Shaking the Legacy of Segregation

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Taking into account the origins and history of racial segregation, especially as it applies to housing, local journalist Chloe Forbes uncovers the roots of redlining, the lasting effects of those segregationist policies in Erie County, and how to fix it, especially within the era of anti-DEI initiatives.

Location, location, location. When looking at homes, buyers may look at different options — nearby amenities, the caliber of local schools, affordable mortgage rates, neighborhood safety. It hasn't been that way for everyone, though. For generations, racial segregation in the community has prevented minorities from buying houses or renting in certain areas. Practices like restrictive property deeds, banks' use of redlining (the discriminatory practice of denying financial services to neighborhoods based on race, ethnicity, or income) for mortgage decisions, and other governmental mechanisms have culminated in leaving areas of Erie County unofficially redlined to this day, impacting generations of Erie residents.

When looking at how segregation comes about, measures fall into one of two categories: de jure, meaning by law and public policy, and de facto, which results from private practices. Modern-day racial inequities can be traced back to public policy and private discrimination reinforced by government bodies, largely with housing policy as the faulty foundation for the future.

Currently, Erie County Executive Brenton Davis finds himself at odds with people like Councilman Andre Horton, who believes the city should pay the price for its years of oppression, and has proposed a yearly allocation. For 2025, Davis decided to eliminate funding for Diverse Erie, the county's diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) commission.

He went as far as to veto council's 4-3 vote in favor of $2.5 million for Diverse Erie funding. Davis favored using the money for municipality infrastructure projects across the entire county as people like Councilman Charlie Bayle say that most Diverse Erie initiatives are strictly city-based and don't service the entire county. The situation calls into question the role of government in racial equity measures as many initiatives are focused on the city due to historic policy limiting Black residents.

This also comes as President Donald Trump is calling for an end to DEI efforts and recently said there would be consequences for any federal government employees who fail to report colleagues pursuing DEI efforts. Perhaps better understanding the governmental policies and practices that led to the current situation could result in more informed conversations about a solution.

Creation of racial segregation

In the aftermath of World War I, U.S. officials created a homeownership campaign to encourage investments in a capitalist system rather than communism (which was then spreading across Eastern Europe and Asia). That's when a group of brothers from Crawford County ventured into Erie County to develop land. The Andrews Land Co. is responsible for high-end developments including the Academy District, Glenwood Hills, and State Street Heights.

"Academy District offers advantageous facilities never possessed by an existing district, never to be acquired by any future residence section," reads an excerpt from the Erie Daily Times in May 1920.

All these neighborhoods, hailed in the Erie Daily Times for their proximity to recreation, schools, and job opportunities, had a common clause barring minorities from purchasing properties.

"Party of the second part, his heirs, executors, administrators or assigns, agree that they shall not and will not sell or convey the property therein described to any person of Polish, Italian, Austrian, Russian, Hungarian, Slavish, or Negro descent and in the event of any such sale or transfer being made the said property shall revert to party of the first part its successors or assigns," restrictive deeds throughout Erie County state.

With the new policy came a manual for housing guidelines. The manual took into account "ignorant racial habits" of Black citizens and European immigrants and listed 30 items a buyer should look at when purchasing a home.

On the list was "buy partnership in the community. 'Restricted residential districts' may serve as protection against persons with whom your family won't care to associate."

By 1934, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt wanted to bounce back from the Great Depression and created the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), which granted 30-year mortgages to ensure more people could afford homes. However, the FHA furthered discrimination by refusing to insure mortgages in and near neighborhoods with African Americans. The practice is known as redlining.

Areas were designated into different classifications based on their "quality" ranging from desirable to hazardous. The areas historically known to house whites were granted the highest classifications. Accompanying documents from the time show "infiltration of Negro" populations is noted in some of the least desirable neighborhoods.

In urban communities like Erie, Black applicants were left out of the homeownership boom. The FHA also subsidized costs for builders who were mass-producing subdivisions for white buyers, under the requirement that none of the homes could be sold to African Americans.

