Racial Restriction and Housing Discrimination in the Chicagoland Area

Summary: 

This project documents the history of racial restrictive covenants in Cook County, Illinois, seeking to unearth artifacts of this history and link them to related housing discrimination tactics, such as redlining, panic peddling, and blockbusting. The documentary evidence, shown in an interactive map and timeline, presents a new view of this troubling and relevant history.

Chicago Fellows Faculty: 

Professor Desmond Odugu, Associate Professor of Education, Lake Forest College

Chicago Fellows Years: 

2016 and 2017

Chicago Fellows Research Assistants

Students research assistants work with Prof. Odugu to gather comprehensive archival data on racial restrictive covenants in Cook County. They also analyze intersections of restrictive covenants and other popular housing discrimination strategies of the 20th and 21st Centuries, and create pedagogical resources for teaching the history of housing discrimination. Lake Forest College students involved in this project have included: Bernie Reyes Facio '18, Camille Lemieux '17, Hakob Parsamyan '20, Zanub Husain '20, Kevin Koku Donkor '20, Jake Ngugi '21, Aaron O'Neill '21, Hanna Sarekanno '21, and others.