this injustice, handing the responsibility over to the executive and legislative branches, where neither the Republican Governor nor the Democrat-led General Assembly desired to alter the boundary lines that divided city and suburban districts. Although Sheff allies proposed a metropolitan school district to unite students across the Hartford region, this bold plan never gained sufficient political traction among local education officials in the suburbs, nor the city, as Trinity researcher Jennifer Williams documented in her interviews with key actors. At present, the limited school desegregation remedies that exist in the Hartford region are based primarily on voluntary measures, under the popular slogan of “choice,” that effectively protect the interests of privileged suburban families while delivering only partial justice to the intended urban beneficiaries.191 Figure 8.11: View the oral history video interview and transcript with Elizabeth Horton Sheff in 2011. In 1966, when representatives of the Project Concern interdistrict busing program attempted to persuade suburban districts to enroll small numbers of Hartford minority students in their districts, they encountered intense resistance from white residents determined to defend their boundary lines. Trinity researcher Grace Beckett discovered that even in West Hartford, one of the few districts that eventually agreed to start up Project Concern, the controversy generated the largest crowd (estimated at 1,200) at a board of education meeting, including many residents who booed religious leaders speaking in support of the plan. After the initial controversy faded, more suburban districts agreed to participate in Project Concern and accept the state subsidy that came with it. In its peak year in 1979, the program enabled approximately 1,175 Hartford students to enroll in suburban districts. Based on 24 interviews that students conducted with Project Concern alumni, Trinity researcher Dana Banks and I found a mix of support and ambivalence about the program. More than half suggested that daily bus rides of an hour (or more) represented a “forced choice,” with less autonomy than the suburbs that voluntarily decided to accept them.192 A second wave of voluntary metropolitan desegregation arose with interdistrict magnet schools, designed to attract families from city and suburban towns with specialized curricula. While three magnets emerged in Hartford during the 1980s, the largest expansion occurred in the aftermath of the Sheff ruling, when the state legislature agreed to fund most construction costs for selected proposals. Magnet schools became a politically popular response to segregation because they allowed individual suburban districts and families to “choose” whether or not to participate in a policy solution.193 Magnet schools also served multiple interests, and not exclusively those of Hartford students. In the early 1990s, Trinity College faced increasing urban poverty and declining admissions statistics, and its Board of Trustees “even began to explore the feasibility of moving the College out of the city,” according to former vice president Kevin Sullivan. Incoming Trinity President Evan Dobelle leveraged private endowment funds to gain state support for the Learning Corridor, a $110 million magnet school complex built on an abandoned field adjacent to the campus in 2000. But Trinity researcher Nivia Nieves and I found that Sheff magnet school funding diverted earlier plans for a Hartford neighborhood school, and reduced the number of seats available to city youth from the Latino community around campus. Although interdistrict magnets were more racially diverse than most city or suburban schools, the relatively low percentage of Hartford students able to attend them led Trinity researcher Sarah Kaminski to question their effectiveness in addressing overall segregation levels.194 Years after the Sheff ruling, plaintiffs and state officials finally agreed to a legal settlement in 2003, with a four-year goal of placing 30 percent of Hartford minority students in “reduced isolation” settings, generally defined as schools with under 75 percent minority students. Together with Trinity researchers Jesse Wanzer and Christina Ramsay, our Missing the Goal report illustrated the limited success of voluntary remedies in meeting that objective, followed by a more detailed analysis of overlapping policy obstacles. We also detected spatial inequalities in how desegregation was implemented. For instance, suburban districts enrolling the highest proportion of Hartford minority students through the Open Choice transfer program (previously known as Project Concern) were more likely to be located farther away from the city, requiring longer bus rides. Also, suburban districts with the highest magnet school participation rates were more likely to have fewer White students (such as Bloomfield), making racial balance more difficult than desegregation planners had anticipated. In 2008, plaintiffs and state officials agreed to a second Sheff settlement, featuring a more comprehensive management plan and a more ambitious desegregation goal to be reached by 2013.195 Public school choice became more prevalent in the Hartford area in 2008, as the new Regional School Choice Office recruited suburban applicants for interdistrict desegregation, and the Hartford Public Schools launched its own district-wide choice initiative to increase school accountability. For many Hartford parents, the opportunity to go “shopping for schools” as suburban parents had done felt empowering, yet the confusion caused by competing choice programs (with similar names but separate application processes) was overwhelming. To address this concern, Trinity students and community partners and I collaborated with Academic Computing staff Jean-Pierre Haeberly and David Tatem, and Social Science Center Coordinator Rachael Barlow. In January 2009, we launched SmartChoices, a parent-friendly digital guide that lists all eligible public school options across the metropolitan region, with an interactive map and tools to sort schools by distance, racial balance, and student achievement. With funding from a local education foundation, Trinity students conducted parent outreach workshops with hands-on guidance on using the tool, while interviewing parents in English or Spanish about their decision-making process. Based on our sample of 93 workshop participants, we found that providing richer information makes a difference: two-thirds either changed or clarified their top-ranked school after the hands-on workshop, and many found options with higher test scores or greater racial balance located closer to their neighborhood. But we also observed some Black and Latino parents using the tool to avoid schools with high concentrations of students from racial groups other than their own.196 Figure 8.12: View this silent video clip of the SmartChoices public school choice search tool, produced by the Cities Suburbs and Schools Project from 2008-2014. Figure 8.13: Trinity student researchers Ada Avila ’11 (left) and Courtney Coyne ’10 (right) interview Hartford parents as they explore SmartChoices during a workshop focus group in 2009. To better understand the “shopping for schools” market, the CSS Project expanded our research agenda to analyze which types of families do (and do not) participate in public school choice programs in the Hartford region, and how they vary by student characteristics, school composition, and neighborhood demographics. Our work builds on prior studies by Trinity researchers who statistically analyzed magnet school application data, conducted door-to-door interviews with parents in selected Hartford neighborhoods with very high or low application rates, and used geographic information systems (GIS) to display results through maps to understand how different stakeholders interpret their meaning.197 Our most recent “Who Chooses?” report, co-authored with Professor Diane Zannoni and her econometrics students, examines Hartford-resident grade 3-7 students enrolled in Hartford Public Schools and whether they applied to an inter-district magnet school or Open Choice suburban transfer program through the Regional School Choice Office lottery in Spring 2012. Overall, we found that lottery participation was not random, but linked to student socioeconomic characteristics that often showed higher rates by more privileged families. In this particular sample, we found statistically lower levels of lottery participation among English Language Learners and students with special needs, and generally higher levels by students with high standardized test scores, and those who live in census areas with higher median household incomes and higher percentages of owner-occupied housing. Our analysis does not reveal the cause of this disparity. Plausibly, it could be driven by school “creaming” (recruitment or discouragement of selected students) and/or family “climbing” (using their social capital for upward mobility). In any case, uneven lottery participation raises a troubling question: can Connecticut’s educational inequality be remedied by a voluntary school choice plan that burdens the most marginalized families to achieve their own justice?198 More research remains to be done in several related areas that Trinity students and faculty have begun to study. Our understanding of magnet schools would improve with further examination of student-to-student relationships and attitudes toward other races. We also would benefit from more cultural comparisons between suburban school districts, and analysis of achievement gaps within suburban districts. The role played by Catholic and private schools in educational markets deserves closer study, as does the legislative history of funding school districts and interdistrict programs. Of course, fruitful ideas for researching schooling and housing in metropolitan Hartford can be found in publications by scholars at other institutions, and in works on other regions.199 Conclusion While our society values equal opportunity for all, our CSS Project research has challenged my students to recognize how the powerful relationship between schooling and housing often blocks us from achieving that goal. Although we call them “public” schools, we buy and sell access to most as “private” commodities, based on the underlying real estate and governmental boundary lines that restrict entry. Access to more desirable elementary and secondary schooling became more valuable in the post-World War II labor market, with rising economic returns for students attaining higher education degrees, which fueled the practice of “shopping for schools” in suburbs today. As civil rights activists have battled against barriers to equal access over the years, state lawmakers have gradually begun to decouple housing and schooling by offering interdistrict transfers and magnet schools, which do not require families to rent or buy a home in a suburban district. In essence, Connecticut’s voluntary desegregation policy has created a second “shopping” marketplace, called public school choice, in our attempt to remedy the ills of the existing market based on private housing. Yet desirable public school options remain scarce. Moreover, this second government-run choice market relies on individual families (with varying levels of literacy) to sort through glossy brochures and competing advertising campaigns to identify the “best” schools for their children, without fully considering the aggregated effects of these decisions on who gets ahead, and who is left behind. By itself, research will not eliminate the disparities that divide us. But it is an essential step in the process. Uncovering the underlying causes of inequalities, and understanding the success and limitations of past reform efforts, helps us come to terms with the depth and scope of the real issues facing us. Learning about the evolution of cities, suburbs, and schools—particularly in the company of reflective community partners, with perspectives broader than our own—can teach us important lessons about privilege and power, and strengthen our collective capacity. Reconstructing a roadmap of how we arrived at our present-day policy dilemmas does not provide us with a detailed reform agenda. But the process can suggest possible avenues and future directions for moving all of us a few steps forward. Jack Dougherty, “Investigating Spatial Inequality with the Cities, Suburbs, and Schools Project,” in Confronting Urban Legacy: Rediscovering Hartford and New England’s Forgotten Cities, ed. Xiangming Chen and Nicholas Bacon (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 2013), 110–26, https://books.google.com/books?id=qeB_AQAAQBAJ.↩︎ Cities Suburbs and Schools Project at Trinity College, http://commons.trincoll.edu/cssp.↩︎ Community Learning at Trinity College, http://cher.trincoll.edu.↩︎ Christopher Collier, Connecticut’s Public Schools: A History, 1650-2000 (Orange, CT: Clearwater Press, 2009), http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1004930998; Susan Eaton, The Children in Room E4: American Education on Trial (Chapel Hill NC: Algonquin Books, 2007).↩︎ “Average Family Income in the Past 12 Months in 2009 Inflation-Adjusted Dollars, Table SE:T:59” (American Community Survey 1-year estimates via Social Explorer, 2009), in author’s Google Spreadsheet, https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AtmGKybdRLlZdDJEcDRxSXN1ZS1oZkNISmFEOE9jUEE.↩︎ Clark, “The Charter Oak City”; Merriam, The Social Significance of the Smaller City, reprinted as Merriam, “The Social Conditions of the Smaller City”.↩︎ Ilyankou and Dougherty, “Map,” 2017.↩︎ Myron Orfield and Thomas Luce, Connecticut Metropatterns: A Regional Agenda for Community and Prosperity in Connecticut (Minneapolis, MN: Ameregis, 2003), http://www.law.umn.edu/metro/metro-area-studies/metropolitan-area-studies-by-region.html; See home value data sources in “Calculating Wealth and Poverty in Past and Present” chapter, TO COME in this book.↩︎ Hartford Public High School, “Student Records” (HPHS Museum and Archive, 1882); “Kicks on Schools in Wethersfield”, p. 11; George D Strayer and N. L. Engelhardt, The Hartford Public Schools in 1936-37: A Comprehensive Report of the Survey of the Public Schools of Hartford, Connecticut: Survey Pamphlet (New York: Division of Field Studies, Institute of Educational Research, Teachers College, Columbia University, 1937), http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/11136338, pamphlet X, p. 13; “Personnel Policies: A Report Submitted to the Hartford Board of Education” (Pamphlet Collection, Hartford History Center, Hartford Public Library, 1958), cited in Eric Lawrence, “Teacher Suburbanization & The Diverging Discourse on Hartford Public School Quality, 1950-1970” (American Studies senior research project, Trinity College, 2002), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/35/; see HPHS historical photos in Ilya Ilyankou and Jack Dougherty, “Map: Hartford Public High School Locations, 1847-Present” (On The Line, 2017), https://ontheline.github.io/otl-hphs/.↩︎ Ilyankou and Dougherty, “Map,” 2017; University of Connecticut Libraries Map and Geographic Information Center, “Federal HOLC \"Redlining\" Map, Hartford Area, 1937”.↩︎ Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier, p. 287; See Federal Lending and Redlining, with Sean McGann and Racial Barriers to Public Housing, with Emily Meehan, both in this book.↩︎ Ilyankou and Dougherty, “Map,” 2017; University of Connecticut Libraries Map and Geographic Information Center, “Race Restrictive Covenants in Property Deeds, Hartford Area, 1940s”.↩︎ Connecticut History, “Trinity College Students Call Attention to Histories of Inequality” (ConnecticutHistory.org, May 2013), http://connecticuthistory.org/trinity-college-students-call-attention-to-histories-of-inequality/.↩︎ Jack Dougherty, “Shopping for Schools: How Public Education and Private Housing Shaped Suburban Connecticut,” Journal of Urban History 38, no. 2 (March 2012): 205–24, https://doi.org/https://doi-org.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/10.1177/0096144211427112.↩︎ Clifford Floyd, “Oral History Interview on Avon, CT” (Cities, Suburbs, Schools Project, Trinity College Digital Repository, June 2003), cited in Jacqueline Katz, “Historical Memory and the Transformation of City and Suburban Schools” (Educational Studies Senior Research Project, Trinity College, 2004), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/27/; Bice Clemow, A Layman Looks at Schools in West Hartford: A Series Reprinted from the West Hartford News from January 25 Through February 15, 1951, Based on the Life Magazine Questionnaire (West Hartford, CT: West Hartford News, 1951), https://history.westhartfordlibrary.org/items/show/506.↩︎ “New School Lines Offered by Thorne,” Hartford Times, April 8, 1954.↩︎ “Display Ad (West Hartford Homes for Sale, Featuring Schools),” The Hartford Courant (1923-1993); Hartford, Conn., May 1, 1960, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/hnphartfordcourant/docview/551999874?accountid=14405.↩︎ Dougherty, “Shopping for Schools”.↩︎ Spencer Shaw, “Oral History Interview on Bloomfield, CT” (Cities, Suburbs, Schools Project, Trinity College Digital Repository, July 2, 2003), cited in Katz, “Historical Memory and the Transformation of City and Suburban Schools”.↩︎ Aleesha Young, “Real Estate, Racial Change, and Bloomfield Schools in the 1960s and ’70s” (Educational Studies Senior Research Project, Trinity College, 2005), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/18/; Keever quoted in James Ross, “Realty Bypassing Told by Resident,” Hartford Courant, June 21, 1973, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/551637521?accountid=14405, p.52↩︎ Adelle Wright, “Oral History Interview on Bloomfield, CT, Part One” (Cities, Suburbs, Schools Project, Trinity College Digital Repository, April 11, 2005), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_ohistory/5.↩︎ Education/Instruccion, “Co-Directors Boyd Hinds, Julia Ramos McKay, Ben Dixon”.↩︎ Grenier, “Oral History Interview on Education/Instruccion, Part 1”, cited in Agosto, “Fighting Segregation, Teaching Multiculturalism”; Education/Instruccion, Fair Housing At Its Worst, 1974.↩︎ Larry Barrows, “Oral History Interview on West Hartford Real Estate, Parts 1 and 2” (Cities, Suburbs, Schools Project, Trinity College Digital Repository, June 27, 2007).↩︎ William Hathaway, “After the Price, the Next Question Is: How Are the Schools?” Hartford Courant, September 26, 1993, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/docview/2123811530/?accountid=14405.↩︎ Dougherty, “Shopping for Schools”.↩︎ Jack Dougherty et al., “School Choice in Suburbia: Test Scores, Race, and Housing Markets,” American Journal of Education 115, no. 4 (August 2009): 523–48, http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/1.↩︎ Christina Ramsay, Cintli Sanchez, and Jesse Wanzer, “Shopping for Homes and Schools: A Qualitative Study of West Hartford, Connecticut” (Hartford, Connecticut: Trinity College, December 2006), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/25/; On the Washington DC study, see Jack Buckley and Mark Schneider, Charter Schools: Hope or Hype (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007).↩︎ Jennifer Williams, “The Unthinkable Remedy: The Proposed Metropolitan Hartford School District” (Presentation slides, Cities Suburbs and Schools Project at Trinity College, July 2004), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/19/.↩︎ Grace Beckett, “Suburban Participation in Hartford’s Project Concern School Desegregation Program, 1966-1998” (Educational Studies Senior Research Project, Trinity College, 2004), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/11/; Dana Banks and Jack Dougherty, “City-Suburban Desegregation and Forced Choices: Review Essay of ’The Other Boston Busing Story’ by Susan Eaton,” Teachers College Record 105 (2004): 985–98, http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/facpub/21/. See also Laurie Gutmann, “Whose Concern Matters?: Student Support and Project Concern” (Educational Studies Senior Research Project, Trinity College, 2003), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/17/.↩︎ See Connecticut’s early magnet school history in Thomas C. Reynolds, “Magnet Schools and the Connecticut Experience” (Master’s thesis, Trinity College, 1994), http://ctwweb.wesleyan.edu:7002/vwebv/holdingsInfo?bibId=114767.↩︎ Kevin B. Sullivan and James A. Trostle, “Trinity College and the Learning Corridor: A Small, Urban Liberal Arts College Launches a Public Magnet School Campus,” Metropolitan Universities 15, no. 3 (2004): 15–34, https://journals.iupui.edu/index.php/muj/article/view/20176/19787; Peter J. Knapp and Anne H. Knapp, Trinity College in the Twentieth Century: A History (Hartford Conn.: Trinity College, 2000), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/w_books/2/; Nivia Nieves and Jack Dougherty, “Latino Politicians, Activists, and Parents: The Challenge of Implementing City-Suburban Magnet Schools” (American Educational Research Association conference paper, April 10, 2006), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/30/; Sarah Kaminski, “Magnet Schools: An Effective Solution to Sheff v. O’Neill?” The Trinity Papers 21 (2002): 63–71, http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/9/.↩︎ Dougherty, Wanzer, and Ramsay, “Missing the Goal”; Jack Dougherty, Jesse Wanzer, and Christina Ramsay, “Sheff v. O’Neill: Weak Desegregation Remedies and Strong Disincentives in Connecticut, 1996-2008,” in From the Courtroom to the Classroom: The Shifting Landscape of School Desegregation, ed. Claire Smrekar and Ellen Goldring (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press, 2009), 103–27, http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/3/.↩︎ Learn about the SmartChoices public school search tool, which the Cities Suburbs & Schools Project ran from 2008 to 2014, at https://commons.trincoll.edu/cssp/smartchoices/; Devlin Hughes, Designing Effective Google Maps for Social Change: A Case Study of SmartChoices (Hartford, Connecticut, 2009), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/8/; Jack Dougherty et al., “School Information, Parental Decisions, and the Digital Divide: The SmartChoices Project in Hartford, Connecticut,” in Educational Delusions? Why Choice Can Deepen Inequality and How to Make Schools Fair, ed. Gary Orfield and Erica Frankenberg (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013), 219–37, https://books.google.com/books?id=x9AlDQAAQBAJ&lpg=PR1&pg=PA219; Jack Dougherty, “SmartChoices Screencast (2008-14)” (Cities Suburbs & Schools Project, Trinity College, November 7, 2014), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0su0t0PFNdk&feature=youtube_gdata_player.↩︎ Naralys Estevez and Jack Dougherty, “Do Magnet Schools Attract All Families Equally? A GIS Mapping Analysis of Latinos” (American Education Research Association conference paper, April 10, 2006), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/16/; Jesse Wanzer, Heather Moore, and Jack Dougherty, “Race and Magnet School Choice: A Mixed-Methods Neighborhood Study in Urban Connecticut” (American Educational Research Association conference paper, March 28, 2008), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/22/; Brittany Price, “The Usage of Maps in Facilitating Conversations with Stakeholders about Educational Desegregation in Hartford” (Educational Studies Senior Research Project, Trinity College, 2009), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/26/; Matthew DelConte et al., “Who Chooses? A Preliminary Analysis of Hartford Public Schools” (Cities Suburbs and Schools Project presentation slides, January 2012), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/37.↩︎ Jack Dougherty et al., “Who Chooses in Hartford? Report 1: Statistical Analysis of Regional School Choice Office Applicants and Non-Applicants Among Hartford-resident HPS Students in Grades 3-7, Spring 2012” (Hartford, CT: Cities Suburbs Schools Project at Trinity College, May 12, 2014), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/46; Jack Dougherty et al., “Who Chooses in the Hartford Region? Report 2: A Statistical Analysis of Regional School Choice Office Applicants and Non-Applicants Among Hartford and Suburban-Resident Students in the Spring 2013 Lottery” (Hartford, CT: Cities Suburbs Schools Project at Trinity College, October 17, 2015), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/48/.↩︎ On student relations and attitudes, see Molly Schofield, “Increasing Interracial Relationships” (Educational Studies Senior Research Project, Trinity College, 2002), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/24/; Nicola Blacklaw, “The Presence of Contact Conditions in a Magnet School” (Educational Studies Senior Research Project, Trinity College, 2002), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/12/; David Reuman, “Effects of An Inter-District Magnet Program On Inter-Racial Attitudes At School” (American Educational Research Association conference paper, April 25, 2003), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/32/. On suburban districts, see Antonio DePina, “Comparing Suburban School Culture in Metropolitan Hartford: How Does the Formal and Hidden Curriculum Vary Across Two High Schools?” (Educational Studies Senior Research Project, Trinity College, 2003), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/15/; Rebecca Wetzler, “The Effects of Health, Mobility, and Socio-Economic Status Factors on the Race Gap in Achievement” (Psychology senior thesis, Trinity College, 2006), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/20/. On parochial and private schools, see Carmen Green, “Catholic Schools, Racial Change, and Suburbanization, 1930-2000” (History of Education Society conference paper, November 5, 2004), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/13/; Heather Moore, “Private School Choice and Educational Outcomes in Metropolitan Hartford” (Cities Suburbs and Schools Project presentation slides, July 2005), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/36. On school finance, see Lis Pennington, Emily Steele, and Jack Dougherty, “A Political History of School Finance Reform in Metropolitan Hartford, Connecticut, 1945-2005” (American Educational Research Association conference paper, April 2007), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/29/; David MacDonald, “The Funding of Interdistrict Magnet Schools in Connecticut: A Failed Approach to Addressing the Sheff Vs. O’Neill Connecticut Supreme Court Ruling?” (Public Policy graduate course paper, Trinity College, 2005), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/34/.