“None of said Lots; nor any building or structure at any time situated thereon, may be sold, re-sold, conveyed, leased or rented to or occupied by any person not wholly of the Caucasian race, except that this provision shall not prevent any bona fide servant from being employed by and from living with any resident family which is wholly of the Caucasian race.”
It’s 1985. A lawyer has just purchased a single-family home in Colonial Park, a subdivision less than a mile from Clayton High School’s campus.
“When I moved in, a neighborhood trustee approached me and asked me, ‘I heard you’re a lawyer; we have a little problem we’d like to see if you could address,’” current CHS history teacher Rick Kordenbrock said.
This “little problem” – racial restrictive deed covenants – happens to be a national phenomenon.
If Kordenbrock would have looked on the deeds for any house in his neighborhood, he would have seen words with the sole purpose of preventing black people from living in this Ladue neighborhood.
While the enforcement of these racial deed restrictive covenants – which inhibited the buying, selling and renting of properties in certain neighborhoods to people of non-Caucasian descent – were determined unconstitutional in 1948, the words remain on the deeds as remnants of the oppressive system of housing segregation.
“Despite the fact that this clause was not enforceable after 1948, and the fact it’s now been formally removed, and it’s not there, I’ve lived in that neighborhood since 1985, and I don’t believe we’ve had one African American property owner,” Kordenbrock said. “We haven’t had a black family purchase a home in our neighborhood, and we’re walking distance from Clayton High School. That’s the reality though.”
