David Michael
During the ’30s, the federal Home Owners’ Loan Corporation color-coded neighborhoods— from green for “best” to red for “hazardous.” The ramifications of “redlining”—the process of denying financial services based on racial and ethnic demographics—continue to this day.
For his senior research project, David Michael ’19, a business administration major with a computer science minor, studied mid-20th century housing and segregation—which hit close to home.
“I found a redlining map issued for Harrisburg in the national archives in Baltimore,” said Michael. “Redlining was done by the government until the ’40s. They would literally draw red over those maps.”
In addition to redlining, restrictive covenants—housing deeds that forbade the sale of a property to anyone who wasn’t white—were legal.
“There was a fear of two racial groups living next to each other,” explained Michael. “What whites did was flee. They set up covenants so African-Americans couldn’t follow. That’s how ghettos were created and how suburbs were created.”
In his research, he found more than 100 restrictive covenants in Cumberland County.
“Whole neighborhoods would set up restrictive covenants. They did it on their own. Nobody forced them to do that,” said Michael.
In a 2018 study by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, the majority of redlined neighborhoods today are much more likely than other areas to comprise lower-income, minority residents.
“Society does carry out racism, but the government was a large proponent and—in some cases—an establisher of segregation,” explained Michael.
He says he’d like for others to continue this research, especially in the areas of education and healthcare.
“We often forget the day-to-day racism and struggle that was to be a person of color in the U.S.,” said Michael. “Looking back we can get a clearer picture.”