↩︎ "],["writing.html", "Writing Greater Hartford’s Civil Rights Past with ConnecticutHistory.org", " Writing Greater Hartford’s Civil Rights Past with ConnecticutHistory.org by Elaina Rollins, Clarissa Ceglio, and Jack Dougherty This chapter originally appeared in Connecticut History Review, whose editor granted permission to republish here with digital links and images.200 Several Trinity students’ ConnecticutHistory.org essays have been expanded into chapters in this book. Through a campus-community partnership, Trinity College undergraduates have published essays under the guidance of http://ConnecticutHistory.org editors that enrich our understanding of twentieth-century civil rights history. Two years ago, Dougherty, a Trinity faculty member, and Ceglio, an editor for the Connecticut Humanities’ project, developed a public history writing assignment. Based on primary source research, students in the Cities, Suburbs, and Schools seminar have authored nearly a dozen short articles on too-often-forgotten histories of Northern injustice, focusing on housing discrimination, segregated education, and efforts to combat inequality in metropolitan Hartford. This assignment challenges undergraduates to accurately and clearly interpret past controversies for contemporary audiences, while instilling an appreciation for writing as an iterative process of reflection and refinement. Newer web-based tools enable drafts to be collaboratively reviewed by peers and the editor and also allow digital evidence–from archival documents, images, and interviews–to be incorporated directly into the essays. Overall, students’ reflections on this process emphasize the intrinsic value of actively contributing to the reshaping of Connecticut’s civil rights history on the public web, rather than simply earning a grade within the confined walls of the classroom. ConnecticutHistory.org is an award-winning digital re-imagining of the traditional state encyclopedia that takes into account the ways in which information seekers use the internet not only for topic-specific searches but also for serendipitous discovery and, through Facebook, Twitter, and other social media, for sharing.201 Connecticut Humanities (CTH), the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, developed this online resource in partnership with the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University and the Digital Media Center of the University of Connecticut’s Digital Media & Design Department. Built using WordPress, a free, open-source content management system suited to the needs of web-based publishing, ConnecticutHistory.org debuted in 2012.202 Since then, by adding new material on a weekly basis, the site has grown to encompass more than 1,300 entries, 3,784 bibliographic records, more than 2,893 connections to digitized primary sources residing elsewhere on the web, and 258 resource pages–one for each of the state’s 169 towns and others on an expanding list of topics and people.203 Those who read and make regular use of the site include history buffs, educators and students (chiefly grades 7 through 12), and other repeat visitors with a sustained interest in state history. Of the roughly 16,700 visits to the site each month, many are the result of specific search queries as well as “click-throughs” from linked citations in other online publications, such as those of the National Geographic Society and Smithsonian Institution.204 Entries include lighter fare, such as the “Today in History” and “Who Knew?” series, which appeals to casual readers. But even short pieces encourage self-guided exploration, through tags as well as links to related ConnecticutHistory.org articles of greater depth. These more substantive entries are produced in collaboration with scholars and authors in the state’s museums, libraries, archives, historical societies, and universities.205 Such partnerships are essential to a sustainable, nonprofit publishing model built on collaborative content acquisition rather than commissioning. Editorial staff hold advanced degrees in public history, primary contributors are experts in their subject matter, and, unlike an academic journal, content does not undergo external peer review. The intent is to maintain a nimble publishing schedule, mindful of the public’s media consumption habits and responsive to topical interests created by contemporary concerns. Importantly, the partnership model provides collaborators with an additional platform for disseminating scholarship produced in support of exhibitions, lectures, and other public fora that do not remain in the public eye. Scholars who publish in peer review journals and for academic presses also work with ConnecticutHistory.org to present this research in public-friendly form and thereby reach different audiences.206 Content, including essays written by Connecticut State Historian Walter W. Woodward, also comes from ConnecticutHistory.org partner Connecticut Explored magazine, which is co-published by Connecticut Humanities. Lastly, ConnecticutHistory.org structures its entries so that information seekers will be directed out to the institutions and repositories that hold and interpret primary source materials related to that particular slice of history. In other words, entries function as connectors by providing links to related institutions, primary source documents, online databases, digitized finding aids, places to visit, books to read, and other means of digging deeper into a given subject. This supports CTH’s mission to encourage the state’s communities to “explore new ideas and historical perspectives, and experience the cultural richness around them.”207 Helping to increase access to heritage resources is only one facet of the project’s commitment to public history. It also undertakes a range of collaborations designed to introduce students to the work of public history or dedicated to bringing lesser known histories of the state to wider general audiences.208 An example of the latter is a long-term effort to rethink how state encyclopedias can be more inclusive with regard to Native histories, particularly by including indigenous knowledge and voices. The Trinity College collaboration detailed here works toward both goals; its iterative writing assignment engages students in our shared criteria for sound historical methodology, clarity of expression, and use of multi-media documentation to educate non-specialist public audiences about historical patterns of racial discrimination in education and housing. This collaboration has inspired similar work with Wesleyan University, Central Connecticut State University, and Capital Community College. For the past two years, Dougherty and Ceglio have collaborated on this ConnecticutHistory.org public history writing assignment during a three-week unit in his Cities, Suburbs, and Schools interdisciplinary seminar at Trinity.209 Students enrolled in the seminar investigate historical and contemporary relationships between schooling and housing in metropolitan Hartford, and this unit is only one example of student learning through community research with a partner organization. Dougherty and Ceglio co-designed the public history writing assignment which requires each student to compose a digital essay, not to exceed 1,000 words, on a designated topic of interest to readers of ConnecticutHistory.org.210 Since the undergraduates are not necessarily history majors, Dougherty generates an online “organizer” page: a list of prospective topics with links to relevant primary source materials, including oral history interviews prior students have recorded, print items he has scanned, and digital holdings from online repositories. Together, Dougherty and Ceglio tailor the list to highlight specific episodes in Greater Hartford’s past that lend themselves to a short essay, with an eye toward expanding civil rights history coverage on ConnecticutHistory.org. Figure 8.14: Clarissa Ceglio teaches Trinity students Emily Meehan and Sean McGann how to write for ConnecticutHistory.org. Unlike typical college papers, which are seen only by the student and the instructor, this public history writing assignment is designed for broader audiences, and its key stages occur on the public web. Ceglio visits the seminar to co-introduce the assignment and the editorial standards of ConnecticutHistory.org. Over the next two weeks, students select a topic from the list that interests them, then analyze and translate historical sources into engaging and accessible stories for diverse online audiences. They author their first drafts in a Google Document, a web-based tool that allows individuals to word-process their own text while simultaneously benefiting from online peer review by classmates, the instructor, and the editor, based on our common evaluation criteria.211 Does the essay open with a compelling argument or story that explains the significance of the topic to Connecticut history? Does it inspire readers to think in new ways? Are the claims supported with appropriate evidence and reasoning? Is the historical research accurate and balanced, with full source citations? Does the writing style engage broad audiences, and provide sufficient background for those unfamiliar with the topic? Is the text well organized and grammatically correct? [For second draft only:] Are digital elements (such as links, images, and videos) thoughtfully integrated into the web essay, and properly credited? After students revise their second drafts and embed links and images to relevant digital sources, all are required to post their work on the seminar’s public WordPress site. In accordance with the assignment guidelines, the editor and the instructor encourage selected students to revise and submit a third draft to ConnecticutHistory.org, with no guarantee that submissions will be accepted for publication. To date, about one-third of the students have eventually met the editorial standards for publication, which usually requires them to do additional work beyond the end of the semester. Multiple rounds of peer review and editing make the assignment much more real-world than the typical college essay, and students are challenged to raise their writing skills to contribute to an education larger than their own. Figure 8.15: Students and mentors comment on draft essays using Google Documents. Trinity student essays published on ConnecticutHistory.org cover a variety of topics, from discriminatory housing practices to efforts to combat educational inequality. These true tales of Northern injustice come as a shock to those who assume historical racial discrimination was limited to the South. By collaborating with ConnecticutHistory.org, Trinity students are able to spread awareness of this forgotten history. In his essay “The Effects of ‘Redlining’ on the Hartford Metropolitan Region,” student Shaun McGann discusses how current racial isolation in Hartford was shaped by past discriminatory housing practices. McGann writes that in 1937, the newly established Home Owner’s Loan Corporation (HOLC) created maps that color-coded neighborhoods based on investment opportunities in those areas; however, HOLC ratings were not always objective. Rather than simply relying on physical property conditions, HOLC frequently assigned poor investment values to neighborhoods with proportionally larger populations of blacks, immigrants, or members of the economic underclass–a process known as “redlining.” Another student essay by Mary Daly, “Race Restrictive Covenants in Property Deeds,” elaborates on discriminatory practices designed to maintain the racial homogeneity of white suburbs in the 1940s. Some housing developers inserted restrictions into property deeds that prohibited “persons of any race except the white race” from owning or occupying selected homes in Greater Hartford, language that the United States Supreme Court deemed “unenforceable” in 1948 but was not made illegal until the 1960s. Furthermore, Emily Meehan’s essay, “The Debate Over Who Could Occupy World War II Public Housing in West Hartford,” recounts how white suburban residents and locally elected leaders effectively blocked African American workers from residing in federally subsidized wartime housing. Together, these pieces illuminate moments of Northern history that may have been forgotten over the years but have undoubtedly contributed to the racial housing patterns that still exist today in Greater Hartford.212 Other Trinity student essays highlight challenges against other forms of inequality by Connecticut activists, including the creation of the state’s education amendment and other more recent school desegregation programs. In “Five Minutes that Changed Connecticut: Simon Bernstein and the 1965 Education Amendment,” Elaina Rollins tells the story of Simon Bernstein, a Hartford lawyer and author of Connecticut’s education amendment, which guarantees free elementary and secondary schooling for children across the state. Bernstein not only lobbied against racially restrictive covenants, such as those described in Daly’s essay, he also advanced the amendment on his own accord, despite significant obstacles from his political superiors. Connecticut’s education amendment later served as the basis for school inequality lawsuits such as the 1989 Sheff v. O’Neill case, which charged that Greater Hartford’s racially isolated schools were unconstitutional. Trinity student Brigit Rioual discusses the aftermath of this landmark case in her essay “Sheff v. O’Neill Settlements Target Educational Segregation in Hartford.” The Connecticut Supreme Court ruled in 1996 that the state must provide equal educational opportunities for Hartford students, but Rioual’s piece explains how Connecticut initially failed to follow through on the court’s order. While the state had agreed to enroll at least 30 percent of Hartford minority children in “reduced isolation” settings (i.e., schools where minorities made up less than three-quarters of the student body), only 17 percent had been achieved by 2007. Rioual’s essay tells a relatively recent story, but the roots of the Sheff case date back to historical patterns of racial segregation and educational advocacy efforts. By collaborating with ConnecticutHistory.org, Trinity students are helping to make public important connections between past injustices and present reforms. Their contributions illustrate in an engaging, informative manner how historical knowledge can help us understand present-day circumstances.213 Students who complete additional rounds of editing with ConnecticutHistory.org experience memorable transitions when they become published authors. College students frequently spend hours on assignments that are ultimately read only by their professor, so to see one’s name in the byline on a respected public website validates seminar participants’ research and writing in a way that a grade alone cannot. Several students have commented that before working with ConnecticutHistory.org, they doubted their own skills as writers. Victoria Smith-Ellison, a sophomore at the time, said that although she struggled with composing essays before beginning college, this collaborative public history project “allowed me to be comfortable with my writing skills that I have learned thus far.” Other students noted how the collaborative nature of the project inspired them to improve their essays even after handing in the required drafts. “After I got the comments [from Dougherty, Ceglio, and classmates], I was at first very overwhelmed,” said Mary Daly. “But I actually really enjoyed polishing my work. I think that [the editing process] helped me, because in the future, I can actually tackle a process and finish it through all the way to the end.” Collaborating with ConnecticutHistory.org also encouraged undergraduate students to recognize themselves as authors contributing to a broader public history, as shown in the video clip in 8.16. Nicole Sagullo, a science student who did not have much experience with humanities writing before Dougherty’s course, said that after her article was published, she discovered that another student on campus had cited her essay in an assignment. “It was just a really good feeling to think that someone had looked at it and read it who wasn’t in that particular class with us,” Sagullo explained. Another seminar participant described how collaborating with a community partner elevated her own view and expectations of herself. “You felt more like a contributor or colleague rather than just a student handing in an assignment,” explained Amanda Gurren. “We felt like we were working with people rather than for them… We felt very respected.” Through several rounds of feedback and revisions, collaborative writing not only incentivizes students to seek improvement in their own work, but also view themselves and their peers as published contributors to Connecticut’s online history.214 Figure 8.16: Watch the video clip on Trinity students reflecting on their writing process with ConnecticutHistory.org in 2013. What are the essential ingredients behind successful public history writing collaborations such as this? First, all participants–students, faculty, and editors–must be motivated to devote additional time and energy to work together on a common goal, with support from their respective institutions. In our partnership, everyone wins. Undergraduate learning benefits from the talent and attention provided by an additional guest writing instructor and evaluator, and in return, high-quality essays on forgotten aspects of civil rights history enrich Connecticut’s understanding of its past. Second, our collaboration became easier with advances in web-based writing tools and online publications. Nowadays, students can write and quickly receive multiple peer reviews from readers, both on and off-campus. Since ConnecticutHistory.org favors shorter essays written for broad audiences, this public history assignment works for a wide array of undergraduates, and its entirely online publication means a speedier turnaround for student contributors who meet their standards. Third, because all of the essays can easily be found on the public web–rather than locked behind a paywall or available only in selected libraries–our contributions to state’s civil rights history are widely accessible and more valuable to readers both inside and outside of Connecticut. We take pride that Tom Sugrue, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and the nation’s leading scholar of Northern civil rights history, took a brief moment to publicly recognize the students’ essays during his April 2014 keynote address to the Association for the Study of Connecticut History.215 For many historians, the digital era raises fears about the future of our profession. What does it mean when anyone can instantly publish their historical interpretation, whether good or bad, on the Internet? How do newer technologies change–and perhaps challenge–what it means to do history? Rather than avoiding the digital turn, we believe that it also provides an ideal opportunity–if wisely exercised–to bring a younger generation to the table and to fully engage them in doing what historians have always done: telling true and meaningful stories about the past for audiences broader than ourselves.216 Trinity College Student Contributions to ConnecticutHistory.org See link to all essays.217 Race Restrictive Covenants in Property Deeds, by Mary Daly ’15. “No persons of any race except the white race shall use or occupy any building on any lot… .” Language such as this still appears in Hartford-area housing covenants today.218 Connecticut Takes the Wheel on Education Reform: Project Concern, by Amanda Gurren ’15. As one of the earliest voluntary busing programs in the US, Project Concern sought to address educational inequalities.219 The Effects of “Redlining” on the Hartford Metropolitan Region, by Shaun McGann ’14. Historical data reveals long-term patterns of inequality that can be traced back to now-illegal practices adopted by federal and private lenders in the 1930s.220 The Debate Over Who Could Occupy World War II Public Housing in West Hartford, by Emily Meehan ’16. In the 1940s, African American war workers eligible for government-funded housing found access restricted to some properties despite vacancies.221 Sheff v. O’Neill Settlements Target Educational Segregation In Hartford, by Brigit Rioual ’14. This landmark case not only drew attention to inequalities in area school systems, it focused efforts on reform.222 Five Minutes that Changed Connecticut: Simon Bernstein and the 1965 Connecticut Education Amendment, by Elaina Rollins ’16. “There shall always be free public elementary and secondary schools in the state. The general assembly shall implement this principle by appropriate legislation.”223 How Real Estate Practices Influenced the Hartford Region’s Demographic Makeup, by Nicole Sagullo ’14. Persistent segregation is the historic legacy of steering and blockbusting, two discriminatory tactics that played a role in shaping suburban neighborhoods.224 Hartford’s Great Migration through Charles S. Johnson’s Eyes, by Victoria Smith Ellison ’15. During the Great Migration of the early 1900s, African Americans from the rural South relocated to Hartford and other Northern cities in search of better prospects.225 Education/Instrucción Combats Housing Discrimination, by Savahna Reuben ’15. This group’s bilingual name reflected its educational mission as well as its dedication to unified, multicultural cooperation for the common good.226 About the authors: Elaina Rollins (Trinity 2016), Clarissa Ceglio, and Jack Dougherty co-wrote this essay based on their collaboration in the Cities Suburbs and Schools seminar. Elaina Rollins, Clarissa Ceglio, and Jack Dougherty, “Writing Greater Hartford’s Civil Rights Past with ConnecticutHistory.org,” Connecticut History Review 53, no. 2 (2014): 220–26, https://ontheline.trincoll.edu/writing.html.↩︎ The website’s permanent web address is http://connecticuthistory.org/. ConnecticutHistory.org received the 2013 New England Museum Association First-place Publication Award for excellence in design, production, and effective communication in websites for organizations with institutional budgets over $500,000.↩︎ Clarissa Ceglio, “ConnecticutHistory.org Opens a New Gateway to Our State’s Past” (ConnecticutHistory.org, May 22, 2012), https://connecticuthistory.org/connecticuthistory-org-opens-a-new-gateway-to-our-states-past/.↩︎ ConnecticutHistory.org site statistics as of June 2014; data on file Connecticut Humanities.↩︎ Total site visits in fiscal year 2013-14 were 200,748, a 226% increase over fiscal year 2012-13 visitation (88,483); data on file Connecticut Humanities.↩︎ Clarissa Ceglio, “The Dos, Don’ts and Dividends of Digital Collaboration.” NEMA News, Winter 2013, https://www.academia.edu/3223779/The_Dos_Don_ts_and_Dividends_of_Digital_Collaboration.↩︎ Ben Railton, “Yung Wing, the Chinese Educational Mission, and Transnational Connecticut” (ConnecticutHistory.org), accessed June 19, 2019, https://connecticuthistory.org/yung-wing-the-chinese-educational-mission-and-transnational-connecticut/.↩︎ Connecticut Humanities, “Mission,” accessed July 11, 2014, http://cthumanities.org/about/mission.↩︎ An additional example of how ConnecticutHistory.org supports student scholarship is its ongoing partnership with the state’s National History Day program. See Rebecca Taber-Conover, “History Day in Connecticut,” Connecticut History 51, no. 2 (Autumn 2012): 261–64.↩︎ Educational Studies 308: Cities, Suburbs, and Schools syllabi, Fall 2012 and Fall 2013, Trinity College, http://commons.trincoll.edu/cssp/seminar/prior-syllabi/↩︎ Dougherty and Ceglio, “Compose Web Essay for ConnecticutHistory.org,” Cities Suburbs and Schools seminar, Trinity College, October 13, 2013, http://commons.trincoll.edu/cssp/seminar/assignments/connecticut-history-entry/↩︎ Jack Dougherty, “Co-Writing, Peer Editing, and Publishing in the Cloud,” in Web Writing: Why and How for Liberal Arts Teaching and Learning, ed. Jack Dougherty and Tennyson O’Donnell (University of Michigan Press, 2015), http://epress.trincoll.edu/webwriting/chapter/dougherty-cowriting.↩︎ McGann, “The Effects of ‘Redlining’ on the Hartford Metropolitan Region”; Mary Daly, “Race Restrictive Covenants in Property Deeds” (ConnecticutHistory.org, January 2013), http://connecticuthistory.org/race-restrictive-covenants-in-property-deeds/; Meehan, “The Debate Over Who Could Occupy World War II Public Housing in West Hartford”.↩︎ Elaina Rollins, “Five Minutes That Changed Connecticut: Simon Bernstein and the 1965 Connecticut Education Amendment” (ConnecticutHistory.org, January 2014), http://connecticuthistory.org/five-minutes-that-changed-connecticut-simon-bernstein-and-the-1965-connecticut-education-amendment/; Brigit Rioual, “Sheff v. O’Neill Settlements Target Educational Segregation In Hartford” (ConnecticutHistory.org, April 2013), http://connecticuthistory.org/sheff-v-oneill-settlements-target-educational-segregation-in-hartford.↩︎ Student quotations excerpted from CTHprograms, “Make Life Collaborative” (YouTube video, April 8, 2013), http://youtu.be/NuWg9Jrkrpw.↩︎ Thomas Sugrue, Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North (New York: Random House, 2009), http://books.google.com/books?isbn=0812970381; See also Twitter post at ASCH meeting, April 5, 2014, https://twitter.com/DoughertyJack/status/452440673942536192↩︎ Jack Dougherty and Kristen Nawrotzki, eds., Writing History in the Digital Age (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2013), https://doi.org/10.3998/dh.12230987.0001.001.↩︎ Connecticut History, “Trinity College Students Call Attention to Histories of Inequality”.↩︎ Daly, “Race Restrictive Covenants in Property Deeds”.↩︎ Amanda Gurren, “Connecticut Takes the Wheel on Education Reform: Project Concern” (ConnecticutHistory.org, April 2013), http://connecticuthistory.org/connecticut-takes-the-wheel-on-education-reform-project-concern/.↩︎ McGann, “The Effects of ‘Redlining’ on the Hartford Metropolitan Region”.↩︎ Meehan, “The Debate Over Who Could Occupy World War II Public Housing in West Hartford”.↩︎ Rioual, “Sheff v. O’Neill Settlements Target Educational Segregation In Hartford”.↩︎ Rollins, “Five Minutes That Changed Connecticut”.↩︎ Nicole Sagullo, “How Real Estate Practices Influenced the Hartford Region’s Demographic Makeup” (ConnecticutHistory.org, February 2013), http://connecticuthistory.org/how-real-estate-practices-influenced-the-hartford-regions-demographic-makeup/.↩︎ Victoria Smith-Ellison, “Hartford’s Great Migration Through Charles S. Johnson’s Eyes” (ConnecticutHistory.org, February 2013), http://connecticuthistory.org/hartfords-great-migration-through-charles-s-johnsons-eyes/.↩︎ Savahna Reuben, “Education/Instrucción Combats Housing Discrimination” (ConnecticutHistory.org, December 2014), http://connecticuthistory.org/educationinstruccion-combats-housing-discrimination/.↩︎ "],["uncovering-unwritten.html", "Uncovering Unwritten Rules Against Jewish and Black Students at Trinity College", " Uncovering Unwritten Rules Against Jewish and Black Students at Trinity College This section supplements the prior chapter on A Jewish Grocer and the Origins of Zoning in this book. It sheds more light on anti-Jewish and anti-Black views and policies implemented by Trinity College leaders during the 1910s and ’20s, which were largely hidden from public view until recent years. Today at Trinity, the Primus Project “aspires to tell a truer and fuller story of Trinity’s history” by exploring how the institution and key individuals “engaged with systems of slavery and white supremacy.” Also, President Joanne Berger-Sweeney announced that Trinity will relaunch its Committee on Named Facilities and Commemoratives to evaluate how spaces are named.227 Although “unwritten rules” against Jews typically did not appear in public documents in this period, in certain cases we can find them in private documents that their creators believed would remain secret. At Trinity College, Hartford’s preeminent institution of higher education, administrative and student leaders expressed explicitly anti-Semitic views from 1915 to at least 1922, and implemented strategies to reduce the number of Jewish students—and to reject all Black applicants—according to Board of Trustees meeting minutes that were long hidden from public view. For decades, Trinity Board Minutes were guarded as “confidential” and “not available for research use,” even by Trinity faculty members like me. Trinity archivist Peter Knapp wrote a book in 2000 that acknowledged the College’s anti-Jewish policies and quoted from Board minutes. But these source documents were not made publicly available until the Trinity Archives changed its policy in 2017 to release materials after a 50-year period, and began to upload them to the digital repository in 2019. Since Trinity’s anti-Jewish rules did not appear in any standard College publications or newspaper accounts from this period, they would have remained invisible today if Trinity’s archivists had not made this history public. Furthermore, anti-Semitism at Trinity is noteworthy because the Episcopalians who established the College in 1823 directly challenged the lack of religious tolerance in the Congregational Church that dominated state government at that time, and adopted a charter that promised Trinity would “not make the religious tenets of any person a condition of admission.”228 Rev. Flavel S. Luther served as President of Trinity College from 1904 to 1919. In public, he was a well-respected mathematician, engineer, and ordained minister in the Episcopalian Church. Hartford voters also elected him to the Connecticut State Senate from 1907 to 1911, where his key accomplishment was to consolidate rural school districts and solidify town-level governance. Luther was a Progressive-era Republican who identified with (and bore some resemblance to) former US President Theodore Roosevelt, who accepted his invitation to deliver Trinity’s commencement address in 1918. To this day, a Trinity student tradition is to wait until graduation day before stepping on the Luther-Roosevelt commemorative stone on the Long Walk.229 Figure 8.17: Former US President Theodore Roosevelt (left) delivered the 1918 commencement address at the invitation of his friend, Trinity President Flavel S. Luther (left), an event commemorated by the “TR-FSL” plaque that students traditionally avoid stepping on prior to graduation day. Images from Weaver, History of Trinity College and “Traditions” web page at Trinity. But behind closed doors, Luther and his contemporaries spoke candidly against Jews. Luther first raised the topic with Trinity’s Board of Trustees in 1915, when he warned them about “the problem presented by the slow, but unmistakable, increase of the number of Jews at the College,” as shown in Figure 8.18. At that time, probably about 10 percent of the 250 students on campus were Jewish, and most of these students resided in the city of Hartford rather than on campus. “Their presence is resented by the other students and has occasioned many protests by the alumni,” Luther observed, and cautioned that “if they increase, the matter may easily become serious.” Luther expressed his conviction that Trinity “should do its share in educating these aliens, whatever their race or religion… [because] it is only by