Restrictive Covenants
Restrictive Covenants Underpin
Lexington's Segregation Pattern
Lexington's Segregation Pattern
Throughout the late 19th to mid- 20th century, property owners and real estate developers throughout the United States used racial deed restrictions to keep African Americans and other minority group members from buying, renting, or living in homes in “White” neighborhoods. These deed restrictions were so prevalent that they shaped community and economic life for decades. In Lexington, as in the rest of the country, we still feel their impact today – in the segregation of our neighborhoods and in the enormous gaps in wealth and home ownership between White and Black families.
What are Deed Restrictions?
A deed restriction, restrictive covenant, is a statement within a property deed — sometimes one sentence, sometimes several paragraphs — that sets out rules about how the buyer may or may not use the property. Like the deed itself, a restrictive covenant is as a contract between buyer and seller.
Today, many property deeds still include deed restrictions. For example, a covenant may limit the size of buildings to be erected, prohibit certain kinds of land uses, or even prescribe the type of fence a homeowner may install. Like other kinds of contracts, these restrictions are enforceable in court. They are usually written in such a way as to "run with the land," which means that their constraints bind not only on the original buyers but future owners as well. (Brooks and Rose, 4)
Until the late 1950’s in Lexington and elsewhere, it was quite common to find racial restrictions in property deeds. Like non-racial restrictions, these racial covenants were written so as to be binding on future buyers of the property. Some covenants specified a period of time after which they would expire — usually 20, 25, or 30 years, although we have seen 40 and 50–year covenants. Some covenants, however, used words like "never" or "shall not ever" to indicate that they would continue in perpetuity. It is because of the restrictions’ prevalence and their long duration that they had such a significant impact on our community’s social, spatial, and economic life.
Who Did Racial Covenants Exclude?
In various parts of the country, different groups were singled out for exclusion: Armenians, Jews, Asians, Mexicans, Hawaiians, Native Americans, Italians, Greeks, eastern Europeans, and many more, but African Americans were nearly always mentioned. (Fogelson, 102-103, Monchow, 50-51) In Lexington, it was usually only African Americans who were prohibited from buying or living in “White” neighborhoods. Here, as elsewhere, sellers used various offensive terminology to describe the people to be excluded; examples are shown below in the section describing specific restricted subdivisions.
We have found only one Lexington deed that may have been intended to exclude another group in addition to African Americans: a deed for a lot in the Rosemill Subdivision referred "any person of the negro or yellow race." At the time, "yellow" may have referred to people of Asian or mixed white and African American heritage.
What Was the Purpose of the Racially Restrictive Covenants?
Before the 20th century, White property owners used “informal norms” of exclusion (sometimes including violence) to signal that certain neighborhoods “belonged” to White people. (Brooks and Rose, 19) The reasons why White people preferred to live in all-White neighborhoods and/or why realtors and developers thought that was what White people wanted are discussed elsewhere on this website. (See Black Space/White Space https://www.segregatedlexington.com/what-we-dont-know/black-spacewhite-space and Redlining https://www.segregatedlexington.com/redlining)
As cities grew, residents no longer had personal relationships that would allow them to count on their neighbors to share and uphold their attitudes regarding race. In addition, African Americans were making economic gains that made it possible for some to consider seeking less crowded housing where they could build wealth.
In the late 1800s Whites began to feel that the informal norms were no longer sufficient to keep Black people out of White spaces, and they came to rely increasingly on legal segregationist policies for public spaces, and racially restrictive deeds for residential neighborhoods.
In a 2012 article focusing on the period around the turn of the 20th century, University of Kentucky professor Rich Schein highlights the ascendance of Jim Crow attitudes and laws, and the hardening of Whites' insistence on racially segregated housing in Lexington. In 1907 developers for two new adjacent streets—Ross Street and Hampton Court—stipulated that only Whites could buy or occupy the properties. Ross Street was a new alley of working-class homes; Hampton Court was an "upper-middle-class residential enclave of brownstone apartments and period houses of fairly large size" (Schein 2012, 952) The new streets were close to Smithtown and other African American neighborhoods. According to Schein, "There was obviously a new concern for proximity, so the racial covenants on Ross Street served as a buffer for Third Street and Hampton Court residents." (Schein 2012, 953) At some point a gate was installed to prevent movement between Hampton Court and the streets to the north. In 1988 the gate was padlocked and welded shut, and serves “as a contemporary boundary between white and black, even rich and poor in Lexington.” (Schein 2012, 946, 953) As of March 18, 2022, the gate was still welded shut.
