Housing discrimination timeline

By Sierra Lewter

Youthcast Media Group®

June13,1933- Home Owners’ Loan Corporation was established. Banks would determine a neighborhood's risk for loan default and redline neighborhoods that were at high risk of default. These neighborhoods tended to be African American neighborhoods, whereas the white-middle-class Americans were able to receive housing loans.

Over decades, as the white middle-class Americans left the city to move to nicer houses in the suburbs, the predominantly African American neighborhoods were left to degrade. 1934 - National Housing Act that came into action after the Great Depression. It enabled the growth of the white middle class by providing loan guarantees to banks which in turn, financed white homeownership and enabled ‘white flight’ but did not make loans to available to blacks.

Established National Labor Relations Board to mediate disputes.

July 5, 1935 - Wagner Act was established. It was instrumental in preventing employers from interfering with workers' unions and protests in the private sector. Blacks were blocked by law from challenging the barriers to entry into the newly protected labor unions and securing the right to collective bargaining.

August 14, 1935 - Established a system of old-age benefits for workers, benefits for victims of industrial accidents, unemployment insurance, aid for dependent mothers and children, the blind, and the physically handicapped. Agricultural workers, servants, most of whom were black, were excluded because key white southerners did not want governmental assistance to change the agrarian system.

1936 - Underwriting Manual was used by the FHA to give 20% weight to a neighborhood's protection. White-majority neighborhoods received the government's highest property value ratings and were eligible for government loans and aid. Between 1934 and 1962, less than 2 percent of government-subsidized housing went to non-white people.