education that they can ever be assimilated and Americanized.” Nevertheless, he believed that Jewish student enrollment should be limited in some way because “we cannot afford to sacrifice any of the really higher interests of the college for the sake of a special class.” No objections were recorded among the other fourteen board members in attendance, including distinguished clergymen, bankers, judges, and businessmen. No one mentioned that Trinity’s founders originally established their college on the principles of religious tolerance.230 Figure 8.18: Scrolling version: Explore excerpts of anti-Jewish and anti-Black views and policies by Trinity College leaders in the Board of Trustees meeting minutes from 1915 to 1922, or view the entire document in the Trinity Digital Repository. Although some Jewish students were admitted, Trinity leaders refused to accept Black students in this era. During the same closed-door meeting in 1915, President Luther confided to Board members that he had received several applications from “colored boys who wished to enter Trinity College,” but reported that he found ways to reject all of them. “In each case so far I have been able to avoid an issue by methods which savor somewhat, I fear, of insincerity; but which have been effective.” Perhaps Luther lied to Black applicants about their qualifications, or the finances that would be required, or invented some other reasons why they could not attend Trinity. Looking into the future, he predicted that “the time will come when this matter must be faced and definitely decided.” But that day was in the distant future, because Trinity only admitted a few Black students in the 1950s, and did not begin to address racism in its admissions practices until the late 1960s.231 Luther accurately predicted that the rising number of Jewish students would soon become a “serious” problem at Trinity College. In April 1918, the Board of Trustees heard from a Student Senate committee, appointed by the faculty “as the result of undergraduate expression of feeling against the Jews.” Five Student Senators, two of whom also led the Trinity Tripod campus newspaper, claimed that the “alarmingly” high rate of Jewish enrollment was approaching 25 percent (although the actual figure was closer to 15 percent). Student Senators’ objections to Jews reflected their negative views of Hartford residents and recent Eastern European immigrants. “The Jews come up to the College from the city, get all they can from from the College, and give nothing to the College,” they wrote. Although Student Senators praised the high scholastic standing of their Jewish peers, they criticized their lack of support for college athletics as well as the war effort. “Speaking in general terms, the Jews have not enlisted in military service while the Gentiles have,” they claimed. Furthermore, the Student Senators complained that “most of the Jews at Trinity are Russian,” which they believed meant that every classroom “has a Russian socialistic expression of opinion.” As a consequence, they told the Board that their classmates “hesitate about showing friends around the College, when they are sure to be greeted frequently by Jews.” Board members asked President Luther to address this problem.232 President Luther presented more data and observations about Jewish students at the June 1918 Board meeting, He understood Trinity’s larger problem was that World War I caused total enrollment to fall from around 250 to only 158 students in 1917-18, when many men left college to enlist in military service or join the workforce. The actual number of Jewish students remained relatively stable at 25 that year, but the proportion of Jews on campus had risen to 15 percent. Drawing on his personal observations of student life, Luther pointed to “a few of the Jews in College who, by reason of exceptional personal qualities, are cordially accepted as good fellows. The other students call them ‘White Jews’.” Luther’s comment revealed how Trinity’s dominant White Protestant culture considered most Jews to be non-White in this era, and assigned them to a lower position in the racial hierarchy. While Luther described Jews as “good scholars… who pay their bills,” he concluded that “they are a definite hindrance to the growth of the College,” and suggested ways that Trinity might deter their future enrollment, perhaps by mandatory Christian chapel services.233 One year later, Trinity student leaders continued to demand that the College reduce Jewish enrollments, but now cloaked their anti-Semitism in more publicly acceptable language of the era. The “Student Movement for Americanization at Trinity” submitted its resolutions to the Board of Trustees in April 1919, and demanded a reduction in “the undesirable element,” a slightly coded phrase that replaced direct references to “Jews” or “Hebrews.” While Americanization proponents recognized that Trinity’s charter promised equality of opportunity regardless of religion, they argued that “90% of the undesirable element lives in Hartford,” and that the College needed to discourage local Jews from attending Trinity. They proposed a policy of “compulsory residence” in college dormitories “to influence and Americanize all students which cannot be done to some of the students while living at their homes.” Their proposal echoed former President Theodore Roosevelt’s warning against the nation becoming “a polyglot boarding house,” and aligned with Connecticut Governor Marcus Holcomb’s agenda for the newly-launched Department of Americanization.234 Trinity leaders embraced the Americanization strategy by enacting an alien-residence policy. To address what some discreetly called “the particularly undesirable element which so seriously lowers the standing of the College,” the Board voted to require on-campus dormitory residence for all freshmen and sophomore students “of alien birth, and… whose fathers were of alien birth,” effective in Fall 1919. This alien-residence policy was designed to discourage Hartford Jews from attending (since they would have to pay additional residence fees rather than live at home), and to assimilate those who did enroll. The College focused only on students’ first two formative years, in part because they lacked sufficient dormitories to mandate it for all students. Board members also discussed whether the alien-residence rule should appear in official College publications, and finally granted President Luther permission to do so. The outcome was a one-page supplement to the 1918-19 Trinity Catalogue, as shown in Figure 8.19, published at the end of the academic year in June 1919 so that hardly anyone would actually see it in print. The alien-residence rule did not appear in future editions of the Catalogue, nor the Student Handbook, nor the Trinity Tripod student newspaper, nor the Hartford Courant daily newspaper. This cleverly allowed Trinity leaders to hide the policy away from public view, yet still enforce a rule that was “on the books.” 235 Figure 8.19: Explore the alien-residence rule in a June 1919 one-page supplement, added nearly a year after the publication of the 1918-19 Trinity College Catalogue. This effectively hid the rule from public view, but still allowed Trinity officials to enforce it. View the full document in the Trinity Digital Repository. Trinity leaders definitely enforced their alien-residence policy. Officials reported to the Board in October 1919 that the rule was applied to 16 students, but “only three of these cases were Hebrews.” This may have signaled that the policy began to meet its goal by deterring some Hartford Jews from applying and assimilating others who chose to enroll, or that other immigrant groups were finding their way to Trinity. To avoid burdening non-Jewish immigrants, the Board refined its policy to exempt “students of alien parentage residing in other towns than Hartford” from the dormitory residence requirement, at the discretion of administrators. In other words, the son of a Swedish immigrant in West Hartford could attend Trinity while continuing to live at home, but the son of a Jewish or Italian immigrant in Hartford could not.236 Two years later, new Trinity President Remsen Ogilby asked the Board to grant him greater discretion over the College’s alien-residence policy, while continuing to quietly limit the number of Jewish students. In June 1921, Ogilby asked the Board “for a reconsideration of the rule requiring sons of foreign born to live on the campus,” and noted that the rule “has caused bitter feelings in some quarters.” Initially, Ogilby seemed to take a stand against treating Jewish students differently. “If the rule is intended to keep out the members of one single race,” he warned, “it is not honest and rules out too many good students who would otherwise be with us.” The Board voted to grant him the power to waive the alien-residence rule on a case-by-case basis. Yet one year later, Ogilby reported on Trinity’s success in reducing its Jewish population. “The number of Jewish students has been a matter of interest to many of us and has concerned two or three,” Ogilby told the Board in 1922, attempting to minimize and put past controversies behind him. He proudly announced that “the percentage of Hebrews in the student body” had declined from 10.5 percent in 1921 to 9 percent in 1922. Interestingly, his presentation did not emphasize that the actual number of Jewish students had remained stable at around 25 (roughly the same number as in 1918), a fact that was disguised because the proportion of Jewish students declined after World War I, when Trinity’s total enrollment rebounded to 268 men. Furthermore, Ogilby backed off his initial stance against treating Jewish students differently. In 1922 he presented additional suggestions on “limiting the number of Hebrew students” to the Board’s Executive Committee, which they discussed, without acting upon, at least on record. Unlike other institutions such as Harvard and Yale, there is no direct evidence that Trinity overtly or covertly invoked an admissions quota to reduce Jewish student enrollment. Instead, Trinity relied on its alien-residence policy to discourage Hartford Jews from attending, and to assimilate those who persisted. Since this rule was hidden from public view, and did not surface again in confidential Board minutes, we do not know when Trinity stopped enforcing it.237 In the following decades, scarcely any mention about Jewish or Black students appears in the Trinity Board of Trustee minutes that are currently digitized and publicly available, which at this moment stops in 1967. We do not know whether these topics were not discussed during Board meetings, or if they were discussed in ways to avoid mentioning them in the official minutes. Furthermore, what do the Trustee minutes reveal about being “locked-in” their April 22, 1968 Board meeting by more than 160 Trinity students protesting for increased financial aid for Black students and the expansion of Black studies in the curriculum? What do the official documents tell us about the aftermath of this protest, when the Trustees and the Faculty conflicted over the question of punishing student activists? We do not yet know much more than what appears in the pages of former archivist Peter Knapp’s history of Trinity College. But the current Trinity College Archives policy states that Board of Trustee records are sealed “for a period of 50 years from the date of creation.” According to current archivist Eric Stoykovich, while the Trustees’ Minutes for this period of controversy are officially open to researchers, the 9th volume (dated April 15, 1967 to May 27, 1972) is not yet available in digitized form, but could become fully available in May 2022.238 “The Primus Project: Slavery, Race, and Reconstruction at Trinity College” (Trinity College, 2021), https://www.trincoll.edu/primus-project/; Joanne Berger-Sweeney, “Naming Buildings at Trinity [Email to the College Community]” (Trinity College, March 31, 2021).↩︎ Knapp and Knapp, Trinity College in the Twentieth Century, pp. 57-61; Eric Stoykovich, “Availability of Trinity Board of Trustee Minutes [Email to Dougherty],” March 29, 2021. See 1823 College Charter reprinted in Trinity College, Bulletin (Catalogue) (Hartford CT, 1919), https://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/bulletin/73, p. 12.↩︎ Norris Galpin Osborn, “Flavel Sweeten Luther, Jr.” in Men of Mark in Connecticut: Ideals of American Life Told in Biographies and Autobiographies of Eminent Living Americans (W.R. Goodspeed, 1906), 125–29, https://books.google.com/books?id=ARFh_Sbpg84C&pg=PA125; “Commencement [Photo],” Trinity Tripod, June 22, 1918, https://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3071&context=tripod; “Dr. F.S. Luther, Educator, Is Dead,” New York Times, January 5, 1928, http://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1928/01/05/91673229.html; Glenn Weaver, The History of Trinity College (Hartford CT: Trinity College Press, 1967), https://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/w_books/4/, pp. 264-68; “Traditions: The Luther-Roosevelt Long Walk Inscription” (Trinity College, 2020), https://www.trincoll.edu/abouttrinity/history-traditions/traditions/.↩︎ 18 June 1915 Report by President Luther, read aloud at 21 June 1915 meeting, Trinity College, Board of Trustees Minutes, Volume 3 (1908-1926), p. 169. Other Board members attending were Rev. Francis Goodwin (Hartford parks architect), Rev. William Vibbert (New York City rector), P. Henry Woodward (Hartford banker), Rev. Chauncey Brewster (New Haven rector), William C. Skinner (President of Colt’s Manufacturing), Ambrose Spencer Murray Jr., Hon. Frank L. Wilcox (Connecticut banker), Rev. Henry Ferguson, Edgar Waterman (Trinity treasurer), Edward B. Hatch (Hartford manufacturer), George D. Howell, Hon. Joseph Buffington (US Circuit Court judge), Robert Thorne, Rev. Samuel Hart (Divinity School dean). The 10 percent Jewish student estimate is based on 23 Jewish students in 1914-15 (p. 277) and a total enrollment of 257 students in 1913-14 (p. 297). “Dr. F.S. Luther, Educator, Is Dead”.↩︎ 21 June 1915 meeting, Trinity College, Board of Trustees Minutes, Volume 3 (1908-1926), p. 169. On the small number of Black and Asian students at Trinity prior to the 1920s, see Knapp and Knapp, Trinity College in the Twentieth Century, pp. 337-341.↩︎ “Tripod Elections,” Trinity Tripod [Newspaper], May 7, 1918, https://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3076&context=tripod.↩︎ President Luther report to Board of Trustees, 28 May 1918, read aloud at Board meeting, 14 June 1918 Trinity College, Board of Trustees Minutes, Volume 3 (1908-1926), pp. 276-278. On “White Jews,” see Karen Brodkin, How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says About Race in America (Rutgers University Press, 1998), https://books.google.com/books?id=itdBdt8OvMwC. Trinity re-instated compulsory chapel services on weekdays and Sundays in January 1919, “unless men are excused to attend church in town,” “Compulsory Chapel at Trinity Again,” Hartford Courant, January 4, 1919, http://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/docview/556660353/abstract/35FB0E56F7734710PQ/1.↩︎ Student Movement for Americanization at Trinity resolutions, presented at 26 April 1919 Board meeting, Trinity College, Board of Trustees Minutes, Volume 3 (1908-1926), pp. 320-321; “Good Luck Says Governor”; “Americanization Is Urged by Roosevelt in His Last Message”.↩︎ Report of the Special Committee, presented at 20 June 1919 Board meeting, p. 329-330; Motion voted on at 20 June 1919 Board meeting, p. 333-334; 20 June 1919 Board of Fellows report, p. 335, Trinity College, Board of Trustees Minutes, Volume 3 (1908-1926); Trinity College, “Supplement to the Catalogue for Trinity College,” in Trinity College Bulletin, 1918 - 1919 (Hartford CT, 1918), https://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/bulletin/74/; Davarian L. Baldwin, In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower: How Universities Are Plundering Our Cities (Bold Type Books, 2021), https://www.google.com/books/edition/_/i0mkzQEACAAJ, pp. 26-27. No mention of the alien-residence policy appeared in the Trinity College Bulletin (Catalogue) from 1919 to 1923, the Trinity Student Handbook for 1922-1923 (no issues available prior to 1916-17), the Trinity Tripod student newspaper for 1919, or the Hartford Courant daily newspaper.↩︎ Report of the Special Committee, presented at 20 June 1919 Board meeting, p. 329-330; Motion voted on at 20 June 1919 Board meeting, p. 333-334; 20 June 1919 Board of Fellows report, p. 335; 24 October 1919 Report of the Executive Committee to the Board, p. 341, Trinity College, Board of Trustees Minutes, Volume 3 (1908-1926).↩︎ 17 June 1921 President Ogilby report to Board, p. 396; 18 June 1941 Board vote, p. 408; 28 October 1922, President Ogilby report to the Board, p. 439; 28 October 1922 Report of the Executive Committee, Trinity College, p. 441. For comparisons with other academic institutions, see Marcia Synnott, The Half-Opened Door: Discrimination and Admissions at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, 1900-1970 (Routledge, 2017), https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Half_Opened_Door/oRwuDwAAQBAJ; Jerome Karabel, The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005), https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Chosen/1Nf3FxMIEB8C; Wendy H. Bergoffen, “Jewish Experience at Amherst College,” in Amherst in the World, ed. Martha Saxton (Amherst College, 2020), https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11873533.↩︎ Knapp and Knapp, Trinity College in the Twentieth Century, chapter 6; Stoykovich, “Availability of Trinity Board of Trustee Minutes [Email to Dougherty]”.↩︎ "],["teaching-oral-history.html", "Teaching Oral History", " Teaching Oral History This chapter-in-progress was prepared for the “Panel Discussion on Oral History and African American Educational History,” with Nicholas Kryczka, Dionti Davis, Jackie Blount, and Dionne Danns at the History of Education Society meeting in November 2019. The need for a chapter on ways of teaching oral history was inspired by a conversation a year earlier with Pamela Grundy, Jake Hardesty, and Kevin Zayed at the History of Education Society meeting in November 2018. Organizations such as the Oral History Association and other authors have published many helpful guides, including the OHA Principles and Best Practices. Most of these guides emphasize the logistics and legalities of collecting and curating interviews, primarily for directors of oral history centers, archivists, and scholars. But relatively few focus on the pedagogical planning for teaching students how to prepare and interpret oral histories, particularly in the context of a college-level course. This DRAFT chapter seeks to offer both strategic and pragmatic advice. Historians can learn a great deal from ethnographers, journalists, podcasters, and others who have been trained or gained valuable experience in interviewing people and listening carefully to how they tell their stories …. and we can add to their work by emphasizing what historians do best: listening to how people tell stories about the past as a way to analyze change and continuity over time, and linking individual testimonies to the broader context. Overall, start small – teaching with oral history will become much easier the second and third time, when you will have sample interview guides, transcripts, and essays to share with future classes Integrating oral history into your course This chapter is written primarily for history educators who wish to incorporate oral history into their courses, with examples drawn from college-level courses. But before we leap too far ahead in the planning process, it’s important for instructors to gain first-hand experience in the steps we ask of our students – such as interviewing, transcribing, and analyzing – before creating an oral history assignment for an entire class. If these steps are new to you, then perhaps the best way to start is to assign yourself some oral history homework, and consider inviting a colleague or a small number of students to accompany you in the process. Over the years I’ve coached several faculty who are ready to take the next step of integrating oral history into their class, most often for a history and/or education class, but also for courses in sociology, anthropology, economics, and religion. Most of these faculty faced an important curricular decision: How might an oral history project fit into my existing course? Or, how should I reorganize my course to fit better with an oral history project? Either way, a common goal is to deepen student learning about the past by engaging with people whose lived experiences may differ from our own, and/or whose perspectives may challenge us to reconsider previously published accounts. At least five conceptual models for integrating oral history into courses stand out in my mind (and I encourage readers to email me with others that I have overlooked). The class analyzes pre-recorded interviews: While interviewing a real person has intrinsic value, there’s also much to be learned from reading transcripts, listening to audio, or watching video of interviews that have already been conducted, especially as oral history collections become more widely accessible on the web. This model may be most appropriate for courses on topics that have no living narrators, or no local access to topics in different parts of the world. It also may work best in courses that focus primarily on analyzing oral histories, as described further below. Each student conducts an individualized interview: In this model, each student is assigned to conduct an interview with a narrator, often a person of their choice, on a topic related to the class, then compare this oral account to conventional published sources. This model can work in a class regardless of its size, because the work is individualized, with no collaboration between students. For example, in a large US history survey course that relies on a textbook, the instructor can assign students to conduct an interview with a family member to compare their memories of an event or time period to its portrayal in the text. The class conducts and observes a group interview: In this model, the entire class observes a group interview with one narrator, typically through pre-planned questions asked by a series of students. This approach only works if the narrator is comfortable with being interviewed in a large-group setting (and see more about this further below). One benefit is that the oral history typically is conducted during class time with everyone listening, and can be set up to model good interviewing skills. Individual students conduct similar interviews and share transcripts: In this model, the class must be assigned or agree on a common set of interview questions, designed for people who have a common experience or time period. Each student conducts an interview with a narrator, either of their choice or assigned by the instructor. Next, students share transcripts, either in small groups or the entire class, either on paper or through a shared digital folder. The instructor can assign students to analyze patterns across interviews, and/or compare narrators’ experiences with conventionally published sources. Students conduct similar interviews at a community event and share transcripts: This resembles the “History Harvest” model developed by historians Will Thomas and Patrick Jones at the University of Nebraska. [Add cites] The class participates a public history event, perhaps co-hosted with a community organization, to bring together narrators to sit for interviews with individual students. This approach requires more coordination and time commitment than others above, but also has potential to expand the community of learners far beyond the classroom. Since these are conceptual models, educators can mix and match to suit their learning goals. For example, I have arranged for my class to conduct a group interview as a practice session with a dual-role narrator, prior to their individual interviews using a common questionnaire. A dual-role narrator belongs to the community our class seeks to interview, but also is familiar with our academic mission and need to teach novice interviewers. One dual-role narrator who partnered with my Cities Suburbs and Schools seminar was Renita Satchell. During the 1970s, she was a young African-American student enrolled in the Project Concern city-suburb interdistrict busing program for racial integration. Decades later, she worked as a staff member in Open Choice, the successor program to Project Concern. In 2002, she agreed to partner with my seminar on our Project Concern Alumni oral history project. To help my students improve their interview questionnaire and skills, she agreed to participate in a group practice interview during our class. During the practice portion, a series of students each asked Renita a question that their class had prepared in advance, with the recorder running and everyone listening. Immediately afterwards, during the talk-back portion, Renita reflect with us on what worked well, and what we needed to improve. Typical reflection questions include: Did the interview questions make sense? Or use words or terms that narrators may not understand? Did interviewers follow-up when appropriate, and refrain from interrupting? Did the interview encourage storytelling by the narrator? Even when only a small number of students ask interview questions during our practice session, the entire class learns by listening closely and imagining what they would have done if they were in their classmates’ shoes. Several years later, my Cities Suburbs and Schools seminar and I co-hosted a “Civil Rights History Harvest” event with the Sheff Movement for school integration on their 25th anniversary public celebration. Describe more from this link Decide who will be interviewed, and why Think carefully about how and why you are selecting interview participants. There is nothing wrong with a selected sample or even a snowball sample, as long as you recognize and write out limitations. Preparing students to interview and listen Previously I searched for the “best oral history” article or chapter to assign to my students, thinking that knowledge would help them become better interviewers. But I now believe that interviewing is best taught as experiential learning, where students engage in the process and reflect on their successes and mistakes. Check privilege at the door. Describe more about crafting interview question about race, perspective, and power. The best interviewers are the best listeners, not the best talkers, which typically is the opposite behavior of what we instructors encourage in our discussion-based classrooms. Assign the class to listen to a pre-recorded interview (read a sample interview transcript, Read a sample interview transcript (and recording): In what portions did the interviewer do well, and how? Where could the interviewer have improved? Point out places where participants were encouraged to elaborate or redirected to the core question, or interrupted, allowed to ramble – include CSS samples Read up on the people you’re interviewing… one of the best ways that historians can build rapport with interview participants, and show respect for their lives, is to bring them copies of photographs, newspaper clippings, or archival documents that we have found in our historical research. These tangible pieces of the past also can spark memories, “How do you feel when looking back at this photograph?” and also prompt some comparative interview questions, such as “Is there anything that the newspapers back then left out of the story?” Craft a common interview guide. Closed-ended survey-style questions versus open-ended questions that encourage participants to tell stories. Inserting prompts: “tell me more about…” and “how did you feel?” (not just how did you think or do) – include CSS samples. (focusing on a select number of essential questions, rather than a long list of questions) When my colleague Mira Debs, a sociologist of education at Yale University, visited one of my Trinity College classes in 2016, we crafted what we jokingly called the Debs-Dougherty Interviewing Principles, to encapsulate the advice we found ourselves repeating to our undergraduate research students: Design interview questions to obtain responses that you can analyze to answer your research question. Ask open-ended questions that encourage participants to tell their stories. Listen attentively as participants respond and avoid interrupting, unless they go way off track and you need to bring them back. Follow up with prompts (“Tell me more about….”) as needed to focus their responses or delve deeper. Perhaps Mira and I were mistaken to “jokingly” label these guidelines, because in all seriousness, it’s exactly what our students — and perhaps yours — need to hear. Ethical questions: Who owns oral history? Whether or not “individualized” oral history interviews are subject to IRB review has been debated for decades, and in 2015, the US federal government effectively made oral history interviewing exempt, DESCRIBE more from https://www.oralhistory.org/information-about-irbs/. But even if your oral history class project is not subject to IRB review, oral historians still contend that there are ethical obligations for participants to voluntarily consent and know what will become of their interview recordings and transcripts, particularly with vulnerable populations. One of the most important and overlooked questions is “who owns the oral history interview?” See this chapter in this volume https://ontheline.trincoll.edu/who-owns-oral-history.html Recording and transcribing oral history Everything I taught has now been replaced by http://Trint.com Teaching students to analyze and write about oral history Here’s where reading helps greatly, compared to the experience of interviewing Review key concepts from Jack Dougherty, “From Anecdote to Analysis: Oral Interviews and New Scholarship in Educational History,” The Journal of American History 86, no. 2 (1999): 712–23, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2567055. Preserving oral history in collaboration with libraries, archives, museums more to come, see CTDA https://collections.ctdigitalarchive.org/islandora/object/120002:otl "],["who-owns-oral-history.html", "Who Owns Oral History? A Creative Commons Solution", " Who Owns Oral History? A Creative Commons Solution by Jack Dougherty and Candace Simpson This is an updated version of an essay that was previously published in 2012 in an open-access book, Oral History in the Digital Age.239 Who “owns” oral history? When an oral history narrator shares her story in response to questions posed by an interviewer, and the recording and transcript are deposited in an archive, who holds the rights to these historical source materials? Who decides whether or not they may be shared with the public, quoted in a publication, or uploaded to the web? Who decides whether someone has the right to earn money from including an interview in a commercially distributed book, video, or website? Furthermore, does Creative Commons, a licensing tool developed by the open access movement to protect copyright while increasing public distribution, offer a better solution to these questions than existing oral history protocols?