What We Know About Lexington's Racially Restricted Subdivisions
We do not yet know how many Lexington neighborhoods had restrictive covenants. Of the approximately 230 subdivisions platted in Lexington between 1900 and 1955 — the last year we think sellers were likely include racial covenants in their deeds — we have completed or are in the process of reviewing about 13%. We have found racial restrictions in every subdivision we have reviewed, which leads us to believe that we will find similar restrictions in many — perhaps most — of the remaining subdivisions. Our goal is to identify and document every Lexington neighborhood that had racial restrictions, and we hope to achieve that goal in the coming year.
In the meantime, we share information about the subdivisions where we have found racial covenants.
Please note: The deeds excerpted below are historical records that may contain harmful language reflecting attitudes and biases of their time. We have not altered, edited, or modified the records except to highlight relevant sections.
Copies of deeds and subdivision plats are from the Land Records department of the Fayette County Clerk's Office. Maps were modified and downloaded from the MapIt! feature of the LFUCG Geographic Information Service: https://data.lexingtonky.gov/
Kenwick
Many of the neighborhoods familiar to Lexingtonians today formed from the merger of earlier subdivisions, some of which were as small as one street. The area known today as Kenwick exemplifies this type of formation.
Early in our research, we found a few deeds with restrictive covenants for lots in Kenwick, with similar language in each. We therefore we thought it likely that all of the lots in Kenwick had been subject to similar racial restrictions. In the summer of 2024, three Fayette County high school students conducted the research that removed virtually all doubt. The three students, employed through the Partners for Youth Summer Job Training Program, spent six weeks reviewing deeds for the Kenwick subdivisions; they reviewed deeds for the majority of lots in these subdivisions, and found racial restrictions in all of them.
The Wickliffe Land Company Subdivision, platted in 1909, was one of the subdivisions that later made up Kenwick. Wickliffe was bounded on the east and west by Sherman and Lincoln; its south and north boundaries were East Main Street and Franklin (now Robinson) Avenue, and the railroad tracks. Below is a copy of the developer's plat, showing the planned streets and lots in the subdivision.
This deed, for lots 261 and 262 (on Bassett Street), uses that standard language. Note the requirement that the home buyer include similar restrictions in any future deed they might make for this property.
The Wickliffe Land Company Second Addition, platted in 1911, included Owsley and one side of Lincoln Street. The yellow and paler yellow highlighting, and the penciled asterisks, show the lots -- just over half of the total lots -- for which student researcher Shanelle Cameus reviewed deeds. She found racial restrictions, using substantially the same language as that found in the first Wickliffe subdivision, in all the deeds she reviewed.
Belldale Addition was a 1915 revision of part of the Wickliffe Land Company's first and second subdivisions. The plat for Belldale is shown below.
The yellow highlighting and x marks show the lots for which a student researcher reviewed deeds. Every lot she reviewed had a racially restricted deed in its chain of title.
Here is the standard language used in Belldale deeds. In exchange for the buyer's obligation not to convey the property to an African American, the seller undertook a similar obligation regarding other properties in the subdivision.
Beechland Subdivision consisted of Victory Avenue, which is also now considered part of Kenwick. The plat, filed in 1920, is shown below. As with the other Kenwick subdivisions, the highlighting indicates the lots for which a student researcher reviewed deeds. Within the chain of title for every lot she found restrictive language, generally the simple statement, "No lot in said subdivision shall ever be sold or leased to a negro or any person of African descent."
Kenwick's rating on redlining maps. To the right is you will see a section from the Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC) map for Lexington. The Kenwick subdivisions correspond fairly closely with area C7 (yellow/tan) and the eastern portion of area B4 (blue) on the map shown below. The western portion of the B4 area is Bell Court, whose deeds we have not reviewed so far. For more about HOLC, its maps, and redlining, see the Redlining section of this website.
Mentelle Park
This short street, between Bell Court and Kenwick (in the B4 section of the map above), is known for its attractive parklike median. We have not yet reviewed deeds for lots in Mentelle Park, but the following newspaper advertisement and brochure make it clear that this subdivision was restricted to White people only.
An advertisement in The Lexington Herald, May 17, 1907, assuring potential buyers that newly-developed Mentelle Park will be all White. The same language, "No Negroes can ever own property or live in the park... No adjacent or near-by negro settlements," appears in the printed brochure, below.
