Civil Rights Legislation and the Housing Status of Black Americans: An Overview

This article explores the relationship between civil rights legislation and the housing status of black Americans. An economic and judicial history of the pursuit of fair housing (or equal opportunity in access to housing) is provided for two major periods—from the late 1800s to the 1950s, and from the years of the civil rights movement to the present. An exploration of the housing status of black Americans throughout these periods follows, in which measures such as crowdedness and tenure—attributable partly to inequality in access to housing—are examined, and comparisons of black and whites are made.