[http://creativecommons.org] Oral historians have begun to ask these types of questions as we confront new challenges of doing our work in the Internet era. At a November 2010 planning symposium for the Oral History in the Digital Age project, law and technology professor Sheldon Halpern posed the provocative question: “What do you think you own?” One of the symposium participants, Troy Reeves, reflected on its broad implications for the field. Over a decade ago, when narrators granted an oral history interview and signed a release form, they could assume that the audio/video recording and transcript “would remain under the care and control” of an archive or library, which would hold ownership rights and grant access to the public as it deemed appropriate. But the Web is dramatically revising these assumptions. Many oral history repositories have begun to share the content of their holdings online and, in the words of one archivist, believe “it is worth giving up some control for the greater good of having more people use the materials.”240 We elaborate on our thinking about how the Internet has transformed the historical profession in our open-access edited volume, Writing History in the Digital Age.241 As an alternative to traditional protocols, Jack and his student researchers began to incorporate Creative Commons language in oral history consent forms while conducting interviews in the metropolitan region of Hartford, Connecticut for the Cities Suburbs and Schools Project at Trinity College. Several interviews are featured in our freely accessible, public history web book, On the Line: How Schooling Housing, and Civil Rights Shaped Hartford and its Suburbs, and many are hosted by the Trinity College Digital Repository.242 By blending interpretive text with oral interviews and other interactive features, this web-book tells the story of how real estate firms maintained the color line, mortgage lenders engaged in red-lining, families sought homes on the more desirable side of school attendance lines, and activists fought to cross, redraw, or erase these lines. We initially presented this essay as part of a broader discussion on “Whose Civil Rights Stories on the Web?” at the 2012 joint meeting of the Organization of American Historians/National Council on Public History.243 Jack: In the mid-1990s, I began to conduct oral history interviews for my dissertation research on African-American school reform activists in Milwaukee. I recorded interviews, followed standard protocols for consent forms and institutional review, and made good on my promise to transcribe and return a free copy of the tape and transcript to each of the sixty participants who kindly shared their history.244 But the “best practices” in the field left me feeling unsatisfied. Originally, I had been drawn toward oral history and public history as means of community empowerment on civil rights history, but the standard guidelines required me to ask people who freely offered their stories to sign away some of their rights. At that time, my reference guide for consent forms was the Oral History Association’s pamphlet by John Neuenschwander, Oral History and the Law, which has since been expanded into a book.245 On the legal question of ownership, as soon as the interview is recorded, the oral history narrator initially holds the copyright, but standard practice is to prepare a consent form to transfer away those rights. As Neuenschwander explains, “The vast majority of oral historians and programs at some point secure the transfer of the interviewee’s copyright interests by means of a legal release agreement,” and offers sample language in the appendix.246 Similarly, the Oral History Association’s 2009 statement on “Principles and Best Practices” fully expects oral history participants to sign over their rights as part of the standard procedure for conducting interviews: “The interviewer should secure a release form, by which the narrator transfers his or her rights to the interview to the repository or designated body, signed after each recording session or at the end of the last interview with the narrator.”247 As I understood copyright law, since I wished to create a transcript of the interview and freely quote from it in my scholarly writing, the transfer of copyright away from the narrator was in my best interest. But here was the ugly irony: as a white scholar of the civil rights movement, my consent form required African American activists to “sign over” rights to their oral history interview. At that time, the best arrangement I could negotiate was a two-step process, because I was working with two different repositories. First, my consent form asked oral history narrators to transfer their copyrights directly to me, which in turn, I donated with the tapes and transcripts to two institutions: the Wisconsin Black Historical Society/Museum (a local public history organization that was best positioned to share these stories with the African-American community) and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Library archives (a better-funded, predominantly white institution that was better equipped to share this history more widely on the emerging Internet). I intentionally partnered with both repositories, and kept my promise to give tapes and transcripts back to all parties, to counter prior generations of white academics and journalists who had come into Milwaukee’s black community to “scoop” up stories, while leaving nothing behind. The 1995 version of my oral history consent form included this key language, paraphrased from Neuenschwander’s 1993 pamphlet: I agree to be interviewed and tape recorded by Jack Dougherty, as part of his dissertation research on the recent history of African-American education in Milwaukee. At the end of the research project, the original tapes and edited transcripts will be donated to the Milwaukee Urban Archives at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the Wisconsin Black Historical Society/Museum. These materials will be identified by my name and made available to the public for scholarly and educational purposes, unless exceptions are listed below… I also grant to Jack Dougherty any title to copyright, property right, or literary rights in the recording(s) and their use in publication, as well as to any reproductions, transcripts, indexes, or finding aids produced from the recording(s). My participation in this project is entirely voluntary, and I may withdraw at any time prior to its conclusion and the donation of the materials to the Archives. Check here to receive a free copy of the tape. Check here to receive a free copy of any transcriptions (whole or partial) for the opportunity to proofread or clarify your spoken words. Yet I was frustrated with this language about copyright transfer. In my eyes, the wording was a necessary evil to preserve these valuable oral histories in a university archive (whose staff at that time coached me on the consent form) and to allow me to quote extensively from them in my eventual book (as required by my publisher’s copyright permissions process). Understandably, many Black Milwaukeeans were highly skeptical or hesitant when I explained the terms of the consent form. Several expressed deep concern that it asked them to sign away their life stories, which I assured them was not the case. A few agreed to be interviewed but did not sign the form. A few others refused to be interviewed at all. One persuaded me, after our interview, to write up a special consent form that preserved her copyright and granted me permission to quote specified passages in my writing, but did not extend any rights to others, such as the archives. Eventually, over sixty oral history participants did agree to sign my consent form, for which I was grateful. Some signed in exchange for a free copy of the recording and transcript as a contribution to their own family histories. Others were motivated by the public good of preserving and sharing their civil rights stories through one or both of my archival partner organizations. Together, all of these conversations challenged me to think more deeply about who benefited from this contractual arrangement. If activists freely shared their civil rights stories with me, did I have the right to profit as a professional historian? The process expanded my thinking about oral history and the public good, and upon receiving an academic book contract, I returned my share of royalties (and later, prize money and speaking fees) back to the Wisconsin Black Historical Society/Museum to continue their public history work. Given my understanding of oral history and copyright law as a graduate student in the mid-1990s, this was the best user-friendly consent form I could envision. Looking back, there were some alternatives that deserved more consideration. For instance, I could have expanded on the copyright transfer language by adding a line that retained the narrators’ rights to utilize their own interviews during their lifetimes.248 But adding this clause fails to address the underlying issue of transfer of copyright ownership away from the narrator, and out of their family’s hands at the end of their lifetime. Another alternative I could have explored further was to ask narrators to make their interviews part of the public domain. But this option would have gone to the extreme of eliminating all of their rights under copyright law, and furthermore, at that time I could not find useful examples of this approach by oral historians.249 Under these circumstances, this mid-1990s consent form was the best I could do at the time, yet it left a bitter taste and a strong desire to find a better model in the future. Candace: When I began working with the On The Line public history web-book project in the summer of 2011, one of my tasks was to conduct oral history interviews with Hartford civil rights activists. At this point, our research team had stopped using conventional consent forms (which asked participants to “sign over” all rights to their interviews) and had begun using a new form that Jack developed with Creative Commons language. Basically, Creative Commons (CC) is a standardized license that maintains the original copyright for the creator of a work, and allows it to be shared more widely with the public, with certain restrictions if desired. Initially released in 2002 with support from the Center for the Public Domain, there are now six types of CC licenses that offer different combinations of licensing terms for source attribution (BY), no derivative works (ND), share alike (SA), and non-commercial (NC) use.250 Figure 8.20: Six types of Creative Commons licenses. Figure source, 2012. At present, our standard oral history consent form uses the CC By Attribution—NonCommercial license, with this key language: I voluntarily agree to participate in an oral history video interview about [insert topic.] I can choose to pause, stop, or erase the recording at any time during the interview. Afterwards, I grant permission for the oral history video recording, with my name and a summary or transcript, to be distributed to the public for educational purposes, including formats such as print, public programming, and the Internet. Under this agreement, I keep the copyright to my interview, but agree to share it under a Creative Commons Attribution—NonCommercial 4.0 International license (BY-NC). This allows the public to freely copy, remix, and build on my interview, but only if they credit the original source and use it for non-commercial purposes. In return, the interviewer will send one free copy of the interview recording, and summary or transcript, to my address below. See the full oral history consent form in this book. We prefer the Creative Commons (CC) consent form because it clearly keeps the copyright in the hands of the oral history interview participant, but allows us to freely share the recording and transcript on our open-access public history book and library repository, where individuals and organizations may copy and circulate it, as long as they credit the original source and do not charge any fees. This NonCommercial restriction assures participants that other people cannot profit by selling their interviews, unless the participant wishes to do so under a separate agreement. As the Creative Commons “Frequently Asked Questions” section clarifies, once a CC license is applied to a work, it cannot be revoked, but all CC licenses are non-exclusive, meaning that the holder of the copyright (in this case, the interview participant) may grant additional licenses to other parties (such as a for-profit book or movie, if desired). Also, CC licenses do not limit “fair use” provisions of existing U.S. copyright law, meaning that commentators have the same rights to report on or quote from the original work.251 Furthermore, CC licenses are increasingly used by leading knowledge-based institutions such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) OpenCourseWare project and the Public Library of Science (PLOS). Overall, we believe that this combination of intellectual property tools—traditional copyright with Creative Commons licensing—–fits better with our primary goal of historical preservation and public education than does traditional copyright alone. In Hartford, a specific oral history interview we conducted with school integration activist Elizabeth Horton Sheff deserves mention, as shown in 8.21. She took our Creative Commons consent form one step further by renegotiating its terms, just before we began our video recording. Sheff agreed with our goal of preserving her oral history for the public good, but her primary concern was to avoid being quoted out of context, as she had experienced with journalists in the past. She wanted her oral history interview to be made available in its totality on the web, but not to allow others to create a modified or excerpted version. Fortunately, Sheff was familiar with Creative Commons because her son is in the independent music business. She asked for a “no derivatives” restriction, and on the spot, we modified the consent form license to the ByAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives CC license. As a result, her video recorded interview and transcript both appear in the Trinity College library digital repository, but to respect her restriction, we blocked users from downloading a copy of the video, to make it harder for them to create an edited version. Yet anyone can move the video time slider on their web browser to watch only a certain portion if desired (such as minutes 28 to 32). Furthermore, anyone may download the transcript of the interview, and quote from the text under “fair use” guidelines.252 Figure 8.21: View the oral history video interview and transcript with Elizabeth Horton Sheff in 2011. We do not contend that Creative Commons has resolved all of our questions about who “owns” oral history, nor do we claim expertise in intellectual property law. But as oral historians seeking alternatives, we believe that this combination—–traditional copyright with Creative Commons licensing—–fulfills our dual needs to maintain the rights of individual participants while sharing history with the public. About the authors: Jack Dougherty and Candace Simpson (Trinity 2012) developed these ideas while conducting oral history interviews for this book, and co-presented at the 2012 joint meeting of the Organization of American Historians/National Council on Public History. Jack later expanded the essay for publication. Jack Dougherty and Candace Simpson, “Who Owns Oral History? A Creative Commons Solution,” in Oral History in the Digital Age, ed. Doug Boyd et al. (Washington, DC: Institute of Library and Museum Services, 2012), http://ohda.matrix.msu.edu/2012/06/a-creative-commons-solution/.↩︎ Troy Reeves, “What Do You Think You Own,” in Oral History in the Digital Age, 2012, http://ohda.matrix.msu.edu/2012/06/what-do-you-think-you-own/.↩︎ Dougherty and Nawrotzki, Writing History in the Digital Age.↩︎ Trinity College Library, “Digital Repository, Cities, Suburbs, and Schools Project,” n.d., https://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp/.↩︎ Jack Dougherty and Candace Simpson, “Whose Civil Rights Stories on the Web? Authorship, Ownership, Access and Content in Digital History” (Presentation at Organization of American Historians & National Council on Public History, April 20, 2012), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/40/.↩︎ Jack Dougherty, More Than One Struggle: The Evolution of Black School Reform in Milwaukee (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), https://uncpress.org/book/9780807855249/more-than-one-struggle/ with interviews archived at Jack Dougherty, “More Than One Struggle Oral History Project Records” (University of Wisconsin Milwaukee Libraries, 2004), http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi/f/findaid/findaid-idx?c=wiarchives;view=reslist;subview=standard;didno=uw-mil-uwmmss0217, and some digitized at “March on Milwaukee” (University of Wisconsin Milwaukee Libraries), accessed November 23, 2018, https://uwm.edu/marchonmilwaukee/.↩︎ John Neuenschwander, Oral History and the Law, Revised Edition, Oral History Association Pamphlet Series No. 1 (Albuquerque: Oral History Association, 1993), originally published in 1985, has been updated and retitled as John A Neuenschwander, A Guide to Oral History and the Law (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).↩︎ Neuenschwander, A Guide to Oral History and the Law, p. 64. He also cites case law that the copyright may be jointly held by the interviewee and interviewer.↩︎ Oral History Association, “Principles and Best Practices,” 2009, http://www.oralhistory.org/do-oral-history/principles-and-practices/.↩︎ As I recall, one reason I did not include this clause in the consent form was because, in my mind at that time, I feared that the suggested language from the 1993 Oral History Association pamphlet (p. 46) and its emphasis on death might have scared away some of my elderly participants: “Allow me to copy, use and publish my oral memoir in part or in full until the earlier of my death or [insert date].” By contrast, Neuenschwander’s 2009 edition (p. 116) includes more life-affirming language: “[In return for transferring copyright], the Center grants me a nonexclusive license to utilize my interview/s during my lifetime.”↩︎ Neuenschwander’s 2009 edition now includes this sample language: “In making this gift I fully understand that my interview/s will not be copyrighted by me or the Oral History Program but will be immediately placed in the public domain. This decision is intended to provide maximum usage by future researchers” (p. 85).↩︎ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/↩︎ https://creativecommons.org/faq/#how-do-cc-licenses-operate↩︎ Elizabeth Horton Sheff, “Oral History Interview on Sheff Vs. O’Neill” (Cities, Suburbs, Schools Project, Trinity College Digital Repository, July 28, 2011), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_ohistory/16; See additional oral histories with participants in the Sheff v O’Neill school desegregation lawsuit in Trinity College Library, “Digital Repository, Cities, Suburbs, and Schools Project”; On The Line Digital Archives, “Connecticut Digital Archive Collection,” n.d., http://hdl.handle.net/11134/120002:otl.↩︎ "],["oral-history-consent.html", "Oral History Consent Form", " Oral History Consent Form This sample oral history consent form emerged from our thinking about “Who Owns Oral History? A Creative Commons Solution” in this book. Readers are welcome to be adapt and modify this form for their own purposes. [Insert title of] Oral History Project Informed consent and copyright permission form I voluntarily agree to participate in an oral history video interview about [insert general topic, such as: my memories and experiences about schooling, housing, and civil rights in the Hartford region.] I can choose to pause, stop, or erase the recording at any time during the interview. Afterwards, I grant permission for the oral history video recording, with my name and a summary or transcript, to be distributed to the public for educational purposes, including formats such as print, public programming, and the Internet. Under this agreement, I keep the copyright to my interview, but agree to share it under a Creative Commons Attribution—NonCommercial 4.0 International license (BY-NC). This allows the public to freely copy, remix, and build on my interview, but only if they credit the original source and use it for non-commercial purposes. In return, the interviewer will send one free copy of the interview recording, and summary or transcript, to my address below. Name: Mailing address: Phone and/or email: Signature: Date: If younger than 18, parent/guardian signature: Interviewer’s signature (to agree with copyright ownership by interviewee, with CC license): Questions? [Insert project director(s) name and contact info, plus project website] Keep one signed copy for project files and offer one copy to participant for their records "],["teaching-segregation-ct.html", "Teaching Segregation in Connecticut", " Teaching Segregation in Connecticut This chapter was prepared for the “Separate by Design: Teaching the History of Residential Segregation in Connecticut” educator workshop, sponsored by the Gilder Lehrman Center at Yale University, with Anthony Roy, Tom Thurston, Rashanda McCollum, and me on May 13th, 2021. Figure 8.22: Learn more about this event from the Gilder Lehrman Center at Yale, and view the video recording. While researching and writing this On The Line book-in-progress with undergraduate students at Trinity College, our primary goal has been to make visible the hidden boundary lines that have divided metropolitan Hartford from the past to the present, in order to engage wider audiences with our troubled history and pathways to changing our future. Rather than waiting until the full manuscript is finished, my contributors and I created this open-access book and uploaded chapters as we completed them to make this history more findable and useful. Also, we strived to write introductory-level chapters—since that’s where all of us begin—and to offer clear explanations instead of complex jargon. Pictures also play an important role in the book, and we’ve added interactive maps, charts, and other illustrations to help communicate concepts that can be difficult to grasp with words alone. The racial and economic segregation we see today did not happen overnight, nor was it caused by nature. The segregated patterns today were created by decisions made by prior generations of elected leaders, real estate interests, and homebuyers. Making sense of how cities and suburbs evolved over time is not simple. But if we really want to dismantle systemic racism and related power structures that shape our present-day reality, then we need to understand how these systems actually work. Teaching historical thinking is one part of the solution. In my prior work as a secondary school teacher, I learned the power of posing thoughtful questions—and providing accessible primary sources—to guide students to think like historians. Sam Wineburg and colleagues have created several valuable resources to assist K-12 teachers in this process, which build on the field of inquiry-based learning.253 In our state, Rebecca Furer has led the development of the TeachItConnecticut at CT Humanities, a growing collection of inquiry-based lesson plans to help elementary and secondary educators guide students to “think like historians” with Connecticut primary sources. To be clear, more work remains to be done. In particular, we need to fulfill the promise of CT Public Act 19-12 to include Black and Latino Studies in the public school curriculum. We also need to continually rethink the mainstream curriculum, and ways to connect White students and communities with the Connecticut’s history of segregation, and how to speaks to all of us. In this spirit, this chapter suggests ways to pair historical questions and source materials from the On The Line book that educators are welcome to freely borrow and adapt for their classrooms. While my current teaching context is at the college level, I’ve always been impressed by K-12 educators who find creative ways to integrate complex topics into the K-12 curriculum. If you have inquiry-based Connecticut history lesson plans you wish to share with other educators, consider sharing it with TeachItCT, or if you teaching ideas that are directly relevant to On The Line, please contact the authors. Neighborhood Change Question: How have neighborhoods changed in Connecticut from 1934 to today? Source: Map of Neighborhood Change in Connecticut, 1934-present. Figure 8.23: Explore the full-screen interactive map of neighborhood change in Connecticut, which displays side-by-side aerial imagery from 1934 to the present for the entire state. Search for an address and zoom into a specific location. Click the “Permalink” button in the bottom-left corner to save a specific view to share with others. For example, view how 1960s interstate highways carved up cities such as the I-84 exchange in Hartford’s Parkville neighborhood, or how suburban commercial and residential development altered rural farmland such as the WestFarms Mall area in West Hartford/Farmington. Open-source map developed by Ilya Ilyankou and Jack Dougherty for On The Line at Trinity College, with MAGIC UConn Libraries. Activity: Enter your school address. What looks different between then and now? What looks similar? Enter your home address. What looks different between then and now? What looks similar? Follow the path from your home to school. What differences or similarities do you notice? What might have caused the changes you see in the photos? What kinds of things can you not see in the aerial photos? Thanks to teacher Josh Blanchfield for sharing his ideas and experiences on using the neighborhood change map with his students. Read more: Connecticut State Library, “Aerial Photographs of Connecticut [1934-present], http://libguides.ctstatelibrary.org/hg/aerialphotos/home. Teacher Tip: Most On The Line maps can be display with or without the explanatory caption by truncating the last portion of the web link. This allows educators to choose which format works best for their students. With caption: https://ontheline.github.io/otl-neighborhood-change/index-caption.html Without caption: https://ontheline.github.io/otl-neighborhood-change/ Redlining Neighborhoods Question: During the 1930s Depression, federal government officials and local bankers created maps and documents showing neighborhoods