Click here to see a recent Slide Presentation at the McFarland Public Library.

Here’s a link to the entire Exhibit.

See 27 News coverage of the Exhibit’s opening here.

See Channel 27 News coverage of the Dane County Supervisors passing a Resolution Repudiating Racial Covenants here.

February 20, 2025, Dane County Board of Supervisors Resolution Repudiating Racial Covenants in Dane County Property Records

February 20, 2025, Dane County Board of Supervisors Resolution Supporting DCHS’s traveling exhibit UNJUST DEEDS: The History of Racial Covenants in Dane County and Beyond.

Rick Bernstein, DCHS Executive Director; Tiffany Malone, co-founder of Own-IT, providing down payment assistance; and Patrick Miles, Chair of the Dane County Board of Supervisors, holding copies of the resolution passed by the Dane County Board on February 20, 2025.

For the past year, the Dane County Historical Society has worked hard to develop “UNJUST DEEDS: The History of Racial Covenants in Dane County and Beyond.”

Protesters placed this sign outside a housing project for African Americans in Detroit, Michigan, in 1944. During the Great Migration, Detroit was one of many northern cities where African Americans moved in large numbers from the South to escape poverty and racial violence.

What Were Racial Covenants?
Racial covenants were an insidious tool for racially restricting home sales and segregating residential neighborhoods. Essentially, a single cleverly-worded sentence inserted into a land deed of a subdivision plat could invoke the full force of the government’s police powers in enforcing racial segregation. As a result, in 1928, the Chicago Real Estate Board proudly said restrictive covenants were “like a marvelous delicately woven chain of armor … [excluding] any member of a race not Caucasian.” Moreover, by 1940, 40% of homes in Chicago and Los Angeles were subject to racial covenants.

Hemmed In: ABC’s of Race Restrictive Housing Covenants. This illustration, published in a pamphlet produced by the Civil Rights Congress of Michigan in 1945, depicts the evils created by racially restrictive housing covenants: unsafe and overcrowded housing for blacks, increasing segregation, and growing distrust between the races.

Exhibit Schedule
In brief, the Exhibit 14 pull-up banners will travel to several different Dane County branch libraries. Its first stop was at the Monona Public Library. To celebrate Black History Month, an opening reception was held on February 6, 2025. The exhibit is available at Pinney Library for the rest of April. It will next be at Sun Prairie Public Library from May 26 until June 17. Sun Prairie Public Library will also host a Slide Presentation by Rick Bernstein on June 4 @ 6:30 pm.

Locations and dates are listed below:

As a result, 1000+ records with covenants have been found and mapped on the Dane County Planning and Development website. Interestingly, breaking that down by decade, they are: 13-1910s, 13-1920s, 26-1940s, 26-1950s, and 4-1960s. Furthermore, staff are still looking at records from the 1920s and 1930s. Interestingly, the increase in covenants from the 1940s and 50s was due to several factors. The first was the large influx of African Americans from the South during the Great Migration (1920-1970). The second was the requirement, starting in the 1930s,  by the Federal Housing agencies to include racial covenants.

Dane County Historical Society
The Dane County Historical Society is a 501(c)3 private non-profit organization established in 1961. Its mission is to preserve and promote the history of Dane County. To learn more about us, click here.

Sponsors
Importantly, this Exhibit would not have been possible without the generous support from the following organizations:
Dane Arts
Evjue Foundation
Beyond the Page Program, Dane County Library Service