Mentelle Park advertising brochure courtesy of Lexington Public Library. www.lexpublib.org/digital-archives
Hollywood Terrace
Hollywood Terrace subdivision is at the intersection where Tates Creek Road becomes High Street. It includes Sunset Drive, Melrose, Beaumont, and Tremont Avenues, and short sections of Ashland Avenue and East High Street/Tates Creek.
In April 1923, Lillie B. Clark and Lucy W. Berry sold 38.829 acres off Tates Creek Road to John and Clyde Buckley and T. L. Warren. The deed of sale states that “no part of said property shall be sold or leased to a negro or person of African descent for a period of 20 years from this date.” On April 26 John Buckley et al conveyed some or all of that property to Security Trust Company, and a plat for Hollywood Terrace was filed in June, 1923. Even before the plat was filed, Security Trust began selling lots. We have reviewed numerous deeds of sale for Hollywood Terrace lots, and have found the same or similar language the chain of title for every one. Note the wording, "no lot," and "any lot," which shows that the restrictions apply to all of the lots in "said Hollywood Terrace." We have not yet reviewed a majority of the deeds for Hollywood Terrace, but the existence of the 1923 deed for the entire subdivision convinces us that African Americans were excluded from this subdivision.
On the HOLC map shown above, Hollywood Terrace is just below and to the right of the circled B3. The blue color meant that HOLC considered Hollywood Terrace, and the other neighborhoods in that section, in the second tier of loan-worthiness.
Forest Park
On August 15, 1919, Bettie P. Rodes, widow of J. W. Rodes, conveyed 76.5 acres of undeveloped land with the stipulation that "no part of said property shall ever be sold or leased to a negro or a person of African descent."
The deed describes the property as bounded by Nicholasville Road and the Cincinnati Southern Railroad on the east and west, Waller Avenue on the north, and "Thompson's" property on the south. We are relatively confident that the area outlined in red to the left (which measures about 76.5 acres) represents the correct boundary. (Map courtesy of LFUCG GIS MapIt!)
Within a few years the property was subdivided. Part of it became Forest Park Subdivision, which included about 240 lots on Waller Avenue, Audubon Avenue, Forest Park Road, Westwood Drive, and Nicholasville Road. Volunteer researcher Jewel Vanderhoef has reviewed at least 60% of those lots so far, and has found racial restrictions for all of them.
In the deed exerpted below, the time during which the racial restriction would be in force was set at 30 years rather than the ["for] ever" that had been in Bette Rodes's 1919 deed. In some other Forest Park deeds, restrictions were to be in force for 50 years. In the last starred paragraph below, note the wording intended to ensure that the various restrictions would run with the land.
Wabash, Goodrich, Pensacola Park, Lackawanna (WGPL) and Penmoken Park
This entire neighborhood was unavailable to African Americans. The original racial restriction derived from 1919, when Mary and Leonard Price sold a large plot of land to J. F Skidmore, and included this language in the deed of sale: "[The following restrictions] shall be deemed running with the land... said land shall not at any time be sold or leased to any negro or colored person." (Deed Book 191, P. 333) Later owners added language such as this: "...except this covenant shall not prevent any owner or lessee of any such lot from having negro servants remaining or residing upon the premises." (Deed Book 293, P 555) Leena Haider, who studied this subdivision during the spring and summer of 2024, reviewed the deed for every 4th or 5th lot on each street, and found in each one either a statement of restrictions or a reference to the original restrictive deed.
Morgan Heights Addition
This small subdivision, platted in 1924, is off Bryan Station Road, three blocks north of Castlewood Park. Morgan Heights consists of three streets: both sides of Shawnee and Morgan Avenues, and one side of Cherry Avenue (now Oak Hill Drive). Many of the Morgan Heights lots appear to have been sold through fill-in-the-blanks deeds copied from deeds for another subdivision. The racially restrictive language, shown below, clearly applies to the entire subdivision. We have found numerous identical deeds, leading us to believe that Morgan Heights was legally unavailable to African Americans. Volunteer researcher Jewel Vanderhoef continues to study Morgan Heights deeds, to determine whether the entire neighborhood was indeed racially restricted.
Shadowlawn
Shadowlawn, which was platted in 1927, is off North Limestone Street just south of New Circle Road. In 1938 the Savage Lumber and Manufacturing Company, which owned all but one lot in Shadowlawn, filed a four-page deed of restrictions for the entire subdivision. Paragraph G of that document states, “The property shall only be sold, rented or leased to or occupied by a person or persons of the white race, except that servants employed by occupants of the property may live on the property while in the employ of the occupants and while said occupants are also occupying the property.” The covenants and restrictions were to be binding until January 1, 1962. (DB 305 P. 206)
We have reviewed deeds for all but four of the lots in the subdivision; all but one of those deeds referred to the restrictions set out in Deed book 305 page 206. Only the deed for Block B lot 14 contained no reference to restrictions.