where they recommended giving loans to home owners. Years later, we call these “redlining” maps. What factors influenced their neighborhood ratings? Sources: Map of Federal Home Owner’s Loan Corporation (HOLC) “Redlining” in Hartford Area, CT, 1937. Figure 8.24: Click on color-coded areas in the full-screen interactive map to view one-page HOLC appraisals for each neighborhood in 1937, and the factors that field agents and local banks and lenders considered. They rated not only the physical condition of property, but also the “social status of the population,” and downgraded neighborhoods with Black, immigrant, and lower-income residents. Decades later, activists labeled these discriminatory lending practices as “redlining.” View open-source code and historical data, developed by Ilya Ilyankou and Jack Dougherty, with UConn MAGIC and the Kirwin Institute. For HOLC maps elsewhere in CT and the US, see Robert K. Nelson et al., Mapping Inequality: Redlining in New Deal America, American Panorama, Digital Scholarship Lab, University of Richmond, 2018. See also the “Downloads” page for specific areas. Figure 8.25: Zoom in and click on HOLC maps and appraisals for cities across the US in the full-screen interactive version of Mapping Inequality: Redlining in New Deal America by Robert K. Nelson, LaDale Winling, Richard Marciano, Nathan Connolly, et. al. Their collection includes HOLC materials for several regions in Connecticut: the Hartford area, New Britain, New Haven, Stamford, Waterbury, Darien, and New Canaan. According to the National Archives, HOLC materials also exist for Bridgeport and New London, Connecticut, but have not yet been digitized. Activity: Explore the interactive map and documents, or download them for your area. Assign student teams to focus on different neighborhoods and pool their findings. How did the mapmakers rate and describe different neighborhoods? What factors influenced their recommendations about who should receive home loans? Warning: The 1930s redlining maps and documents contain harmful words that reflect the racial, ethnic, and economic prejudices of the people who created them. Don’t allow your lesson to reinforce stereotypes. Teach students to recognize and disrupt inequalities. Read more: Shaun McGann and Jack Dougherty, “Federal Lending and Redlining,” On The Line book-in-progress, https://ontheline.trincoll.edu/lending.html. Robert K. Nelson et al., “Mapping Inequality: Redlining in New Deal America,” American Panorama, Digital Scholarship Lab, University of Richmond, 2018, https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining/. See “Introduction” for historical background. See more interactive maps Explore all of the On The Line interactive maps we’ve created so far—and watch for new ones to come—at the top of the Mapping and Publishing chapter in this book. Who Lived Here? Questions: Who lived in a specific house or street long ago? Which residents stayed, and which ones moved? How do different streets or neighborhoods compare on stability or turnover? What factors might have influenced people’s decisions? What do these patterns tell us about neighborhood change? Activity: Access the subscription-only Ancestry database, “US City Directories, 1822-1995,” https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/2469/, and download pages for specific streets if needed. Many CT public libraries provide access to Ancestry.com when using the library network. Some public libraries also provide access to the HeritageQuest database when using your library card, https://www.heritagequestonline.com/. Where Can You Afford to Live? Teaching the history of segregation can be challenging if learners do not have personal experience with searching for an apartment or house to rent or buy. See the Home School Shopping simulation in this book. Oral History Build stronger inter-generational communication and understanding with oral history interviews. See activities in the Teaching Oral History section of this book. Recent News on Residential Segregation in Connecticut Emily DiSalvo, “Hamden Confronts Legacy Of Segregation,” New Haven Independent, April 27, 2021, http://www.newhavenindependent.org/index.php/archives/entry/hamdensegregation_/. Eliza Fawcett, “A Fight Over Building Apartments in Mainly White Woodbridge Has Become a Flashpoint in the Debate Over Racial Equity in Connecticut. Here’s Why.,” Hartford Courant, April 30, 2021, https://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-news-woodbridge-zoning-debate-20210430-x7vda5qdhfegdahtzhd64tbeiq-story.html. Alex Putterman, “West Hartford Is Mostly White, While Bloomfield Is Largely Black; How That Came to Be Tells the Story of Racism and Segregation in American Suburbs,” Hartford Courant, February 21, 2021, https://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-news-west-hartford-bloomfield-housing-segregation-discrimination-20210214-eoobsguoybguznkoa4n2ravwli-story.html. Jacqueline Rabe Thomas, “Separated by Design Archives,” The CT Mirror, May 22, 2019, https://ctmirror.org/category/all-news/investigations/separated-by-design/. Sam Wineburg, Daisy Martin, and Chauncey Monte-Sano, Reading Like a Historian: Teaching Literacy in Middle and High School History Classrooms (Teachers College Press, 2011), https://www.google.com/books/edition/Reading_Like_a_Historian/hJwbAgAAQBAJ; Kathleen Thompson and Hilary Austin, Examining the Evidence: Seven Strategies for Teaching with Primary Sources (Capstone Classroom, 2014), https://www.google.com/books/edition/Examining_the_Evidence/uQ9XBAAAQBAJ.↩︎ "],["home-school-shopping.html", "Home and School Shopping Simulation", " Home and School Shopping Simulation Learning exercise developed for Ed 308: Cities, Suburbs & Schools by Jack Dougherty Goal: Given a demographic profile of a Hartford family, where can you afford to rent or buy a home in the surrounding suburbs, and what kind of public school access would this residence provide? This simplified role-playing scenario is designed to simulate the experience of home and school shopping, in order to deepen our understanding of the relationship between education and housing policy in the metropolitan US. Scenario: the parent(s) currently work and rent an apartment (or live with relatives) in Hartford each family has two children (grades 3 & 6), currently in Hartford Public Schools you have heard that “life will be better if you move to the suburbs” Google Sheet – Random Assignment of Family Economic Profiles: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1yq5lw2uJcZ3FpPZ5oKor_TdCxbmphocHk1EvYzD_W7U/edit#gid=0 How much housing can you afford to rent or buy? Explore this CNN Money home affordability calculator: http://money.cnn.com/calculator/real_estate/home-afford/index.html In what suburban towns does your monthly housing costs allow you to rent or buy? Remember that the space must house you (the parent), plus two children, which means 2 bedrooms minimum. Search for actual properties using tools such as http://Zillow.com. Write your top 2 choices in the Google Sheet Extra: Learn more about 30-year conventional mortgage payment schedule of payments http://www.bankrate.com/calculators/mortgages/amortization-calculator.aspx Given your housing choices, what is the average public school performance level? Explore interactive chart on this web page https://handsondataviz.org/scatter-chart-tableau.html Or download the spreadsheet to find your district https://handsondataviz.org/data/ct-districts-income-grades-2009-13.xlsx Write the percent of students performing at test goal in the Google Sheet If you moved to a suburban residence, what additional challenges might you face? Who wins and who loses under current US housing policies and practices? "],["covenants.html", "How We Found Restrictive Covenants", " How We Found Restrictive Covenants by Katie Campbell Levasseur, David K. Ware, June Gold, and Jack Dougherty Our Restricting with Property Covenants chapter in this book was inspired by several public history and advocacy projects across the U.S, including several now organized as the National Covenants Research Coalition. One of the earliest to launch online was the Segregated Seattle project in 2005, where researchers found White-only and anti-Jewish covenants in tens of thousands of properties across King County and Washington State. Their public history work pushed state legislators to approve a 2006 law to encourage homeowners to strike out racist covenants in the public record, and a 2023 law to provide compensation for victims.254 This chapter outlines different strategies for finding race restrictive covenants in Connecticut. Our methods vary by the type of land records available in each town clerk’s office, and our methods also changed over time as more (but not all) documents from the past have gradually been digitized. When possible, we recommend consulting with local experts who have more experience, such as property lawyers and professional title searchers, and to learn from methods advanced by members of the National Covenants Research Coalition. We share our experiences to encourage readers to search their own local property records, build public awareness of how racism shaped our communities, act on Connecticut’s 2021 legislation for property owners to renounce race-based covenants, and to advocate for policies that promote justice in housing. Help us continue the work to strike out Connecticut’s racist covenants. In early 2024 we created the https://myCTdeed.com site to build public awareness and simplify the process for current owners to find and remove unlawful covenants from their property. From Oral Interviews to Printed Records One method to finding racial covenants is to start with oral interviews and trace leads back through printed property records. When Katie Campbell and Jack Dougherty began searching in West Hartford in 2010, we began with anecdotal accounts by long-term residents that we attempted to confirm in the Town Clerk’s property records. But we faced several obstacles. First, the town clerk’s land records room contained over 4,000 print volumes of land transaction documents, with partially organized paper indexes but few digitized records at that time. Second, we had no legal training nor experience with title searching, so we read accounts of what other researchers had done elsewhere and tried to apply it to our local context. Third, no one in our small circle of Hartford-area civil rights activists, attorneys, or town officials had ever seen a restrictive covenant in the Hartford region, so we didn’t know exactly what to look for or whether we would actually find one. Due to the overwhelming size of the task at that time, we limited our search to property records in West Hartford, the largest suburb bordering the City of Hartford, and did not attempt to look elsewhere. Tracey Wilson, the West Hartford town historian and history teacher, gave us leads for possible covenants from anecdotal accounts by long-term residents while writing her monthly history column in the West Hartford Life periodical. Our most specific lead came from Mary Everett, who described in our history interview how she bought a home at 30 Ledgewood Road around 1970, when her lawyer mentioned that the property included a racially restrictive covenant from the 1940s that was no longer enforceable.255 Working backwards with property records, we traced the real estate transaction from the 1970s to the original deed in the 1940s. When conducting our research in 2010, the Town of West Hartford had recently made available a public online property assessment database, which allowed searches by name or address, but with transactions only into the 1970s. Our search for Mary Everett (or her spouse, Ronald) pointed us to a 1970 warranty deed in book 474, page 185, available only in print volumes in the property records room. This 1970 deed referred to the printed book and page numbers for prior transactions. By tracing the trail backwards in time, we finally found the original 1940 deed for the High Ledge Homes subdivision, which included this race restriction: “No persons of any race except the white race shall use or occupy any building on any lot except that this covenant shall not prevent occupancy by domestic servants of a different race employed by an owner or tenant.” Also, the entire High Ledge Homes subdivision appeared on a wall map in the property room, which referenced a 1938 subdivision surveyor’s map number 222, stored separately on microfilm in the town clerk’s office. By matching up past and present maps, we geographically confirmed that 30 Ledgewood Road was constructed on building lot #78, one of the 84 parcels of land specifically restricted by the racial covenant in the original 1940 subdivision deed, described in the video in Figure 8.26.256 Figure 8.26: In this 2011 video, Katie Campbell Levasseur describes how we traced restrictive covenants in paper property records in the Town of West Hartford town clerk’s office. We also tried to widen our search by skimming paper indexes of real estate transactions in the Town of West Hartford’s property records room. For example, a print volume called the Grantor Index Corporate Pages listed transactions by grantor (seller) to grantee (buyer) in partially alphabetical order by years during the racial covenant period (roughly 1920s through 1940s). The “Corporate” element of this title held some promise that we might find deeds where the developer was doing business as a corporation, rather than an individual. We searched for listings labeled as “agreements” and inspected those by volume and page to see if the deed between parties included any restrictions. Using this approach, we identified about 200 documents listed as “agreements,” and among those we found 22 “agreements” that included some type of restriction, all between 1933 and 1949. (We determined that before 1933, searching for “agreements” was not a productive way to look for restrictions, because we found restrictions in deeds that were not listed as “agreements.”) As a result, we found two types of restrictions in the records between 1915 and 1950, which we labeled value and race. Value restrictions were more common than race restrictions. Value restrictions typically stated that the owner could not build a home below a certain square footage, or below a minimum price (such as $5,000 in the 1920s), in an effort to maintain higher property values. But race restrictions stated that the land could not be occupied by non-White people, except for domestic servants. In some cases, deeds or agreements combined the two types. In either case, individuals or developers used these restrictions to control the social class and/or racial composition of a neighborhood, and its relative price in the minds of prospective wealthy White buyers. Looking back, over the past decade the partial digitization of West Hartford records makes the job somewhat easier today, but still requires searching print volumes to reliably trace sales back into the 1940s. First, the Town of West Hartford Online Assessment Database offers name and address search, but ownership history is currently incomplete prior to the 1970s. Second, the Town of West Hartford Land Records portal offers search by name, date, and book-page number (not consistently by address or parcel number), but many document images are still not available online, and lands records are incomplete prior to 1963. Third, even if West Hartford’s Land Records portal included document images for the 1940s, the tool currently lacks full-text search for keywords related to restrictive covenants, such as “the white race.” Searching by paper is still necessary for land records in this town at this point in time. In sum, while our 2010 study of West Hartford was not exhaustive, we located race restrictive covenants in 5 subdivisions that included about 190 parcels of land in the early 1940s. We estimate about 6 percent of West Hartford homes built during this period had restrictive covenants, given around 3,020 buildings were constructed in town during the 1940s. We count the entire decade because developers did not successfully sell homes on every parcel during the Depression and World War. In 2012 we placed scanned PDFs of all historical documents and digitized subdivision boundaries in an interactive Google Map, hosted by the University of Connecticut Libraries Map and Geographic Information Center. In 2017, we migrated historical documents and geodata into our GitHub public repository and displayed them in our open-source Leaflet map.257 Starting with anecdotal accounts of restrictive covenants produced mixed results, which perhaps tells us something about historical memory and how people believe they remember the past. Both during and a decade after our research, we heard some White West Hartford residents describe their memories of anti-Jewish or anti-Catholic restrictive covenants on their homes, yet still have not found documents supporting claims about their specific properties, nor any religious-based covenants in West Hartford as of this writing. How do we explain this difference between historical memory versus documents? One interpretation is that homeowners might be confusing different tools of housing segregation. Rather than a formal restrictive covenant (which would appear in the land records), perhaps Jewish or Catholic homebuyers were excluded by: (a) a neighborhood association agreement (which might exist on paper, but which might not filed as a property record with the town government), or (b) perhaps more likely, by the real estate agents who collectively or individually refused to show property to outsiders (which may have been openly discussed, but not documented on paper).258 Search Full-Text Historical Newspapers Another strategy to locate racial covenants is to search for keywords in full-text historical newspaper databases, which may lead to news stories or real estate ads with clues to trace back in the property records. For example, in our 2010 research for racial covenants in West Hartford, we searched the full-text Hartford Courant historical newspaper, at that time a newer 2005-era technology available through our Trinity College library subscription to the ProQuest database, and now more widely available through the ResearchIT CT portal with any Connecticut public library card. By searching for “restrictive” and “covenant” and related terms, we found 1947 news accounts about Simon Bernstein, a Hartford lawyer and Democratic city council member, who wrote a public letter asking the state legislative Judiciary Committee to invalidate race- and religious-restrictive covenants. The Hartford Courant, a White-run daily newspaper, ran a short excerpt of Bernstein’s letter, which mentioned an unnamed nearby town where a property deed restricted its sale “to only non-semitic members of the Caucasian race.” Later our search of Library of Congress historical newspapers led us to the Hartford Chronicle, a Black-owned weekly newspaper, which published Bernstein’s full letter. Six decades after Bernstein wrote his letter, we were very fortunate to conduct an oral history interview with him at age 98. He clearly recalled a different racial covenant case he was involved in as an attorney, regarding the Mountain Road area of West Hartford, which was settled out of court. But without sufficient details, we never found any documentation about either covenant seen by Bernstein.259 More recently, we have had more success searching for clues about restrictive covenants in newspaper real estate ads from the early 20th century across Connecticut. Purchasing an individual subscription on the Newspapers.com platform allowed us to do full-text searching of multiple newspapers across the entire state, though many papers still have not yet been digitized. For example, by searching for key phrases — such as “wisely restricted” or “reasonable…” or “sensible…” or “proper restrictions” — we found several Connecticut real estate advertisements that openly publicized euphemistic prohibitions, as shown in Figure 8.27. These code words sometimes led us directly to anti-Black and anti-Jewish prohibitions in the town land records. Another advantage of searching the Newspapers.com database is its wider inclusion of Hartford Courant local and regional editions for suburban and rural towns, compared to the ProQuest database that sometimes includes only the city edition.260 Figure 8.27: Screenshot of search for “wisely restricted” coded phrase in Newspapers.com database. Search Subdivision Maps Another strategy to locate restrictive covenants in Connecticut focuses on how housing developers converted large landholdings into subdivisions for individual homes, and the maps they created in that process. When retired attorney David Ware searched for racial covenants in suburban Manchester in 2020, he went to the Town Clerk’s office and began looking at surveyor’s subdivision maps, submitted by developers for town approval from the 1910s through the 1950s. Depending on the town, original paper subdivision maps may be stored in large flat drawers, or they may have been microfilmed or digitized into an online database. Typically, these maps identify the seller of the property, the person or corporation subdividing it into smaller lots for home sales, perhaps a name they gave to the development, and the year, as shown in Figure 8.28.261 Figure 8.28: 1940 surveyor’s map of Greenway Park housing development, submitted by Greenway Incorporated and approved by the Town of Manchester, Connecticut. In Manchester during the early 1940s, Ware found that developers of larger housing subdivisions, meaning 30 or more residential lots, were more likely to add uniform restrictions in property deeds for sales to builders or homeowners to maintain consistency and property values across a neighborhood. A list of uniform restrictions might prohibit shacks, trailers, and nuisances to other neighbors, and it might also include racist covenants. While smaller subdivisions are not necessarily free from racial prohibitions, Ware decided that the more efficient way to identify the greatest number of race-restricted properties was to start with larger subdivisions. The next step is to search by name of the property seller in the “Grantor Index” for the years during and after the creation of the subdivision, and often there are multiple entries for owners or developers selling subdivided lots for individual homes. Grantor Index entries usually include a brief description of the property (such as the development name and lot number), the date, and most importantly, the town clerk’s record of the deed by volume (or book) and page number. If the developer added a racial covenant, it will appear (or be referred to, directly or indirectly) in the deed on this volume and page, and subsequent property transfers will refer back to this deed. For large subdivisions, it’s wise to check at least two or more individual lot sales to confirm the presence of racial covenants. Based on this research, Ware recommended that Connecticut create a simpler process for current homeowners to renounce racial covenants in their property records. Connecticut’s General Assembly and Governor responded in 2021 and unanimously approved Public Act 21-173, as described in the Restricting chapter in this book.262 Search Digitized Property Records When retired attorney and educator June Gold learned in 2023 about racial covenants in Hamden, a suburb of New Haven, she began investigating property records and free legal services to help current homeowners remove them, as described in the Restricting chapter in this book. Searching for covenants became easier when the Town of Hamden lands records from 1778 to date were hosted online. The Town Clerk contracted with a private company to digitize and publish their public land records, primarily for attorneys and title searchers working on present-day real estate transactions, but also for historical researchers.263 Searching digitized property records has several advantages, but it’s important to begin with key constraints. First, while Hamden’s online records are robust, there currently is no full-text search capability, meaning that ordinary users cannot yet easily search across thousands of scanned property deeds for keywords or phrases found in restrictive covenants, such as “the white race” or “non-semitic” persons. (But land record digitization services most likely have the technology to enable full-text searches, as described further below.) Second, digitized property records are typically organized to search by names of sellers and buyers (grantors and grantees), date, and volume and page number—but typically not by street address (or parcel number) for more than five decades ago. So searching for racial covenants still requires hunting backwards in time, from the current owner to prior owners, and skimming pages of original property deeds for any restrictions. When searching Hamden property records online, one strategy is to begin with the name and address of a current homeowner who recalled hearing about a racial covenant in their property deed when they purchased their home and signed closing paperwork with an attorney. Beginning with the buyer’s name, you can trace the transfer of ownership—sometimes multiple transactions over time—through volume and page references to the original property agreements with racist prohibitions, as shown in Figure 8.29. Figure 8.29: Search by name in Town of Hamden online land records, showing a racial covenant in a 1940 property agreement. After locating a racial covenant on one property, another strategy is to trace the paper trail of neighboring homes, especially those located in the same subdivision, since many developer’s maps also have been digitized in the town property records, as shown in Figure 8.30. For example, after finding the name of one developer with a racial covenant, search that name to check if they created other subdivisions with similar covenants. Sometimes Gold also searches for similar property documents (such as an “agreement” or “warranty deed”) in the same or adjacent volumes to where she has already located one racial covenant. In addition, she recommends exploring present-day maps of suburban neighborhoods to identify the geographic outlines of likely subdivisions from the relevant time period. Figure 8.30: Search by “Gilridge” development name in the Town of Hamden online land records, showing a 1940 subdivision map of homes with racial covenants. Another online tool Gold uses is Hamden’s online property assessment database (also called assessor records), primarily created to track current owners and the appraised value of their property for taxation. While online assessor records may only go back a few decades in Connecticut towns, most platforms allow searches by owner name and street address, which helps Gold inform present-day homeowners about racial covenants placed on their home in past. For example, if a 1940s subdivision developer added a racial covenant to all properties on Carmalt Road, the assessment database allows Gold to lookup current owners’ names and addresses to contact them about their opportunity to renounce an unlawful covenant, as shown in Figure 8.31.264 Figure 8.31: Search by name or street listing in the Town of Hamden online assessment database, showing current owners of homes with racial covenants. A growing number of Connecticut town governments have digitized some portion of their printed bound volumes of public land records, but details vary widely, as shown in Figure 8.32. Note that “Earliest year land records or index online” may refer to full digital images of individual land records (such as scans of property deeds or surveyor’s maps), or it may refer to an indexed list of transactions by names, date, and volume/page number (but no digital images of those pages). Also, while most town governments with online land records make them publicly searchable (often with a free guest login), most require payment to print official copies, and a few towns even require a paid subscription to view online public records. Regardless of the status of a town’s digital property records, all printed property records are publicly viewable at the town clerk’s office. As of this writing, the major digitization providers with links to Connecticut towns they serve are: Avenu Analytics & Insights; Cott Systems, Inc. RECORDhub and its older Town Clerk Portal; SearchIQS; and NewVision Systems (with no public list of links to town databases).265 Figure 8.32: Search the interactive table and view data sources Although Connecticut town clerks did not digitize property records with restrictive covenants in mind, these online resources offer a valuable opportunity for historical researchers and fair housing advocates. The four major digitization services scanned images of property records, which are public documents, and some of them contain evidence of unlawful covenants created decades ago. Even if the town clerk or the digitization service does not currently offer full-text searches of these scanned images, the technology exists to run optical character recognition (OCR) searches for key phrases such as “the white race” or “non-semitic” persons. Furthermore, the National Covenant Research Coalition observes, “If you have a committed group and are willing to negotiate with [local government] officials, you may be able to get access to the whole database.” We believe it is in Connecticut’s public interest to reveal our history of racism in order to make a better future together.266 About the authors: Katie Campbell Levasseur (Trinity 2011) co-authored the West Hartford portion, David K. Ware co-authored the Manchester portion, and June Gold co-authored the Hamden portion, all in collaboration with Jack Dougherty. “National Covenants Research Coalition”. The earliest digital history project on racial property deeds probably was Plotkin, “Racial and Religious Restrictive Covenants in the US and Canada”, which states that content was posted online prior to 1999. On Seattle and Washington State, see Gregory, “Segregated Seattle” and Civil Rights and Labor History Consortium, University of Washington, “Racial Restrictive Covenants Project Washington State”.