In his 2017 book The Color of Law, Richard Rothstein explained that zoning ordinances likewise established "colored residence districts" because doing so was thought to remove the chances of racial conflict. When racially biased zoning was ruled unconstitutional, states took other measures to evade integration. In Virginia, there was a ban on interracial marriage, so people would be less likely to move into an area full of people of a different race that they could not marry.

Neighborhoods began creating associations with a mission to keep those areas racially segregated. So although it was illegal to refuse home ownership to minority residents, developers could make it a condition that the buyer adhere to the neighborhood association's rules.

Other practices — like local governments denying water and sewer access to homes newly purchased by Black citizens or the IRS affording tax breaks to churches that paid fees for whites to take Black residents to court over restrictive deeds — reinforced segregation via government action, Rothstein writes.

Home assessors also undermined tax fairness by overassessing properties in Black neighborhoods and underassessing them in white ones. African American property taxes were often higher relative to market value, which led them to be delinquent in taxes, too.

A 1973 study done by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) uncovered a systematic pattern of overassessment in low-income African American neighborhoods with corresponding underassessment in white, middle-class neighborhoods. In some instances, houses were assessed at one-ninth the value of nearby Black residents.

Although many of these practices are no longer in use, they remain ingrained in history. It wasn't until 2023 that Gov. Josh Shapiro signed legislation declaring racially restrictive deeds inactive across the commonwealth.

Most recently, at the end of December, HUD reported that homelessness has surged 18 percent in the past year, with an overrepresentation of Black residents at its forefront.

County Councilman Andre Horton believes the city should pay the price for its years of racial oppression, and has proposed a yearly allocation. However, for 2025, County Executive Brenton Davis acted to eliminate funding for Diverse Erie, the county's diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) commission. (Photo: Elect Andre Horton)

Effects of historic policy

As America began to move forward following World Wars I and II, Black residents were still at a 400-year disadvantage while the nation continued to build on those hazardous policies, causing further systemic damage.

The GI Bill (Servicemen's Readjustment Act), passed in 1944, was designed to help millions of veterans transition from military to civilian life by providing benefits. Those benefits, to be carried out by the Veterans Administration, included loan guarantees for homes and businesses, education and training for jobs, and unemployment pay.

In an essay published by the Jefferson Educational Society in 2022, Parris Baker chronicled, "The enormous prosperity of the 1950s, experienced in the United States after World War II was attributed directly to the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, changing the life trajectories of many American veterans. However, the two critical methods for creating generational and intergenerational wealth were denied the majority of African American veterans."

Although the bill did not openly exclude African Americans, not many were granted benefits. In 1947, just two of the more than 3,200 VA-guaranteed home loans in 13 Mississippi cities were granted to Black borrowers. In New York and New Jersey suburbs, fewer than 100 of the 67,000 mortgages insured by the GI Bill supported home purchases by non-whites.

For example, servicemen who were dishonorably discharged were ineligible to receive benefits, and African American soldiers were disproportionately discharged with that status.

According to the National Park Service, World War II began a practice of "blue" discharges or "blue tickets" in the military. Named after the paper they were printed on, the discharges were given to soldiers who had "undesirable habits and traits of character." This included those in the LGBTQIA+ community as well.

In other cases, Black soldiers were dishonorably discharged for protesting segregation in army towns.

From the end of World War II to about 1973, wages in the US grew rapidly, nearly doubling according to government data. However, it wasn't until the 1960s that African Americans became part of that equation and still remained excluded from higher-paying jobs like construction work.

In 1935, Roosevelt signed the National Labor Relations Act, which for the following 30 years protected the bargaining rights of those unions that denied African American admission.

From 1973 to now, wages have become mostly stagnant with the American Enterprise Association stating that hourly compensation for blue-collar workers flatlined in the 1970s in stark contrast to rising incomes at the top.

From 1957 to 1968, Congress adopted civil rights laws prohibiting second-class citizenship in public accommodation and transportation, voting, and employment. Much of the damage was already ingrained within the system, though.