Strathmore Subdivision
To show the correct north-south orientation, this plat has been reversed, resulting in some upside-down street names.
Strathmore is off Bryan Station Road, across Eastin Road from Bryan Station High School. We have reviewed deeds for 14 (28%) of the 50 lots and have found similar restrictive language for each lot: “...no lot hereby conveyed shall be sold or leased to any person of African descent, to any negro or mulatto, or to any organization or association of negroes or mulattos…” DB 299 PG 95 (12-15-1937).
What does differ among the deeds we reviewed is the period during which the restrictions would be in force: 25 years in some deeds and 30 years in others. All of the deeds were recorded in the late 1930s, so African Americans could not have have purchased or leased homes in Strathmore until the late 1950s or early 1960s. We will continue our study of Strathmore.
Avondale
Avondale lies between North Limestone Street and Bryan Avenue, just north of Louden Avenue. Neighborhood streets include Glenn Place, Burnett Avenue, and Avon Avenue. M.L. Levy and T.L. Warren subdivided and platted the property in 1930 and then sold all of the lots to each other by means of two deeds. The two deeds included identical language: “That none of the said lots herein conveyed shall ever be sold or leased to any negro or any person of African descent, nor shall any person of African descent be permitted to occupy said property, provided this stipulation shall not forbid the owner or lessee of said property to have negro servants live or reside on the premises (Db __ P. 266 10-18-1930; Db __p. 269 10-18-1930).” These restrictions were to be in effect for 20 years, which meant that all of the Avondale subdivision was legally unavailable to African Americans until 1950.
Castlewood Park Subdivision
At least two subdivisions make up the section now known as Castlewood. We have reviewed the section platted as Castlewood Park Subdivision No. 2, the plat for which is shown below. We are in the process of studying its sister subdivision, platted as Castlewood Subdivision.
Castlewood Park Subdivision No. 2 was part of a large parcel of land (93.84 acres) that Security Trust Company, as executors for the will of Mary E. Goodloe, sold in 1921 to James F. Bailey of Paintsville. In 1940, Bailey and his wife sold part of the property to the Savage Lumber and Manufacturing Company, which in May, 1940 filed the plat shown to the left. That November, the Savage Company filed with the County Clerk's Office a document called "Restrictions upon Castlewood Park Subdivision No. 2 to the City of Lexington, Kentucky." This document contained 9 conditions dealing with such matters as minimum cost and size of buildings, setback from the street, building heights, utility eastments, and so on. The 10th condition stated, "No persons of any race other than the Caucasian race shall use or occupy any building or any lot...nor shall any of said lots be sold or leased to any persons other than the Caucasian race." (Deed Book 322, P. 489). An exception was made for servants. All of the covenants were to run with the land and be binding until January 1, 1965.
In a bow to thoroughness, we examined deeds from a sample of lots in the subdivision -- from 1/4 to 1/2 half of the lots in each block. For for each lot we sampled, at least one deed in the chain of title incorporated the restrictions described above, either by a specific reference to Deed Book 322, P 489, or by a general reference to any covenants that had previously been filed in the Clerk's Office.
The Meadows
The Meadows is a large subdivision partially bordering Castlewood Park Subdivision. The land itself was once part of an important horse farm where enslaved people lived and worked. By the mid-1940s the United States Realty Company had acquired a portion of the farm, and began subdividing it. The 14 plats that made up The Meadows were filed over several years from the late 1940s to the early 1950s. On February 14, 1950, the U. S. Realty Company filed a "Declaration of Restrictions for The Meadows," which, among other restrictions, prohibited sale or lease of any part of the property "to any negro or to any organization or associations of negroes..."
The deed of restrictions for The Meadows was signed nearly two years after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that such covenants were not enforceable in state courts. (Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1, decided May 3, 1948). But The Meadows was already "highly restricted," as shown by the newspaper ad to the right.
The Meadows is a complex subdivision, made up of 14 platted units developed over several years. A thorough review of The Meadows will take considerable time, but even now, based on the subdivision-wide deed of restrictions, we believe we will find that African Americans were excluded from this entire neighborhood.