↩︎ Mary Everett, “Oral History Interview on West Hartford” (Cities, Suburbs, Schools Project, Trinity College Digital Repository, July 21, 2011), http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_ohistory/23.↩︎ Katie Campbell and Jack Dougherty, “How We Found Restrictive Covenants” (Video, Cities Suburbs and Schools Project, 2011), https://vimeo.com/220562166; High Ledge Homes Inc., “Agreement Concerning Building Restrictions”.↩︎ See table calculations, historical documents, and map code in Ilyankou and Dougherty, “Map,” 2017.↩︎ For more anecdotal accounts of anti-Jewish and anti-Catholic covenants that we could not confirm with documents, see Wilson, “Taking Stock of High Ledge Homes and Restricted Covenants”. Wilson wrote: “By word of mouth I had heard that in the 1930s and 1940s and into the 1950s, no Roman Catholics could live on Stoner Drive, the first street developed on ‘the mountain.’ No Catholics could buy on Wood Pond or Sunset Farms. According to another resident, the address of a house on the corner of Foxcroft Road and Fern Street was changed to Fern Street because no Jews were allowed on Foxcroft Road.” But we could not find property records to confirm any of those 2010 claims.↩︎ Compare the excerpt versus the full letter in “Bernstein Seeks End Of Restrictive Clauses”; Bernstein, “Letter to the Editor”, and see also Bernstein, “Oral History Interview on Connecticut Civil Rights”. Hartford Courant historical newspaper searches are now publicly available through Connecticut State Library, “researchIT CT,” accessed February 8, 2024, https://researchitct.org/. Learn more about Hartford Chronicle and related newspapers, publicly available through US Library of Congress, “Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers,” accessed January 31, 2024, https://www.loc.gov/collections/chronicling-america/.↩︎ Ancestry.com, “Newspapers.com,” accessed February 8, 2024, https://www.newspapers.com/.↩︎ See 1940 Greenway Park map from Town of Manchester CT property records, in Ilyankou and Dougherty, “Map,” 2017.↩︎ Ware, “The Black and White of Greenway”.↩︎ Hamden land records in Avenu Insights and Analytics, “Connecticut Land Records,” accessed January 15, 2024, https://www.uslandrecords.com/ctlr/, and see other towns in table below.↩︎ For many municipalities, see Vision Government Solutions, “Connecticut Assessor’s Online Databases,” accessed February 13, 2024, https://www.vgsi.com/connecticut-online-database/.↩︎ Table of CT land records online in Ilyankou and Dougherty, “Map,” 2017; Avenu Insights and Analytics, “Connecticut Land Records”; Cott Systems, Inc., “RECORDhub Land Records,” accessed January 15, 2024, https://recordhub.cottsystems.com; Cott Systems, Inc., “Connecticut Town Clerks Portal,” accessed January 16, 2024, https://connecticut-townclerks-records.com; Search IQS, “CT Land Records,” accessed January 15, 2024, http://searchiqs.com/; NewVision Systems, Inc., “Official Records,” accessed February 13, 2024, https://webhost01.newvisionsystems.com/officialrecords.aspx. See also CATIC, “Connecticut Town Land Records (Directory),” accessed February 13, 2024, https://catic.com/agents/resources/land-records/connecticut.↩︎ See “What is a Covenant” in “National Covenants Research Coalition”.↩︎ "],["mapping-publishing.html", "Chapter 9 Mapping and Publishing On The Line", " Chapter 9 Mapping and Publishing On The Line This chapter details our design process and web technologies we used to create this open-access digital book. Our interactive maps and charts, built with open-source code libraries such as Leaflet and Chart.js, help broader audiences to visualize spatial and historical change over time. The chapter also describes our publishing workflow, based on the open-source Bookdown package for RStudio, which produces both HTML web pages and PDF print pages. We share our knowledge about these tools so that others may innovate and build more digital books to tell their own stories. Maps by Year by Jack Dougherty and Ilya Ilyankou List of maps created for On The Line, listed by earliest year of data. Click links to explore the full-size interactive versions on the web, access the source data and code, and read in context in this book. Screenshot Description and Links Town Borders in Hartford County, CT, from 1600s to Present.Explore the full-size interactive map.View open-source code and historical data.Read in context in Carving Up Town Boundaries. Racial Change in Hartford County, CT, 1900-2018.Explore the full-size interactive map.View open-source code and historical data. Read in context in Segregating Along Color Lines. Year Built for Properties in West Hartford, CT, 1900s-2010s.Explore the full-size interactive map.View open-source code and historical data. Read in context in Expanding Zoning Across Suburbs. Home Value Index in Hartford County, CT, from 1910-2010.Explore the full-size interactive map.View open-source code and historical data.Read in context in Richest City in the Nation. Real Estate Development in West Hartford CT, 1920s.Explore the full-size interactive map.View open-source code and historical data.Read in context in A Jewish Grocer & the Origins of Zoning. Exclusionary Zoning in West Hartford, CT, 1924-present.Explore the full-size interactive map.View open-source code and historical data.Read in context in Bringing Zoning to Connecticut. Neighborhood Change in Connecticut, 1934-present.Explore the full-size interactive map.View open-source code and historical data. Read in context in Teaching Segregation in Connecticut. Federal Home Owners’ Loan Corporation “Redlining” in Hartford area, 1937.Explore the full-size interactive map.View the open-source code and historical data. Read in context in Federal Lending and Redlining. Race Restrictive Covenants in Connecticut, 1930s-40s. Explore the full-size interactive map.View open-source code and historical data. Read in context in Restricting with Racial Covenants. Zoning in Avon, Bloomfield, and West Hartford CT, 1950s.Explore the full-size interactive map.View open-source code and historical data. Read in context in Expanding Zoning Across Suburbs. Local Planning and Zoning Agencies in Connecticut, 1957.Explore the full-size interactive map.View open-source code and historical data. Read in context in Expanding Zoning Across Suburbs. Compare US Elementary School Districts at the Same Scale, with Student Poverty, 2017.Explore the full-size interactive map.View open-source code and data. Read in context TODO Old Schoolhouses in Connecticut, featuring photos by Johnna Kaplan. Explore the full-size interactive map.View the open-source code and data.Read in context in Consolidating Rural School Districts. TODO: Add more maps; add charts section "],["digital-history-dialogue.html", "A Digital History Dialogue", " A Digital History Dialogue by Jack Dougherty with editors of The Metropole blog of the Urban History Association The editors of the “Digital Summer School” series of The Metropole, the official blog of the Urban History Association, invited me to dialogue with them about the process of creating On The Line, and gave me permission to republish the essay and add footnotes.267 Digital Summer School: On The Line in Metropolitan Hartford, Connecticut This is the second installment in our annual Digital Summer School series which highlights digital humanities projects focusing on urban history… Featured Project: Jack Dougherty, On the Line: How Schooling, Housing, and Civil Rights Shaped Hartford and its Suburbs Why did you establish this digital project, meaning why a digital book rather than your more traditional academic text? Who do you see as its audience and why? Many historians have a bad habit of splitting our work into separate categories, such as “digital projects” versus “scholarly books.” Some institutional factors feed this division, such as revenue-driven publishers (who depend on book sales) and conventional tenure committees (who cannot imagine how to evaluate digital projects). But this false dichotomy between projects and books does not serve our broader interests as academic authors. In our field of history, as the average scholarly monograph sells only a few hundred copies, and the retail price tag approaches $50 per copy or higher, our audience is increasingly likely to search on the web for historical sources and interpretation, and to view these results in their browsers. In today’s digital context, dividing projects and books is not a viable path; we need options to merge them into one. Kristen Nawrotzki and I made this general argument in our introduction to Writing History in the Digital Age. Over twenty-five contributors and our publisher, the University of Michigan Press, agreed to share our peer-reviewed publication under an open-access license, where readers can discover and view the full-text book on the web (for free) or in print (for a reasonable price). Scholars holding full-time jobs in academic institutions operate primarily in a reputation-based economy. If readers can access our ideas with our names attached and determine them to be of high-quality, then our value goes up. By contrast, if our ideas are locked inside hard-to-access books or behind paywalls, regardless of their quality, our reputations among readers will suffer. My thinking about these issues continued to evolve, and I experimented further with blending web technology and book production, as I co-edited a second open-access book, with Tennyson O’Donnell, Web Writing, and launched an open-access textbook with Ilya Ilyankou, Hands-On Data Visualization (in-progress).268 These three works illustrate lessons I learned while working on my current book, On The Line: How Schooling, Housing, and Civil Rights Shaped Hartford and its Suburbs (in-progress, under contract with Amherst College Press). Set in Connecticut’s capital region, the book makes visible the hidden boundaries that have divided American cities and suburbs over the past century, as well as the civil rights struggles of families and activists who crossed over, redrew, or erased these powerful lines. As a work of history, On The Line blends textual narrative and digital sources into one book, with web and print editions. Perhaps it’s most appropriate to call it a digital-first book, because the richest edition is the one that appears on the open web. The narrative is wrapped around digital evidence—including interactive maps, oral history audio and video, and scanned documents—to make racial and class boundaries visible to broader audiences and to amplify the voices of people who challenged these lines. How did this project come to fruition? What obstacles did you have to overcome? Thanks to the wonderful Way Back Machine by the Internet Archive, I took another look at the first version of On The Line that I published on the public web in 2010. At that very early stage, I presented some dreams and demos to obtain grant funding and naively predicted to finish everything by 2012 (Ha!) This early version also reminded me that my previous publishing partner insisted I create two interconnected yet separate products—a digital repository (free) and a scholarly book (for sale)—each designed to stand alone, but to refer readers back and forth. Under this early model, readers would have to buy or borrow the book to read the text and go to the companion website to explore the interactive maps, videos, and other digital elements. Honestly, I’m glad that I didn’t finish on my initial deadline, under the restrictive terms of this proposed publishing arrangement, since the final product would have been disappointingly fragmented.269 The truth is that the origins of On The Line can be traced back to my personal frustration with the status quo of scholarly communication. “Why separate the digital project and the book?” I recall asking. “Why not create a better book that unifies text and sources into one product?” I began exploring open-source digital tools that merged web and PDF publishing into one workflow. First the Anthologize WordPress beta plugin (by the One Week One Tool team at the Center for History and New Media, George Mason University), then the Pressbooks/Open Textbook/WordPress plugin platform (by PressBooks and BC Campus), and now I use the Bookdown package (by RStudio). Each step has brought me closer to an improved workflow: composing easy-to-edit text that cleanly produces a web edition, with embedded interactive maps and videos, and a PDF edition, with static screenshots and links to interactive web content. Fortunately, I work with a supportive group of current and former students, librarians, and IT staff, because building an ambitious digital-first book like this one involves many steps: designing and coding interactive historical maps; transcribing and hosting oral history audio and video; managing citations and external links; future-proofing; and embedding all of this content into web and print formats. I’m not a speedy writer, and managing all of these steps has slowed me down even further. On a purely functional level, when considering the project’s internal structure, how did you think about incorporating aspects of On the Line such as its interactive maps, videos, and other features? As a historian, my job is to tell meaningful true stories about the past. For this book in particular, the goal is to help readers see the “invisible” race and class boundary lines that have increasingly divided city and suburban residents over time, and to draw attention to the ways that families and activists sought to cross over or erase lines, such as movements for school integration and inclusionary zoning. Showing how these people tell their own civil rights stories in oral history video clips is more powerful than merely retelling their stories in the text. While working on each chapter, often with student co-authors, we continually ask these types of questions: How can we tell stories that connect with our present-day readers? How can we persuade readers to explore and accept our interpretation of the evidence? And how can we guide both local and distant readers through spatial and historical change in our place-based narrative of a central city and its diverging suburbs? Creating this type of book requires traditional research and writing, but also dreaming up digital sources – interactive maps, video clips, and digitized documents – to embed into the narrative and illustrate our analysis. Some of my best teachers in this genre have been digital journalists (such as Alvin Chang, formerly at CTMirror.org, now at Vox.com). For example, consider how historians have published over time about “redlining,” or discrimination in financial services based on people’s residence, typically linked to their race or ethnicity. Ken Jackson’s book, Crabgrass Frontier (1985), introduced many readers to the 1930s Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) and their color-coded neighborhood appraisal maps, which he quoted from and included an image of to demonstrate their segregative intent. Subsequent scholars such as Amy Hillier (2003) analyzed archival records with spatial computing methods and questioned whether actual HOLC lending practices matched this intent. A decade later, historians Robert K. Nelson, LaDale Winling, Richard Marciano, Nathan Connolly and their colleagues released their Mapping Inequality digital history project (2016), with its impressive compilation of over 150 HOLC maps and appraisals, with commentary. In On The Line, former student Sean McGann and I co-authored a chapter that interprets this redlining history with a Hartford-area narrative. The chapter is illustrated with an interactive map of neighborhood appraisals created with the Map and Geographic Information Center (MAGIC) at University of Connecticut Libraries and the assistance of Trinity College graduate Ilya Ilyankou. The eye-catching redlining maps pull local readers further into the On The Line narrative, and allow them to explore archival documents for specific neighborhoods. But our book also argues that other federal programs, such as the Underwriting Manuals of the Federal Housing Administration, which are not as visually attractive as the HOLC maps, may have been more influential in segregating suburbs. Overall, this digital-first book delivers a hybrid combination of textual interpretation and interactive sources that, in my view, is vastly superior to the alternative: a separate book and web site. What role do digital projects like On the Line play in the field of history? Where do you see this project and others like it going in the future? Based on local feedback, I know that On The Line has already begun to achieve one of its primary goals for Hartford-area audiences: to educate residents on ways that housing and education barriers have shaped our city and suburbs, and about the strategies used by activists and families who fought back against them. Although it’s still a book-in-progress, my student co-authors and I are publishing chapters and sources, as we complete them, on the open web. Our analytics tell us that thousands of readers have discovered this history, and dozens of local organizations and schools have invited us to give public presentations. Not bad for a not-yet-finished book. As for the broader historical profession, another goal is for On The Line to help change the way we envision scholarly communication, by offering a reproducible example of blending textual narrative and digital sources into a book with both web and print editions. But I don’t have much evidence of progress to share. Look again at the wording of the question above, which refers to On The Line as a “digital project” rather than a “book.” It’s surprising to me how slowly the historical profession is creeping into the digital age, while keeping its traditional publishing paradigms intact. Relatively few historians appear to be writing digital-first books that genuinely blend textual narrative and digitized sources. I fully realize that these types of books require more work by collaborative teams, not just individual scholars; a wider range of skills not typically taught in history graduate schools; and sources of both start-up and sustainable funding. When I began work on this nearly a decade ago, I sincerely believed that more historians would be moving in this direction. Yet it still feels lonely to me. (While typing these words, I secretly hope to hear back from readers who will prove me wrong and share links to other digital-first books that blend text and evidence.) It seems over the past few years two aspects of urban history have arisen 1) greater emphasis placed on education as key factor in suburban development notably in the case of your work here and others such as Ansley Erickson and 2) efforts by more academic and popular historians (I’m thinking of perhaps Richard Rothstein’s The Color of Law which fundamentally synthesized a large body of work) to really grapple with how suburbs and their attendant segregation came to be. How do you explain these developments which in many ways are embodied by the project itself? Yes, I’ve been very impressed by recent works on the historical relationship between housing and education, such as Ansley Erickson’s Making the Unequal Metropolis (2016), Richard Rothstein’s The Color of Law (2017), and others. This may be a case where historians are just now catching up with our audiences. For several decades, privileged Americans and our politicians have understood the growing two-way equation between housing and schooling: where you live shapes your children’s education, and their level of education shapes their future income and where they can afford to live. So why has it taken historians so many decades to write about this? The “Bridging the History Gap” section of On The Line argues that we have not fully understood how this dynamic relationship between housing and schooling played a central role in shaping metropolitan America because a prior generation of historians split these topics into separate bodies of literature and essentially drew boundaries around these disciplinary subfields. On one side of this scholarly divide, urban and suburban historians, such as Arnold Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto, and Ken Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier, described how housing policies and racial discrimination fueled the post-World War II decline of cities and expansion of outlying suburbs, but schools did not play a meaningful role in their equation. On one side, educational historians who followed the lead of David Tyack (The One Best System) focused on the rise and fall of big-city school districts, yet paid little attention to their relationship with suburbs. Whereas most educational historians halted at the city line, urban and suburban historians generally stopped at the schoolhouse door. So it’s a refreshing development to see newer historical works by Ansley Erickson, Matthew Lassiter, and others blur these boundaries. So far, what moment or event related to your digital project comes to mind when I say greatest achievement or unique insight? Years ago, when teaching or presenting about the history of cities, suburbs, and schools, I used to “talk with my hands,” waving them around in the air in my feeble attempt to visually represent racial and economic change across neighborhoods over time. Now I teach and give talks with interactive historical maps. Seems to be a much better way to communicate about urban history, and less annoying for the audience. Jack Dougherty is Professor of Educational Studies and Director of the Center for Hartford Engagement and Research (CHER) at Trinity College. Since learning how to create interactive urban history maps, he spends less time talking with his hands. (Photo by Andy Hart) “Digital Summer School: On The Line in Metropolitan Hartford, Connecticut.” (The Metropole, July 17, 2019), https://themetropole.blog/2019/07/17/digital-summer-school-on-the-line-in-metropolitan-hartford-connecticut/.↩︎ Kristen Nawrotzki and Jack Dougherty, “Introduction,” in Writing History in the Digital Age (University of Michigan Press, 2013), 1–18, https://muse.jhu.edu/chapter/1030699, Jack Dougherty and Tennyson O’Donnell, eds., Web Writing: Why and How for Liberal Arts Teaching and Learning (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2015), https://doi.org/10.3998/dh.13396229.0001.001, Jack Dougherty and Ilya Ilyankou, Hands-On Data Visualization: Interactive Storytelling from Spreadsheets to Code (O’Reilly Media, Inc., 2021), https://HandsOnDataViz.org.↩︎ https://web.archive.org/web/20100614053219/http://ontheline.trincoll.edu/↩︎ "],["bookdown.html", "Bookdown, GitHub, and Zotero", " Bookdown, GitHub, and Zotero by Jack Dougherty and Ilya Ilyankou We built this book with free-to-use, open-source tools, primarily Bookdown, GitHub, and Zotero. This chapter explains why and how we combined these tools and developed our publishing workflow, so that others can build their own books and share their knowledge about how to improve the process. Why not just write the book in a conventional word processor? We desired an efficient workflow to co-author one manuscript that could continuously generate multiple book products for different purposes, as shown in Figure 9.1. HMTL web edition for the open-access book, with embedded iframes for interactive charts and maps PDF print edition with static images and book-style layout ePUB electronic publication edition for e-reader devices Microsoft Word edition with static images for editors who prefer to provide feedback this way Markdown file of the full-length book with pathnames to static images for easy conversion into the publisher’s platform A conventional word processor could not continuously generate all of these products, which likely would have resulted in creating entirely separate files and code for different editions. But with our unified Bookdown workflow, all of our writing is done in one manuscript. Whenever we make edits, we can push a couple of buttons to publish our updated book products in all formats: HTML, PDF, ePUB, MS Word, and Markdown formats. Figure 9.1: Simplified workflow to compose, compile, and publish in multiple formats with Bookdown. Images from Daniel Hendricks, RStudio, and Zotero. Bookdown Overview: Why and How? We based our solution around Bookdown, an open-source package for the R code project created by Yihui Xie at RStudio. Although many people use R for statistical analysis, the free RStudio desktop application also supports several innovative publishing solutions. Here’s an overview of our workflow: We set up the Bookdown files and composed the manuscript in R Markdown, the R-flavored version of the easy-to-write Markdown syntax. Each chapter consisted of one .Rmd file, with links to static images and interactive visualizations. We uploaded our files to a free GitHub repository, which allows multiple authors to work simultaneously on different chapters of the book and “push” revisions (called commits) to a shared online repository, where authors can view each other’s edits. Alternatively, you could simultaneously write and comment on the same chapter in Google Documents, and use the Docs to Markdown add-on to convert one-time into Markdown format, which is similar to R Markdown. We organized our sources using the free Zotero bibliography manager by the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. Also, we installed the free Better BibTeX extension by Emiliano Heynes to create Zotero citation keys that work smoothly with Bookdown. After each day’s writing, we used Bookdown to automatically “knit” and compile the book products. Behind the scenes, Bookdown builds the editions using the PanDoc universal document converter and the LaTeX document preparation software, without requiring you to learn these complex formats. Under our open-access agreement with the publisher, we made our book public as we wrote it to develop our audience and address reader feedback. With each day’s revisions, we rebuilt the book and published all of the editions to our public GitHub repository, and used its free GitHub Pages feature to host the open-access HTML web edition. (Alternatively, you can choose to keep your GitHub repo private.) We hosted our open-access web edition on GitHub using a custom domain name (https://ontheline.trincoll.edu), which we set up through Trinity College. Also, we can provide our editor and publisher with the text of the book in different formats: a Microsoft Word file for editing, a PDF file in a book-style layout, or a full-length Markdown file for conversion into other platforms. Screenshots of two variations of the basic workflow appear in Figure 9.2 and Figure 9.3. The first displays how to compose the book using the R Studio built-in editor, and the second shows a very similar process using the Atom text editor, which we prefer. Learn more about GitHub Desktop and Atom text editor in Hands-On Data Visualization. Figure 9.2: Workflow on a Mac desktop: Compose the text in RStudio and build books with Bookdown (top left), manage sources and insert citation keys with Zotero + BetterBibTex (bottom left), push book products to your GitHub repository to host online (right). Figure 9.3: Variation on the workflow above: Compose the text in your preferred editor (such as Atom), and use RStudio only to build the book products. Our Bookdown workflow met our goal to efficiently and continuously produce multiple book products. But it may not be ideal for everyone, especially novice computer users. Installation and setup requires several steps, as described in the following sections: Install and Set Up Bookdown File Structure and Headers Style Guide for On The Line Images and R Code-chunk Formatting Tables in Markdown Format Zotero and Better BibTeX for Notes and Biblio Before leaping into Bookdown or any related tool, see also this section on Alternative Book Publishing