If policy up until that point had given people the tools to build the life they desired, white citizens received a shiny new package of power tools while minorities got a hammer and nails.

In the late 60s and early 70s, the Erie Daily Times called attention to housing inequalities. In the article "Negro Housing Bias Prevails in Erie," Robert S. Schluraff, the president of the Greater Erie Board of Realtors, denied discrimination against Blacks by realtors and real estate agents.

"There is discrimination, but the homeowner does it," he said.

The Rev. Paul Martin, the executive director of the Opportunities Industrialization Center training and employment program said the realtor or agent does not have to and should not have to tell the seller the race, nationality, or other identifiers of the prospective buyer. Schluraff disagreed and said it was "more practical" to disclose those details and that homeowners are not governed by the state or city because that's their private property.

In 1970, the Erie Daily Times published a series documenting the housing woes of minorities in the city. Headlines included "Unfit for Human Habitation," "The Poison Doesn't Stink But The Dead Rats Do," and "Action Needed Now!"

"The rats are dead in an apartment in this E. 18th Street home … the maggots crawling from the woodwork will testify to that. Action is needed now to find new, permanent homes for tenants who are forced to exist in homes like this one," an article read.

Since then, the Environmental Protection Agency has issued statements confirming a disproportionate amount of toxins in Black communities nationwide.

The lack of integration can also be seen in school enrollment. The Economic Policy Institute reported that schools are more segregated now than 40 years ago due to segregated neighborhoods.

Other nonhousing programs continue to build on preexisting residential patterns as well. For example, limited transportation funds, like those in the 2024 Pennsylvania budget are afforded to highways rather than public transportation. Those measures isolate city residents and renters more from outlying suburbs.

Where do we go now?

Unlike registering to vote or changing seats on a bus, moving from an urban apartment to a suburban home is more challenging.

Someone's economic status is typically replicated in the next generation, and the value of suburban houses for white working- and middle-class families appreciated over the years, helping to result in vast and multigenerational wealth differences.

Specifically, a reduction of discriminatory barriers has not historically translated to upward mobility for Black Americans. According to the Pew Center, of American children born to parents whose incomes were in the bottom quintile, 43 percent remain trapped there as adults. For African Americans, only 26 percent make it to the middle quintile or higher.

In his 2023 book, Poverty, By America, Matthew Desmond examines poverty in the U.S. and possible solutions. The first step? Integration.

"We have revised our textbooks and renamed our holidays to acknowledge the harms of colonization. We have begun the work of removing marble statues and changing street signs in recognition of the horrors of slavery. But do we not act as modern-day segregationists when we mobilize to block an affordable housing complex in our neighborhood?" Desmond asks.

"Yet even the most ambitious antipoverty proposals in wide circulation today, such as a universal basic income, often leave segregation untouched," he writes.

Desmond maintains that if someone is taken out of an impoverished neighborhood and placed into a more affluent one, even if they receive no increased income, the outcome will be better because they have more access to resources, better health care, proper schooling, etc.

He suggests that zoning ordinances nationally should be rewritten to include mandates that developers must set aside a percentage of their units for low-income families, or incentives for developers to promote mixed-income housing.

Similar housing recommendations by sustainability expert Court Gould have gone mostly unaddressed.

"Neighborhoods with quality, affordable, mixed-income housing for all people create value that attracts investment and grows population. This is the formula to break Erie's decades of corrosive segregation and poverty," Gould wrote in a 2022 report published by the Jefferson Educational Society.

He noted that high concentrations of low-income and often minority households still occupy the city's least desirable housing, which highlights the city's racial and social segregation.

That's nearly 50 years after a judge's ruling called for "reverse discrimination" as part of the equation to ensure equity.

In the 1973 court case Erie Human Relations Commission v. [Mayor Louis] Tullio, a judge ruled that the City of Erie Police Department must hire additional Black police officers to properly reflect the population of the city. He stated that "reverse discrimination" must be used for equity over equality, as a form of compensation.

