Did you know that most cities in the US once reserved some neighborhoods for White people?

The Racist Covenants Research Project’s mission is to document and understand structural racism, beginning with investigating, mapping, interpreting and educating students and the public about Nevada’s racist restrictive covenants – provisions in property deeds that once prevented people of color from owning or occupying homes in neighborhoods of their choice.

Unlike “top down” redlining, covenants worked to create racial segregation— and restrict the free market— from the “bottom up.” Since home ownership has historically been the most important way that middle class Americans created intergenerational wealth in the US, such discrimination plays a major part in the racial wealth gap. Though illegal since 1968, racist covenants are still in millions of deeds nationwide.

This project has been supported by Democrats and Republicans in the Nevada Legislature, by Republican Governor Joe Lombardo, by the University of Nevada, Reno, by the American Council of Learned Societies, and by donors— please join them!