Tools. For more technical details about Bookdown, and examples of other publications built with this tool, see https://bookdown.org: Xie, Yihui. Bookdown: Authoring Books and Technical Documents with R Markdown. Chapman & Hall/CRC, 2018. https://bookdown.org/yihui/bookdown/. Xie, Yihui, J. J. Allaire, and Garrett Grolemund. R Markdown: The Definitive Guide. Chapman & Hall/CRC, 2020. https://bookdown.org/yihui/rmarkdown/. Xie, Yihui, Christophe Dervieux, and Emily Riederer. R Markdown Cookbook. Chapman & Hall/CRC, 2020. https://bookdown.org/yihui/rmarkdown-cookbook/. "],["install.html", "Install and Set Up Bookdown", " Install and Set Up Bookdown Below are steps we followed to set up the Bookdown publishing platform and related tools for this book, using our Macintosh OS 10.14 computers. The same general principles also should apply to Windows computers. No special knowledge is required, but these tools may not be ideal for novice computer users. Installation steps—and inevitable problems that pop up—will be easier if you are comfortable with exploring your computer, or already have some familiarity with text editors, GitHub, or R Studio. Install R Project statistical programming language https://www.r-project.org, which is required by Bookdown. See screenshot Install the free version of RStudio Desktop to make R easier to use with a visual editor. See screenshot. Some authors compose their books in RStudio, but you may use any text editor. Our personal preference is the Atom editor from GitHub. Inside RStudio, select the Packages tab, and select Install. See screenshot Inside RStudio, install the “bookdown” package to build your book, and select Install Dependencies. See screenshot Bookdown now should be successfully installed in RStudio. See screenshot For Bookdown to create a PDF edition of your book, you need to install a LaTeX engine to prepare your Markdown plain text, citations, and images into stylized pages. Since the full-sized LaTeX project is very large, Bookdown recommends the smaller TinyTeX package. Inside RStudio, select the Packages tab, select Install, and enter “tinytex” to find and upload the package. See screenshot To finish installing tinytex, in the RStudio console, type tinytex::install_tinytex() and press return. See screenshot Note: If a permissions error displays that /usr/local/bin not writable see solution at https://github.com/yihui/tinytex/issues/24 When you installed RStudio, it also should have installed its own version of Pandoc, the package that converts files from Markdown format to HMTL and other formats. To confirm the Pandoc installation and version number, in the RStudio console, type rmarkdown::pandoc_version() and press return. The resulting version number should be 2.3.1 or higher. To install a newer version of Pandoc, which is highly recommended, go to https://pandoc.org. In RStudio > Packages tab > System Library screen, be sure to check boxes for bookdown and tinytex packages. To display your platform and package settings in RStudio, type xfun::session_info() and it will display results similar to this: R version 4.1.0 (2021-05-18) Platform: aarch64-apple-darwin20 (64-bit) Running under: macOS Big Sur 11.3.1 Locale: en_US.UTF-8 / en_US.UTF-8 / en_US.UTF-8 / C / en_US.UTF-8 / en_US.UTF-8 Package version: base64enc_0.1.3 bookdown_0.22 compiler_4.1.0 digest_0.6.27 evaluate_0.14 glue_1.4.2 graphics_4.1.0 grDevices_4.1.0 highr_0.9 htmltools_0.5.1.1 jsonlite_1.7.2 knitr_1.33 magrittr_2.0.1 markdown_1.1 methods_4.1.0 mime_0.11 rlang_0.4.11 rmarkdown_2.9 stats_4.1.0 stringi_1.7.3 stringr_1.4.0 tinytex_0.32 tools_4.1.0 utils_4.1.0 xfun_0.24 yaml_2.2.1 Download, Build, and Host a Sample Bookdown Book While Bookdown does not require you to use GitHub, these steps show how to integrate these tools to make your own copy of a sample Bookdown book. Create a free GitHub account to simplify steps for the next two sections. While Bookdown does not require you to use GitHub, the workflow described below features GitHub to copy a sample Bookdown template and to host your own Bookdown editions online. To learn more about the basics of this tool, see Chapter 11: Edit and Host Code with GitHub. In your web browser, log into your GitHub account, go to the Bookdown developer’s bookdown-minimal repo https://github.com/yihui/bookdown-minimal, and fork a copy to your GitHub account. Install GitHub Desktop https://desktop.github.com to transfer files between your online GitHub repo and local computer. While software developers may prefer to access GitHub by typing commands in their terminal, GitHub Desktop provides easier point-and-click access for most users. In your web browser, go to your forked copy of bookdown-minimal, click the green Code button, and select Open in Desktop. This should automatically open the GitHub Desktop application, and you can navigate where you wish to store a copy of your code repo on a folder in your local computer. In RStudio in the upper-right corner, select Project > Open Project to open the bookdown-minimal folder on your local computer. See screenshot In RStudio, open the index.Rmd file and make some simple edits to the text of this minimal book. For example, remove the hashtag # comment symbol in line 8 to “uncomment” and activate the PDF book option. Save your edits. See screenshot Optional: If you wish, you can modify your bookdown-minimal files outside of RStudio, by using your preferred text editor, such as Atom editor https://atom.io. In RStudio, upper-right corner, select the Build tab, select Build Book, and choose All Formats to build both the gitbook-style static web edition and PDF edition. If RStudio successfully builds both editions of your minimal book, the output will be saved into your bookdown-minimal folder, in a subfolder named _book, because that’s how this sample is configured. The RStudio internal browser should automatically open your web edition (but it’s not a very good browser, so we typically close it and manually open the index.html file with our regular browser.) Also, open the subfolder and inspect the PDF edition of your book. If any errors were generated in the process, error messages will appear in red type in the RStudio Build viewer, which may require you to debug errors and delete temporary files as instructed. See screenshot. Tip: In future sessions with RStudio, you should select the Packages tab and click Update to keep Bookdown and other software packages up to date. See screenshot Close your project, and quit RStudio. The next set of steps will focus on pushing your edited book to your GitHub repository using the GitHub Desktop tool. Open GitHub Desktop and navigate to the bookdown-minimal folder on your local computer. Write a quick summary to commit (or save) the changes you made above to your main branch, and push this version to your online GitHub repo. In your web browser, go to your online GitHub repo, with a web address similar to https://github.com/USERNAME/bookdown-minimal. In your GitHub repo, select Settings, and scroll down to the GitHub Pages section, which is a free web hosting service to publish your code and book editions on the public web. Change the Source from None to Main, keep the default /root option in the middle, and press Save. Scroll down to the GitHub Pages section again, and the web address of your published site should appear similar to https://USERNAME.github.io/bookdown-minimal. Copy your published web address from above, paste into a new browser tab, and at the end add _book/index.html. The reason is because your sample book is configured by default to store all web and PDF editions in your _book subfolder, with index.html serving as the home page. Therefore, the full web address in your new browser tab should be similar to: https://USERNAME.github.io/bookdown-minimal/_book/index.html Tip: You may need to wait up to one minute for edits to your GitHub online repo to appear live at your GitHub Pages web address. Also, after waiting for GitHub Pages to make changes, be sure to “force reload” or “hard refresh” your web browser to update directly from the GitHub Pages server, not the browser’s internal cache. "],["structure.html", "File Structure and Headers", " File Structure and Headers To understand our file structure, see the GitHub repository for this book at http://github.com/ontheline/otl-bookdown. In general, each subchapter is a separate .Rmd file. Here is a simplified outline of the root file structure in the GitHub repo for this book: Preface of the book with non-numbered sections: index.Rmd Chapters with first-level headers in this format: 1-chapter.Rmd Subchapters with second-level headers in this format: 1.1-subchapter.Rmd. While Bookdown refers to these as sections, we call them subchapters. The images folder, where PNG, JPG, and PDF images to display in chapters are located. The docs folder, which contains the published book products, such as Web edition (index.html, introduction.html, etc.), the PDF edition (Dougherty-etal-OnTheLine.pdf), etc. Additional helper files described further below. When you change the names of chapters/sections, Bookdown builds new HMTL pages based on those new names, but old HMTL pages based on old chapter/section names may still exist in the same subfolder. To avoid confusion, you may wish to carefully delete old HTML pages in docs whenever you significantly alter names and build a new version of the book. Bookdown assigns a default ID to each header, which can be used for cross-references. The default ID for # Topic is {#topic}, and the default ID for ## Section Name is {#section-name}, where spaces are replaced by dashes. But we do not rely on default IDs because they might change due to editing or contain duplicates across the book. Instead, we manually assign a unique ID to each first- and second-level header in the following way. Note that the {-} symbol, used alone or in combination with a space and a unique ID, prevents auto-numbering in the second- thru fourth-level headers: # Top-level chapter title {#unique-name} ## Second-level section title {- #unique-name} ### Third-level subhead {-} #### Fourth-level subhead {-} Also, we match the unique ID keyword to the file name for top-level chapters this way: 01-keyword.Rmd to keep our work organized. Unique names should contain only alphanumeric characters (a-z, A-Z, 0-9) or dashes (-). Subheaders must have unique names or IDs to avoid Bookdown errors about duplicated references. In the Bookdown index.Rmd for the HTML book output and the PDF output, the toc_depth: 2 setting displays chapter and section headers down to the second level in the Table of Contents. The split_by: section setting divides the HTML pages at the second-level header, which creates shorter web pages with reduced scrolling for readers. For each web page, the unique ID becomes the file name, and is stored in the docs subfolder. The number_sections setting is true for the HTML and PDF editions, and given the toc_depth: 2, this means that they will display two-level chapter-section numbering (1.1, 1.2, etc.) in the Table of Contents. Note that number_sections must be true to display Figure and Table numbers in x.x format. To override numbered sections in individual subchapters, insert a minus sign before the hashtag inside the curly brackets: ## Subchapter title {- #keyword} See relevant settings in this excerpt from index.Rmd: output: bookdown::gitbook: ... toc_depth: 2 split_by: section number_sections: true split_bib: true ... bookdown::pdf_book: toc_depth: 2 number_sections: true Note that chapter and section numbering do not appear automatically in the MS Word output unless you supply a reference.docx file, as described in the RMarkdown guide and this Stack Overflow question. In the _bookdown.yml settings, all book outputs are built into the docs subfolder of our GitHub repo, as shown in this excerpt: output_dir: "docs" delete_merged_file: true book_filename: "OnTheLine" language: label: fig: "Figure " tab: "Table " chapter_name: "Chapter " In our GitHub repo, we set GitHub Pages to publish to the web using main/docs, which means that visitors can browse the source files at the root level, and view the HTML web pages hosted in the docs subfolder. We use the GitHub Pages custom domain setting so that the HTML edition is available at https://OnTheLine.trincoll.edu. The docs subfolder also may contain the following items, which are not generated by Bookdown and need to be manually created: CNAME file for the custom domain, generated by GitHub Pages. .nojekyll invisible empty file to ensure speedy processing of HTML files by GitHub Pages. wp-content folder to redirect old links from the previous WordPress site at this domain Note: Bookdown now generates a 404.html file that replaces the need for the custom version that previously needed to be manually created. This HTML version of this book also includes the Google Analytics code file, and also a footer that appears at the bottom of each web page, with references in the index.Rmd code, as shown below. output: bookdown::gitbook: ... includes: in_header: google-analytics-otl.html after_body: footer.html "],["style-guide.html", "Style Guide for On The Line", " Style Guide for On The Line View the underlying source code to understand how this page was composed at: https://github.com/OnTheLine/otl-bookdown/blob/main/9.3.3-style-guide.Rmd. The goal of this style guide is to compose one version of the text, primarily in easy-to-read R-flavored Markdown format, which Bookdown generates into multiple book products (HTML for open-access web edition, MS Word for editing, PDF for print edition, ePUB for electronic publication, full-length Markdown for conversion, etc.). Note: This style guide was created primarily for the HTML web edition, and the PDF and ePUB versions will require additional modifications prior to final publication of the print and eBook editions. In general, each subchapter is a separate R-flavored Markdown (.Rmd) file. Each paragraph begins on a separate line. Use brackets and parentheses for an embedded link, and remember to add a footnote (as shown further below) for readers of the printed version that does not display embedded links. For lists, always insert a blank line before the items, unless they appear directly after hashtag header. unordered list ordered list Dashes: Use a hyphen (1 dash) for hyphenated words, such as two-thirds or dog-friendly hotel. Use an en-dash (2 dashes) for ranges, such as the May–September magazine issue. Use an em-dash (3 dashes) to insert an additional thought—like this—in a sentence. Insert TODO to note items to finish or review with co-author or editor. For a block quote, start each line with a caret AND add two spaces to insert a line break: I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him. — Mark Twain — notable American author Note that the HTML edition has customized style.css code for block quotes. See relevant code on GitHub. Also note that the HTML edition has customized style.css code to improve visual contrast and make it more accessible for visually-impaired readers, based on the Wave Accessibility Evaluation Tool. See relevant code on GitHub. Conditional Formatting Conditional formatting offers the option to display text or images in some editions, but not other editions. Options: Conditional formatting offers the option to display text or images in some Bookdown editions, but not others. Here are several ways to use conditional formatting: Insert a HTML code comment <!-- Comment --> in the .Rmd file to hide a few lines of text. This appears as commented-out text in the HTML and .md formats, is not displayed in the HTML browser, and does not appear in any way in the PDF or MS Word formats. Demo: R package function is_[html/latex]_output allows conditional output for different book products, such as text that should appear in the HTML edition but not the PDF edition, or vice versa. Demos: This line appears in the HTML, Word, Markdown versions, and is commented-out in the PDF version. Option to customize the style.css code for the HTML book. Option to add headers, footers, preambles to the HTML or LaTeX versions. Option to build different versions of the HTML and LaTeX/PDF books using different chapters by listing them in order in the _bookdown.yml file. Cross-references In order to cross-reference in Bookdown, assign a unique name or R code-chunk label to each chapter, section, figure, and table. Unique names and labels should contain only alphanumeric characters (a-z, A-Z, 0-9) or dashes (-). To cross-reference any chapter or section, and allow readers to jump there, use a HTML link with the unique name, such as index.html or style-guide.html. Demos: See Preface See Style Guide in Chapter x. Note: We use the HTML link method because it works best for the HTML web edition. We avoid using Bookdown unique ID links to cross-reference chapters or sections, as recommended in the Bookdown manual, for the HTML edition because it creates imprecise URLs with extraneous hashtags for sections/subchapters. However, if your primary goal is to create an ePUB, use the Bookdown unique ID links method, since HTML links will not work. To cross-reference figures and tables, and display their auto-number and allow readers to jump there, write a call-out with a Bookdown reference to a code-chunk label, such as See Figure \\@ref(fig:sample-image) or See Table \\@ref(tab:left-table). Demos: See Figure 9.4. See Table 9.1. Cross-reference interactivity varies by output: In HTML, all cross-refs are clickable. In PDF, all cross-refs are clickable (except chapter-level HTML links). In Word, no cross-refs are clickable (unless this varies with reference.docx). "],["images.html", "Images and R Code-chunk formatting", " Images and R Code-chunk formatting View the underlying source code to understand how this page was composed at: https://github.com/ontheline/otl-bookdown/blob/main/9.3.4-images.Rmd NOTE: These instructions are designed primarily for the HTML web edition. Be sure to research and consider options if your primary objective is PDF print edition, ePUB electronic publication, or other formats. In general, create high-resolution color images and save in PNG format (preferred over JPG due to image loss) into the images folder of the Bookdown repository on GitHub. Write file names in lowercase with year-name format using dashes (not spaces or underscores). Begin with the relevant year if possible, and keywords to match bibliographic information in Zotero. If the original image is larger than 3MB, add -original to file name to avoid confusion, then create a duplicate and use photo editor to reduce size but maintain 300 dpi resolution for use in the publication. If adding any artwork to images, insert -annotated to file name to avoid confusion with original. To create screenshots, use high-resolution Retina monitor (144 ppi) with tight cropping. To combine images for side-by-sides or montages, save each element using the root file name plus a suffix. Save all elements in an images subfolder using a similar year-name format. Use either https://Canva.com or https://Photopea.com to combine images, and save a copy of the latter in Photoshop format (.psd) in the images subfolder. Since very large PNG images sometimes appear too large in the PDF edition, convert a copy into a smaller PDF image to fit better. In Preview, open the copy and reduce image size by 50% (or more), and double resolution (up to 300 dpi if feasible), and save. Then File > Export, with Option to change file format to PDF, but keep same file name as PNG. Save all versions of an image into the images folder to keep them together, as long as the overall GitHub repo size remains under 1GB. (Keep extremely large TIFF files elsewhere but use similar file names in order to locate them.) Bookdown will copy only the relevant files into the docs/images subfolder. As a result, one image may have different versions: images/1937-sample.png images/1937-sample.pdf images/1937-sample-original.png images/1937-sample-annotated.psd Include relevant source info in the Zotero library, and include the file name in the Abstract field to manually match up with the manuscript. Since Bookdown does not cleanly process endnotes in image captions, include the Zotero citation at the end of the main-text paragraph that describes the image, typically after a call-out: …as shown in Figure X. For the image caption, write a brief standalone description, add an action-instruction and supplemental link for any visualizations, and include any relevant image source credits or copyright information. In writing this book, one of key goals was to create R Markdown syntax to display different versions of images for different Bookdown editions. For each image, we wanted one set of instructions to display an interactive chart/map/video using an embedded iframe in the HTML web edition, but display a static PNG image in the full-length Markdown edition, or to substitute a smaller PDF static image when available in the PDF book edition. Also, we wanted auto-numbering of images by chapter. Our solution relies on R code-chunk formatting for most images, with some exceptions. This R Markdown/Bookdown syntax is more complex than basic Markdown image formatting, but supports conditional formatting and captions in all of our editions, and auto-numbering in HMTL and LaTeX/PDF editions. Our general R code-chunk image format looks roughly like this, minus some code tics that have been removed for simplicity: ...as shown in Figure \\@ref(fig:keyword). (ref:keyword) Caption, with optional Markdown links and image credits, but no endnotes. {r keyword, fig.cap="(ref:keyword)"} if(knitr::is_html_output(excludes="markdown")) knitr::include_url("http://pathname-to-interactive-version-keyword.html") else knitr::include_graphics("pathname-to-static-version-keyword.png") The first line generates an auto-numbered and clickable figure cross-reference call-out. Auto-numbering appears in Figure x.x format in HTML, PDF, and Word, but Figure x format in Markdown. (Word auto-number formatting can be changed with a reference.docx file.) This call-out is important because images in PDF output will “float” by design and may appear before or after the desired page. The second line contains the caption, with optional links in Markdown format. But do not insert endnotes with Zotero citation keys, since those will cause errors in the PDF edition. Insert detailed endnotes about sources for images in the body of the text, and use the caption for only a brief image credits and any copyright notice. The third block is the R code-chunk. (In practice, the code-chunk is set off from the other two lines using 3 code tic marks, as shown in later demos, which we omitted here for simplicity.) The first portion references keyword in the call-out and also the caption above. The latter portion may simply instruct Bookdown to include a static image (when there is no interactive version), or it may include an if-else statement for conditional formatting when both interactive and static versions exist. The if statement for HTML output contains (excludes=\"markdown\") because markdown is considered an HTML format, as described in the R Markdown Cookbook. Since the publisher’s platform will accept a full-length Markdown version of the book, which displays static images rather than interactive visualizations, we need to generate the “markdown” file differently than the HTML web edition. Write R code-chunk labels that use the same year and keywords as the image file name. Avoid duplicate labels across the book. Use only letters, numbers, and hyphens (not underscores): ref:1901-keywords-with-hyphens images/1901-keywords-with-hyphens.png Do not insert spaces inside the ref:chunk-label for the caption. But do add a blank line to separate it from the code-chunk. After the code-chunk, add another blank line to avoid “undefined reference” Bookdown errors. Inside the R code-chunk ref caption, do NOT use mischievous characters (such as < or > or \") that will throw HTML errors into the Markdown output images. Do not insert footnotes in the R code-chunk ref caption, which will throw PDF errors. Our Bookdown index.Rmd file includes global R code-chunk settings immediately after the first header. One setting displays each code-chunk image without a code echo, meaning that only the image is displayed, and not the code used to generate that image. The other setting automatically inserts the PDF version of an PNG/JPG image, whenever it exists, in the PDF output, which allows us to manually reduce the size of large images displayed in the PDF book. Read more about these options in this Bookdown chapter: https://bookdown.org/yihui/bookdown/figures.html. {r setup, include=FALSE} knitr::opts_chunk$set(echo = FALSE) options(knitr.graphics.auto_pdf = TRUE) Demo: R code-chunk for static image for all editions: HTML, PDF, DOCX, MD …as shown in Figure 9.4. Figure 9.4: Caption with optional Markdown links but no endnotes. Source: “Hippo and crocodile” by Stig Nygaard, CC-BY. Demo: R code-chunk to reduce size of static image for all editions First, create a copy of the original PNG image. Use Preview or any image editor to reduce size by 50 percent or more, and if needed, increase the resolution (from 72 to 144 dpi or higher), and save. Export as PDF image with same filename as PNG file, to produce two image files: keyword.png (original) and keyword.pdf (smaller size). The global setting will auto-substitute the smaller PDF image in place of the original PNG image. Second, insert an out.width=... in the second line to reduce the PNG display size as needed in the HTML edition. Note that this method keeps the original PNG image intact, which is ideal when working with historical images of a reasonable file size. Images larger than 3MB may be delayed in the HTML web edition for readers with slow internet connections. …as shown in Figure 9.5. Figure 9.5: This version reduces HTML display size using out.width=300 and auto-substitutes a smaller PDF image. Source: “Hippo and crocodile” by Stig Nygaard, CC-BY. R code-chunks allow more complex conditional formatting, where an interactive map or animated GIF or streaming video clip appears in the HTML version, and a manually-produced static image with an embedded link appears in the PDF, MS Word, and full-length Markdown outputs. To change the height of the default 400px iframe, add the new height to include_url as shown in the examples. (Note: Changing the width of the default 675px iframe to less than 100 percent requires adding a line in a custom-scripts.html file, and including this in the index.Rmd file). Demo: R code-chunk for iframe in HTML, static image in PDF, DOCX, MD …as shown in Figure 9.6. Figure 9.6: Explore the full-size interactive map, which enables readers of non-HTML editions to view it. View open-source code and historical sources, developed by list-authors-here. Demo: R code-chunk for locally-stored scrolling PDF in HTML, static screenshot in PDF, DOCX, MD Be sure to add “screenshot” to the file name of the static PNG to avoid confusing it with the scrolling PDF, in case the static PNG is converted into a static PDF for better image quality in the PDF book output. Note: Currently in 2021 this displays a scrolling PDF in Firefox, Chrome, but not Safari browser. Insert link to local PDF in the caption to provide workaround for readers with Safari browsers. …as shown in Figure 9.7. Figure 9.7: Explore the sample PDF that is locally stored in the GitHub repo, with option to add more Markdown links. Demo: R code-chunk for animated GIF in HTML, static image in PDF, DOCX, MD When appropriate, create animated GIF files using the free Giphy Capture or the paid Camtasia application, which allows the option to add fade-to-black to mark the end-point in the looped version. …as shown in Figure 9.8. Figure 9.8: View the animated GIF, which enables readers of non-HTML editions to view it. Note about CTDA Videos As of 2020, videos uploaded to CTDA have datastreams generated in MP4 video format, but these run in auto-play format in the browser, which CTDA cannot turn off, so are not appropriate to display in the browser in this book. See sample video datastream: https://collections.ctdigitalarchive.org/islandora/object/120002:172/datastream/MP4 and read more https://confluence.uconn.edu/display/CTDA/Datastreams. Therefore, CTDA should be used as a historical preservation video server, but must use either YouTube, Vimeo, or Kaltura examples above to display secondary video clips for display in this book. Demo: R code-chunk for YouTube video in HTML, static image in PDF, DOCX, MD Be sure to use the embed link from a YouTube or Vimeo share button. …as shown in the video 9.9. Figure 9.9: View the YouTube video, which enables readers of non-HTML editions to view it. YouTube formatting in Bookdown seems cleaner than Vimeo formatting. Add link to full video on a historical preservation server (such as CTDA) to avoid auto-play issue. Demo: R code-chunk for Kaltura video in HTML edition, static image in PDF, DOCX, MD Work with Trinity Library to upload items to their Kaltura Hartford History channel or your personal channel. Go to Kaltura video entry > share button > embed, extract the long URL, and paste in R code-chunk below. Option: This method allows you to select a video start time, such as 8:00, which will be appended to the embed code URL in seconds like this: [mediaProxy.mediaPlayFrom]=480\" This method successfully avoids auto-play in Mac browsers. TODO: test in Windows browsers and other devices. Note: If you paste the long URL directly into a modern browser, the early portion of the link transforms into HTML5-specific code, which you also could use if needed. TODO: Since Kaltura player setup auto-displays captions, which are faulty in the automated video upload process, need to insert corrected captions directly from the transcript. Prioritize videos that need caption revisions. …as shown in Figure 9.10. Figure 9.10: Here’s a sample caption for a video on Trinity Kaltura server. Option to add Markdown link to historical preservation version in CTDA. Demo: R code-chunk for streaming video ONLY in HTML This option is useful if you wish to display a video only in the HTML edition, with no screenshot in the other editions. Note that this will alter figure auto-numbering between the HTML and other editions. To avoid auto-numbering issues, use conventional iframe formatting without the R code-chunk. Figure 9.11: Caption only appears in HTML version. View link to YouTube video. Demo: Markdown image formatting without auto-numbering, for all editions While we normally use R code-chunk image formatting, there are some exceptions. For example, we use Markdown formatting for tables or grids of images that are relatively small and do not require captions or auto-numbering. When creating images to appear as the same size in sequence, temporarily add a code-comment with the image width, height, and resolution as a reminder to match up with others, as shown below. Use PNG images (rather than JPG), and if appropriate, add a numerical suffix to the filename (image-200.png) to distinguish this 200px-wide version from the larger original. <!