We are here today because we are tired. We are tired of paying more for less. We are tired of living in rat-infested slums… We are tired of having to pay a median rent of $97 a month in Lawndale for four rooms while whites living in South Deering pay $73 a month for five rooms. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all of God’s children . . . .
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, Chicago Soldier Field Stadium, Chicago Open Housing Movement, 1966
Each year, as the Monday-focused blogger for the Business Law Prof Blog, I endeavor to offer a post that connects with Dr. King’s work in some way. Today, which also is the day on which the United States inaugurates a new presidential administration, I focus on the role of federal regulation in creating and sustaining racial separation and racism. In 2020, The University of Tennessee College of Law produced a faculty video series labeled “How Did We Get Here.” The series focused on areas in which law or policy has contributed to systemic racism.
The video in the series I highlight today features my Tennessee Law colleague Eric Amarante describing how federal housing policy incorporated and fostered continuation of a racial divide and accompanying racism. You can find the video here. It is a fascinating story, told in a video less than ten minutes long. Although Eric does not cite to Dr. King in the video, fair housing was, as many know (and as the quote above indicates), a cause célèbre for him. See also the brief article here that includes the quote above. The video offers Knoxville as an example of the policies and regulations he describes, using color-coded maps and excerpts from primary texts as visual illustrations. Also of note, Eric’s video quotes President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in extolling a government value of assisting “the little fellow” at least as much as “large banks and corporations.”
For those who find the idea behind the video series interesting, you may want to check out other videos in the series, which include Ben Barton on unjust incarceration of black citizens, Lucy Jewel on legal reasoning related to inequality, and Penny White on jury selection.