"Like the infections in the human body which are cured by injections of the same poison, the antitoxin of reverse discrimination is a recognized judicial remedy for the toxin of discrimination," Judge Gerald Weber wrote in his opinion. "There is a compelling public interest in preventing the perpetuation of discrimination or undoing the effects of past discrimination. Therefore, the consideration of a racial quota in making appointments to the police department is not a form of invidious discrimination since the goal of this policy is not to promote segregation but rather to achieve integration."

Likewise, in 1985, the city of Erie's administrative code was amended to include an article focused on inclusion in city contracting, but the ordinance was never implemented.

Sustainability expert Court Gould wrote, in a 2022 report published by the Jefferson Educational Society, "Neighborhoods with quality, affordable, mixed-income housing for all people create value that attracts investment and grows population. This is the formula to break Erie's decades of corrosive segregation and poverty." (Photo: Contributed)

Boots on the ground

Even today, the effects of racial segregation and past policy, especially in housing, impact part of Erie's population. Some organizations pay special attention to those areas, though.

In the old Wayne School neighborhood, redlined and put up against an industrial zone, health has declined so much that Hamot Health Foundation (HHF) has prioritized its rehabilitation. Other organizations like National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Erie's Black Wall Street, Our West Bayfront, United Way of Erie County, Erie City Mission, The Erie Community Foundation, and businesses like Erie Insurance focus on equitable initiatives and research.

Still, measures remain lacking as reports point to ongoing disparities in access to education, health care, housing, and employment for Black residents.

In 2020, Erie County Council adopted and enacted an ordinance declaring racism a health emergency crisis in Erie County. Yet, it persists.

There have been multiple reports within the past decade that point to possible interventions. In 2021, a report addressing public policy reform in Erie identified inclusive jobs for public construction projects as a starting point for the initiative's policy work.

Housing-wise, Gould's 2022 report also outlined recommendations like community action, rental inspection guidelines, inclusionary zoning measures, and shared data across services in his report, which would span across government action to neighborhood associations and organizations. It's something he says is an economic measure just as much as an ethical one.

"For the economy to grow, all must live in safe/quality housing, be able to work to their potential, and the city needs to retain its residents while successfully attracting new, particularly highly skilled, high-wage earners. Diverse neighborhoods with authentic character are a magnet for attraction and retention," he writes. "Integration of new economy workers into mixed neighborhoods can help break patterns of segregation and concentrated poverty."

A Penn State Behrend conference in July focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion-based economic gains in Erie. During it, Ken Louie, an associate professor of economics and director of the Economic Research Institute of Erie, said that if the earnings of all workers were raised to the median pay of white men, Erie County's economy would grow by $765 million.

Both government officials like Davis, who focuses much of his time in office on economic development, and diversity, equity, and inclusion officials agree that economic development is a strength that could benefit the larger community.

Oftentimes though, the debate about economic development turns into one about gentrification, pitting low-income families with stable housing against low-income families who need it, in a battle of limited space that seems further encroached upon.

To talk about gentrification is to miss the point, as creating mixed-income neighborhoods is the principal recommendation for economic prosperity. Instead of further segregating, economic plans must focus on how racial integration can be used as another tool, not a scare tactic.

Since there is little money to go around, Erie County government has chosen this year to divert funding, including for affordable housing through the Redevelopment Authority and a civil rights investigator in the Human Relations Commission, to other areas. The time-old tale about limited funds is one that drives the point home.

"Why do we continue to accept scarcity as given, treating it as the central organizing principle of our economics, policy-making, city planning, and personal ethics?" asks Desmond. "Why do we continue to act like the farmer who, upon learning that his dog is lying on a pile of hay meant for cattle to eat and baring his teeth when the cows come near, chooses to drop their rations, feeding them with what scraps he can snatch from the edge of the pile? Why don't we just move the dog?"

After weathering life's storms, the Black population has patched up and remediated as much as it can, but it's government action that has forced residents to rebuild without the proper resources.

In the words of Martin Luther King Jr., "Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable… Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals."

Chloe Forbes is a local journalist, reach her at chloeforbes14@gmail.com.