-- Images below are 200x200 at 300 resolution --> Co-Authors About Us About Jack Dougherty About Ilya Ilyankou "],["tables.html", "Tables in Markdown Format", " Tables in Markdown Format View the underlying source code to understand how this page was composed at: https://github.com/ontheline/otl-bookdown/blob/main/9.3.5-tables.Rmd Two approaches to tables: long, complex, or dynamic in Datawrapper, versus short or static in Markdown For long, complex or dymamic tables that may be updated often, create a Google Sheet, link to Datawrapper, and save backup CSV or XLSX in GitHub repo. Follow iframe image guidelines, including a PNG download. Unless data has specific historical year, start file name with datawrapper-keywords.png. For short or static tables, create in Markdown format, since it produces good output for HTML, PDF, Word, and Markdown. Use a tool such as Tables Generator to import significant table data in CSV format, format the column alignment as desired, and press Generate button to create table in Markdown format. For significant table data, save the CSV version in a GitHub repo for potential later use. Add the Markdown table code shown below to auto-number (Table x) in HTML, PDF, Word. …as shown in Table 9.1. Table 9.1: Left-justify content, remember blank Line Much Much Longer Header Short Header Short Header Left-justify text content with left-colons Less Here Use more hyphens to grant more space to some columns Less Here Table 9.2: Right-justify content, remember blank line Header1 Header2 Header3 123 456 789 Right-justify numerical content with right-colons Use equal hyphens to make equal space for all columns Note that Bookdown creates the Markdown file with tables in HTML format, not Markdown format. If necessary, one workaround is to paste the individual Markdown-formatted tables directly from the .Rmd into a modified full-book .md file. "],["zotero.html", "Zotero and Better BibTeX", " Zotero and Better BibTeX Our Bookdown workflow uses the open-source Zotero bibliography manager, with the Better BibTeX extension, to simplify the process of creating source notes and a bibliography. Rather than typing full references directly into the text, you can insert a short citation key into the book manuscript, and the tools will automatically generate the desired references in your preferred format (we like Chicago-style endnotes), with an alphabetized bibliography of all sources cited at the end. After you’ve installed the tools, here’s an overview of the workflow: Create an entry for each source (book, journal article, document, etc.) in your Zotero library. Select and upload your preferred citation style in .csl format. For each source, Better BibTeX generates a unique citation key, similar to tyackOneBestSystem1974, which you can paste with formatting to create a note in the book manuscript. Each time before you build your book inside Bookdown, export your Zotero library or collection in .bib format into your Bookdown repository, which supplies the reference data to match your citation keys in the text. Here are more detailed instructions to install, set up, and use Zotero and Better BibTeX in a Bookdown workflow. Remember that this workflow may not be ideal for novice computer users. But if you have multiple citations, it will save you time in the long run. Download and install Zotero for Mac, Windows, or Linux. Add connectors to your preferred browsers to automatically upload bibliographic data for your sources. Install the Better BibTeX extension and follow all of the site’s instructions for initial setup. At the top of each entry in Zotero, the extension will generate a unique citation code, such as tyackOneBestSystem1974. Copy and paste the citation code into your Markdown text, and add a caret, square brackets, and the at symbol ^[@tyackOneBestSystem1974]. See more options in the Style Guide. Or to use Zotero’s drag-and-drop quick-copy feature, you can set Zotero preferences > Export > Better BibTeX Quick Copy, and also if desired, set Better BibTeX preferences > Export > Quick-Copy > Pandoc citation format. Tip: If you use R Studio’s built-in text editor, see this blog post on how it supports Zotero citations. Go to the Zotero Style Repository to find your preferred citation style (such as chicago-fullnote-bibliography.csl). Upload this file to your Bookdown repository, and also add it to your book’s index.Rmd settings for both the HTML and PDF editions. Each time before your build your book in Bookdown, export an updated Zotero bibliography (in .bib format) from your Zotero library or collection, and upload into your Bookdown repo, following these steps: A. Select Library > Right-click to export the collection B. Select format > Better BibLaTeX (IMPORTANT: We use this setting, rather than “Better BibTex”, because “Better BibLaTex” includes full dates in newspaper citations, and URLs). Also, we leave all of the checkboxes blank during the export, and do not select “keep updated”. This means that if your Better BibTex citation codes suddenly change in Zotero because the author, title, or year changed, then you are responsible for running find-and-replace to make these edits in the text of the book. C. Save the output in .bib format, save into your book repo, and be sure to add the same filename to your settings in index.Rmd, as shown in these excerpts: bibliography: ontheline.bib citation-style: chicago-fullnote-bibliography.csl ... output: bookdown::gitbook: ... pandoc_args: [ "--csl", "chicago-fullnote-bibliography.csl" ] ... bookdown::pdf_book: ... citation_package: default pandoc_args: [ "--csl", "chicago-fullnote-bibliography.csl" ] In our Bookdown workflow, which uses the Chicago full-note bibliography style, this Zotero source type entries appear correctly formatted: Book Book chapter Journal article Newspaper Thesis Report Web page Blog post – But we avoid this because Zotero Chicago-style entry inserts “(blog)” into citation title. Instead, we prefer to reset the type to Web page. Document – Use this all-purpose entry in place of other types: Law case, Presentation, Interview, Video recording, Television broadcast, etc. Insert important details (such as the archival location information) in the Publisher field. To help other researchers find items cited in this book, include URLs in Zotero entries whenever feasible, even if not required by convention. For example, some print-only books and documents are hard to locate, so include an OCLC WorldCat permalink to make them easier to find (example: http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/20683509). Also, if a print source has been digitized by HathiTrust, Google Books, or the Internet Archive, add one of these URLs to the Zotero entry. Reminder: Chicago full-note works exactly as it was designed, meaning that the second instance of a citation currently appears as an abbreviated note (author, with title when appropriate). Demo: Here’s a text-only note, with no Zotero citation.270 To create a note with citations only, separate Zotero/BibTeX citation keys with semi-colons: 271 Since notes also may include text and punctuation in Markdown syntax, always insert a caret symbol prior to the brackets to demarcate a note:272 Remember that the chicago-fullnote-bibliography.csl format is designed to automatically shorten the note after it its first reference. Customized to restart endnote numbering in each chapter & subchapter Note that this publication contains customized code in style.css to restart endnote numbering in each chapter and subchapter (aka section), to match a traditional history book publication. See relevant code on GitHub. TODO: Fix known issue: Using Bookdown version 0.16 as of January 2020, note numbering with customized code appears differently across editions, and needs to be addressed prior to final PDF publication: In the Web HTML edition, customized code in style.css renumbers endnotes at the beginning of each chapter (e.g. 2) and subchapter (e.g. 2.1), as desired by the author. But in the PDF edition, endnote renumbering begins only at each chapter, not subchapter, regardless of the custom CSS code. Probably need to change a Pandoc LaTeX setting. In the MS Word edition, footnotes (rather than endnotes) are continuously numbered without breaks across the entire document, regardless of the custom CSS code. Also, avoid placing notes in image captions, since URLs cause an extra } symbol to appear when generating PDF version, which crashes the build. Instead, place dynamic reference in the body text immediately before the image, along with footnote ref. This is a note, with no bibliographic reference.↩︎ Tyack, The One Best System; Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier.↩︎ Compare how urban education appears in Tyack, The One Best System, p. 123 versus suburban schooling in Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier, p. 234.↩︎ "],["alternative.html", "Alternative Book Publishing Tools", " Alternative Book Publishing Tools We gained some experience with book publishing tools while writing On The Line. During its early years, we migrated the book across different platforms, using different titles and domain names, with shapshots and code commits stored on the Internet Archive: 2010-2014 On The Line on self-hosted WordPress 2015 On The Line on self-hosted Pressbooks to 2017 2018 On The Line built with Bookdown on GitHub Before leaping into Bookdown or any other tools for authoring and/or publishing book-length works, clarify your goals and consider the costs and benefits of different approaches. Here’s a short list of alternatives we tested or considered, and our notes on how they addressed our specific goals. Your experience may differ, and tools are continually evolving, so we welcome feedback to the authors. Conventional word processors: Most authors work primarily with text, and are content with a traditional book-publishing workflow that begins with composing in Microsoft Word or LibreOffice, then handing it off to a publisher for review, copyediting, layout, and distribution. But this book is designed to blend text and interactive digital media, and to publish book products in multiple formats: on the public web (for free) and an inexpensive paperback (for sale). Traditional word processors do not efficiently achieve this goal. Advanced word processors: Scrivener by Literature & Latte is a powerful word-processor and outlining tool designed to help authors see both “the forest or the trees” of book-length manuscripts. Although Scrivener supports a different version of Markdown, the tool was not designed to integrate interactive maps and charts into text, nor does it support multi-author collaboration or sharing files on a public repository. Cloud-based word processors: Google Docs and other cloud-based word processors allow authors to write collaboratively in real-time, comment on each other’s work, and share drafts in semi-public or public venues for early reader feedback. Furthermore, installing the Docs to Markdown by Ed Bacher allows you to convert Google Doc files into Markdown format (for easier conversion to other platforms, such as Bookdown) or HTML format (for the web). Although Google Docs can display static images of interactive maps and videos, and links to online versions, it was not designed to display interactive iframes, nor to publish book-length editions to the web or PDF formats. GitBook is a collaborative publishing platform that is primarily designed for producing online documentation. Authors can embed some interactive content, share their work through a GitHub repository, and exercise version control. The GitBook layout with its collapsible table of contents is well-designed, and has been integrated as a style into Bookdown. But GitBook is not designed to produce exportable book files (and the PDF export is only available as a beta feature for paid business-level subscribers). Furthermore, GitBook does not support citation tools that some authors require. WordPress.org is an open-source web authoring platform, used by over 33 percent of the top 10 million websites as of 2019. Users can create a free account on WordPress.com, or freely download the WordPress software and run a self-hosted version on a server, which requires developer skills or a third-party service, such as ReclaimHosting.com. Although WordPress creates web pages, it was not designed to produce PDFs or print books, and it’s not easy for authors to edit book-length manuscripts on a WordPress platform. Pressbooks is an open-book publishing platform built on an open-source variation of WordPress Multisite, which produces books in different formats: web, print (PDF), ebooks (ePUB), etc. Authors can pay to publish on the Pressbooks.com platform or a third-party service such as ReclaimHosting.com, or freely download the software to run on a server, which requires developer skills. Although Pressbooks is a powerful tool, it requires an investment of time and resources to install and maintain its platform, dependencies, and updates. Also, creating a book in Pressbooks requires authors to compose directly in the WordPress-style editor, or copy-and-paste content from word processor to web platform, which requires continually updating back-and-forth to keep both versions the same. By contrast, composing in Bookdown is simpler because there is only one version of the book manuscript, from which all book products are generated. Scalar is an open-source scholarly authoring and publishing platform by the Alliance for Networking Visual Culture, with support from the Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. The platform was created primarily for authors to assemble born-digital book-length works online, with media from multiple sources, and it allows multi-author collaboration. But the platform was not designed to produce PDFs or print books, so was not considered for this book. See examples of online-only works at https://scalar.me/anvc/scalar/showcase/. Users can freely register to create works on the Scalar platform hosted by the University of Southern California at http://scalar.usc.edu/works/. Manifold is an open-source scholarly publishing platform created through a collaboration by the University of Minnesota Press, the Graduate Center at the City University of New York, and Cast Iron Coding, with funding from the Mellon Foundation. The platform was designed primarily for authors to integrate digital media into their texts, and also for readers to view and annotate drafts and finished books online. It appears that print book production is handled separately. Since installing Manifold on a server requires developer skills, most authors will need to work directly with a participating publisher to access the tool. The Manifold platform can ingest texts written in Markdown, Microsoft Word, and other formats. Fulcrum is an open-source scholarly publishing platform created University of Michigan Library and Press in collaboration with several partners, with initial funding from the Mellon Foundation. The platform was designed primarily for authors to integrate digital media into book-length works, which readers can view online or in e-book formats or print formats. Since the Fulcrum platform is hosted on the publisher’s server, authors will need to work directly with a participating publisher to access the tool. "],["bibliography.html", "Chapter 10 Bibliography", " Chapter 10 Bibliography The text and images for the On The Line book, including data files and source code for interactive charts and maps, is located in our open-source GitHub repository at https://github.com/ontheline. The text is copyrighted and shared under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license, and source code for interactive charts and maps is shared under an MIT license. See individual images and captions for information about copyrights held by others. See also digitized documents, oral history interviews, and videos related to this book, stored in the On The Line Digital Archives, Connecticut Digital Archives, https://collections.ctdigitalarchive.org/islandora/object/120002:otl. Since 2002, over 30 Trinity College student researchers have co-authored publications and/or research presentations with faculty, staff, and community partners through the Cities Suburbs and Schools Project http://commons.trincoll.edu/cssp. CSSP is both an undergraduate seminar and a research team for independent studies. Their works listed below include articles, book chapters, papers, and presentations, and many of these have been stored in the Papers and Publications section, Cities Suburbs and Schools Project, Trinity College Digital Repository, http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers. Note that several items currently in the Trinity Digital Repository https://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp/ will be migrated into the CTDA. Archival and Digital Collections Avon Free Public Library. Avon History Collection. https://history.avonctlibrary.info. ———. Connecticut Digital Archive Collection. https://collections.ctdigitalarchive.org/islandora/object/150002:001. ———. Map Collection Master Index. https://archives.library.wcsu.edu/cao/ctavfpl/mapcollection.xml. ———. Marian Hunter History Room. https://www.avonctlibrary.info/services/history-room/. Avon Historical Society. https://avonhistoricalsociety.org. Connecticut Digital Archive. http://collections.ctdigitalarchive.org/. Connecticut Historical Society. https://chs.org/. ———. Connecticut Digital Archive Collection. http://hdl.handle.net/11134/40002:CHS001. Connecticut History Illustrated. http://hdl.handle.net/11134/480002:collection. Connecticut Judicial Branch. Case Look-Up. https://www.jud.ct.gov/jud2.htm. Connecticut Open Data. https://data.ct.gov/. Connecticut State Library. https://ctstatelibrary.org/. ———. Aerial Photographs of Connecticut, 1934-Present. http://libguides.ctstatelibrary.org/hg/aerialphotos/home. ———. Connecticut Digital Archive Collection. http://hdl.handle.net/11134/30002:csl. ———. ResearchIT Newspapers (Available with a Public Library Card). https://researchitct.org/newspapers/. ———. Treasures of Connecticut Libraries. https://cslib.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p128501coll0. CT Mirror. https://ctmirror.org. CTHumanities. https://cthumanities.org/. ———. Connecticut History. https://connecticuthistory.org/. ———. TeachIt Curriculum Projects. https://teachitct.org. Google Books. https://books.google.com/. Google Scholar. https://scholar.google.com/. Hartford Courant. https://courant.com. ———. 1764-1995, ProQuest Historical Newspapers. https://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant. ———. 1764-1995, ProQuest Historical Newspapers, CT State Library Access with a Public Library Card. https://search.proquest.com/hnphartfordcourant/?accountid=46995. ———. 1764-1995, ProQuest Historical Newspapers, Trinity College Library Subscription. https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trincoll.edu/hnphartfordcourant/?accountid=14405. ———. 1992-Present, ProQuest Newspapers. https://search.proquest.com/hartfordcourant. ———. 1992-Present, ProQuest Newspapers, CT State Library with a Public Library Card. https://search.proquest.com/hartfordcourant?accountid=46995. ———. 1992-Present, ProQuest Newspapers, Trinity College Library Subscription. https://search-proquest-com/hartfordcourant?accountid=14405. Hartford Data. https://data.hartford.gov/. Hartford Public High School Museum & Archive. https://hphs1638.wordpress.com/. ———. Connecticut Digital Archive Collection. http://hdl.handle.net/11134/620002:HPHSMA. Hartford Public Library. https://www.hplct.org. Hartford Public Library, Hartford History Center. https://hhc.hplct.org. ———. ArchivesSpace. http://hhc2.hplct.org. ———. Boyd Hinds Papers. http://hhc2.hplct.org/repositories/2/resources/29. ———. Butch Lewis Video Collection. https://collections.ctdigitalarchive.org/islandora/object/50002:butch_lewis. ———. Connecticut Digital Archive. http://hdl.handle.net/11134/50002:AdminJME02. ———. Hartford Changemakers. https://hplct.libguides.com/changemakers. ———. Hartford Housing Resources. https://hplct.libguides.com/hhc-resources/housing. ———. Map Collection. http://hhc2.hplct.org/repositories/2/resources/19. HathiTrust Digital Library. https://www.hathitrust.org/. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/. Jewish Historical Society of Greater Hartford. https://jhsgh.org/. Life in West Hartford. Essays by Tracey M. Wilson. http://lifeinwesthartford.org. Map Warper by Topomancy LLC. http://mapwarper.net/. New York Public Library. Map Warper. http://maps.nypl.org/warper/. On The Line. GitHub Repository. https://github.com/ontheline. On The Line Digital Archives. Connecticut Digital Archive Collection. http://hdl.handle.net/11134/120002:otl. Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER). https://www.pacer.gov/pcl.html. Shoeleather History Project. Stories from Hartford’s Grassroots. Essays by Steve Thornton. https://shoeleatherhistoryproject.com. Social Explorer. Trinity College Library Subscription. https://www.socialexplorer.com/. Trinity College Library. https://www.trincoll.edu/lits/. ———. Digital Repository. https://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/. ———. Digital Repository, Cities, Suburbs, and Schools Project. https://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp/. ———. Digital Repository, Hartford Studies Papers. https://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/hartford_papers/. ———. Hartford Collection [Hartford Times Photos]. https://www.jstor.org/site/trinity/hartford/. ———. Watkinson Library, Hartford Studies Project Collection. https://trinitywatkinson.libraryhost.com/repositories/3/resources/58. University of Connecticut Library. https://lib.uconn.edu. ———. Archives and Special Collections, Connecticut Digital Archive Collection. http://hdl.handle.net/11134/20002:UniversityofConnecticut. ———. Map and Geographic Information Center (MAGIC). http://magic.lib.uconn.edu/. ———. Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, Archives and Special Collections. https://dodd.uconn.edu/thomas-j-dodd-research-center/. University of Hartford. Connecticut Digital Archive Collection. http://hdl.handle.net/11134/550002:UniversityofHartford. University of Pennsylvania Library. Online Books Page. https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/. US Census Bureau. Decennial Publications. https://www.census.gov/prod/www/decennial.html. US Department of Education. National Center for Education Statistics. https://nces.ed.gov. US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Historical and Archived Reports. https://www.huduser.gov/portal/taxonomy/term/2520. US Government Publishing Office. GovInfo. https://www.govinfo.gov/. US Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/. ———. Sanborn Maps Collection. https://www.loc.gov/collections/sanborn-maps. US National Archives. https://www.archives.gov/. Wadsworth Atheneum. Connecticut Digital Archives Collection. http://hdl.handle.net/11134/250002:WA001. West Hartford Public Library. West Hartford History Online. https://history.westhartfordlibrary.org/. ———. West Hartford Life. https://history.westhartfordlibrary.org/collections/show/1. ———. West Hartford Local History Resources. https://www.westhartfordlibrary.org/local-history/. ———. West Hartford News and Predecessors. https://history.westhartfordlibrary.org/collections/show/6. WorldCat. https://www.worldcat.org/. Automated list of sources cited in book-in-progress "],["404.html", "Page not found", " Page not found The page you requested cannot be found (perhaps it was moved or renamed). You may want to try searching to find the page's new location, or use the table of contents to find the page you are looking for. "]] diff --git a/docs/segregating.html b/docs/segregating.html index ff17cd7..9100f7f 100644 --- a/docs/segregating.html +++ b/docs/segregating.html @@ -24,7 +24,7 @@ - + diff --git a/docs/selling.html b/docs/selling.html index e59c995..6f416cb 100644 --- a/docs/selling.html +++ b/docs/selling.html @@ -24,7 +24,7 @@ - + diff --git a/docs/structure.html b/docs/structure.html index 1dda537..b285260 100644 --- a/docs/structure.html +++ b/docs/structure.html @@ -24,7 +24,7 @@ - + diff --git a/docs/style-guide.html b/docs/style-guide.html index 86012bb..2d818d9 100644 --- a/docs/style-guide.html +++ b/docs/style-guide.html @@ -24,7 +24,7 @@ - + diff --git a/docs/tables.html b/docs/tables.html index 51b4793..b6b0eba 100644 --- a/docs/tables.html +++ b/docs/tables.html @@ -24,7 +24,7 @@ - + diff --git a/docs/teaching-oral-history.html b/docs/teaching-oral-history.html index d6c4c22..9adb25e 100644 --- a/docs/teaching-oral-history.html +++ b/docs/teaching-oral-history.html @@ -24,7 +24,7 @@ - + diff --git a/docs/teaching-researching.html b/docs/teaching-researching.html index 859cbc4..23856f8 100644 --- a/docs/teaching-researching.html +++ b/docs/teaching-researching.html @@ -24,7 +24,7 @@ - + diff --git a/docs/teaching-segregation-ct.html b/docs/teaching-segregation-ct.html index 8bd2706..56707e4 100644 --- a/docs/teaching-segregation-ct.html +++ b/docs/teaching-segregation-ct.html @@ -24,7 +24,7 @@ - + diff --git a/docs/uncovering-unwritten.html b/docs/uncovering-unwritten.html index 5f9c1e0..ee94e57 100644 --- a/docs/uncovering-unwritten.html +++ b/docs/uncovering-unwritten.html @@ -24,7 +24,7 @@ - + diff --git a/docs/who-owns-oral-history.html b/docs/who-owns-oral-history.html index f6499dc..2ff4df2 100644 --- a/docs/who-owns-oral-history.html +++ b/docs/who-owns-oral-history.html @@ -24,7 +24,7 @@ - + diff --git a/docs/writing.html b/docs/writing.html index fdacc16..4468c07 100644 --- a/docs/writing.html +++ b/docs/writing.html @@ -24,7 +24,7 @@ - + diff --git a/docs/zotero.html b/docs/zotero.html index 501f7a0..29105b4 100644 --- a/docs/zotero.html +++ b/docs/zotero.html @@ -24,7 +24,7 @@ - + diff --git a/notes-todo/2.4-restrictive-covenants-TODO.md b/notes-todo/2.4-restrictive-covenants-TODO.md index 95721fa..80bbd36 100644 --- a/notes-todo/2.4-restrictive-covenants-TODO.md +++ b/notes-todo/2.4-restrictive-covenants-TODO.md @@ -1,9 +1,9 @@ -# Restrictive covenants TODO +# Restrictive covenants TODO +Modify text and map caption: +Colored polygons show areas with very high likelihood of restrictive covenants, either because one agreement covered all lots, or our sampling found the same restriction on each individual lot we examined. -Now we can reasonably estimate that 22 percent (509 out of 2297) of Hamden homes built during the 1940s had racial covenants. See calculations - -This is far higher than the 3 to 6 percent rates that Dave and I found in Manchester and West Hartford, respectively, and I'll add this to the book chapter after my CA trip. +In Hamden, 22 percent (509 out of 2297) of homes built during the 1940s had racial covenants, far higher than the 3 to 6 percent rates found in Manchester and West Hartford. See calculations Some Connecticut lakefront cottage areas, such as parts of East Haddam, appear to have high percentages of residences with racist covenants.