Today on City Cast Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh’s racist real estate history

I’m on today’s City Cast Pittsburgh talking about racism and real estate. One of the takeaways from my PublicSource reporting was that unlike other places, so far the only racial and ethnic exclusions that I have identified in Pittsburgh area deeds exclude Black people from buying and renting homes. All of the deeds with racially restrictive deed covenants that I sampled for the PublicSource investigation were limited to people of African descent.

Racially restrictive deed covenant filed in 1940 for a Sewickley subdivision.
Racially restrictive deed covenant filed in 1929 for a McCandless Township subdivision.

These examples from Erie, Pennsylvania, and the DC suburbs show a laundry list of racist, anti-semitic, and xenophobic exclusions.

Deed filed in Erie County, Pennsylvania, in 1924 with racial and ethnic exclusions.
Deed filed in Montgomery County, Maryland, in 1947 with racial and ethnic exclusions.

I make the point in the City Cast podcast that Pittsburgh’s racially restrictive deed covenants underscore the metropolitan area’s historical and contemporary racism that led to Southern Black migrants dubbing Pittsburgh the “Mississippi of the North.”

Listen to the complete City Cast podcast here:

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