Striking Out Racially Restrictive Covenants: A Hands-On Workshop

Racially restrictive covenants were widely employed in the 19th and 20th centuries throughout the United States to keep Black people and other "undesirable" groups from living in or purchasing a home in certain, all-white neighborhoods. Such covenants were legal contracts embedded in property deeds, and although they were deemed unenforceable in 1948 and illegal in 1968, many still remain on the books. These covenants, along with other unscrupulous activities such as redlining, led to housing segregation and racial inequities that continue.

The State of Maryland has created a straightforward, no-fee process to search a digitized "chain of title" for residential real estate and if a racially restrictive covenant is found, have it removed.

Join the Montgomery County Lynching Memorial Project in a hands-on workshop to learn how to research your own home to determine if such a covenant exists in your property's chain of title. If it does, you'll learn how to have it legally removed. The offending language will not be obliterated; it will simply be crossed out, always remaining detectable in the official Maryland State Land Records. History will not be erased.

The Montgomery County Lynching Memorial Project seeks to educate and engage communities about our history and the legacy of slavery, racial violence, racial terror lynching and systemic racism by promoting truth, remembrance, reconciliation, and reckoning in Montgomery County, MD. We are a grassroots organization and a designated Community Remembrance Project of the Equal Justice Initiative.

Host or Publisher Montgomery County Lynching Memorial Project