title: The misunderstood consequences of Shelley v. Kraemer.
abstract: Shelley v. Kraemer (1948) was a landmark civil rights ruling, in which the Supreme Court held that private racial covenants could not be enforced by the state to evict black buyers of "restricted" homes. Fair housing scholars have generally dismissed or downplayed the practical effects of Shelley, since other forms of housing discrimination remained very powerful. Using spatial lag models and detailed geographic data on the location of covenants and patterns of intra-urban black migration, we compare the role of Shelley with other forces shaping mid-century neighborhood change. We find that Shelley precipitated white-to-black neighborhood transitions after 1948 and changed the nature of the dual housing market in important ways. We also show that increased black mobility produced a sharp increase in intra-black economic segregation during the 1950s and 1960s.
authors.affiliation: Center on Poverty and Inequality, Stanford University, Building 370, 450 Serra Mall, Palo Alto, CA 94305, United States. Electronic address: ykucheva@stanford.edu.
authors.forename: Yana
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Kucheva
authors.affiliation: School of Law, University of California - Los Angeles, 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1476, United States. Electronic address: sander@law.ucla.edu.
authors.forename: Richard
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Sander
mesh_terms: D001741:Black or African American; D002961:Civil Rights; D003132:Commerce; D006798:Housing; D006801:Humans; D057766:Policy; D011287:Prejudice; D012111:Residence Characteristics; D014505:Urban Population; D044465:White People
keywords: Dual housing market; Neighborhood transitions; Racial restrictive covenants; Residential segregation