From Lexington Herald, April 6, 1947
Meadowthorpe
Meadowthorpe is off Leestown Road, to the right just before New Circle Road. In the late 1930s Hugh R. Taylor began buying the farmland that was to become Meadowthorpe; in June of 1949 he filed the first plat, shown on the left below. On January 3, 1950, nearly two years after the U. S. Supreme Courts had ruled racially restrictive covenants unenforceable, he filed the document "Meadowthorpe Subdivision - Restrictions" (Deed Book 471 P 334), which included the racially restrictive language in the dark box below.
Over the next several years, Taylor added more sections to the subdivision. So far, student researcher Shanelle Cameus has reviewed deeds for representative lots in the two sections shown above, which are among the older sections of Meadowthorpe. She selected every 4th or 5th lot on each street, and for each one found a deed that referenced the restrictive covenants in Deed Book 471 P 334.
We have not yet reviewed deeds for the remaining sections of Meadowthorpe.
An interesting booklet, "A History of Meadowthorpe Community," published in 1991 by the Meadowthorpe Neighborhood Association, is available to read (but not check out) in the Lexington Public Library's Kentucky Room.
Rosemill Subdivision
Map courtesy of LFUCG GIS MapIt! with highlighting added.
We first learned about racial restrictions in Rosemill Subdivision from an article published in the Lexington Herald-Leader on August 1, 2021. There Chris Green, Director of the Loyal Jones Appalachian Center at Berea College, discussed his research into the history of this south Lexington neighborhood where he had spent part of his childhood. Not only was the entire neighborhood subject to restrictive racial covenants but, Green discovered, had been built on land where enslaved people had once toiled. (Green, 2021)
Eight units, each platted separately, make up Rosemill Subdivision. We have found deeds imposing racial restrictions on Units 1, 2, 3, 5, and 8, but we have not yet researched Units 4, 6, or 7. The deeds we have found referred to "negros or mulattos," "negro or colored person," or, in the only such deed we have found so far, "any person of the negro or yellow race."
Chatham Village
Situated just across from Lafayette High School, Chatham Village was developed pursuant to two plats, filed in 1939 and 1945. In 1939, A.C. and Lucy Pierson, the owners at that time, imposed a set of subdivision-wide restrictions, including this: “No persons of any race other than the Caucasian or white race shall use or occupy any building on any lot, except that this covenant shall not prevent occupancy by domestic servants of a different race domiciled with an owner or tenant.” The covenants were to run with the land and be in force until January 1, 1965. (Deed Book 312 P 220, 10-17-1939)
The document that included the above restrictions was actually a deed of sale conveying 10 lots, all of which were in Blocks C and D. Although the deed stated that the restrictions were "to be binding on all of the Lots in Blocks A, B, C, and D of said Chatham Village subdivision,” we questioned whether purchasers of other lots would have had notice of the restrictions. We therefore sete out to review deeds for lots in all of the blocks within the subdivision, to satisfy ourselves that they included or made reference to the racial restrictions.
So far we have identified deeds for an additional 16 lots in Block B, 3 lots in Block A, and 21 lots in Blocks C and D. This covers about 1/3 of the lots in the subdivision. With only one exception, they all included the same racial restriction, or stated that the conveyance was subject to the restrictions in DB 312 P 220. (The one outlier mentioned no restrictions of any kind.) We intend to review several more deeds for Block A lots, but we are convinced that Chatham Village was unavailable to African Americans.
In 1940 the owners of several properties in Chatham Village filed an agreement to revise the restrictive covenants affecting their property. They revised the restrictions having to do with setback and minimum square footage of the buildings, but did not remove the racial restriction.
Deed Research in Progress
In the above sections about specific neighborhoods, we have mentioned minor gaps in our research — gaps our volunteer and student interns will work to fill in the coming months. In several other neighborhoods work is underway but is not at the almost-completed stage.
Ashland Park. This large neighborhood includes several sections, each with its own many-block plat. Volunteers Dave Jones and Mark Scarr are working on Ashland Park, and each of them has finished one large plat. Together, those plats cover about one-third of Ashland Park. Dave and Mark have found racial restrictions in every lot they have studied.
Aylesford. One of Lexington's earliest suburbs, Aylesford is a challenging neighborhood to research because the plats have been revised several times, and the early deeds were often written in cursive script. From an elaborate advertising brochure (see the right-hand column) we know that Aylesford was racially restricted, but we do need to review deeds.
Liberty Heights. This subdivision, off Winchester Road near Liberty Road, was platted in April 1921. We have reviewed three deeds, all with racially restrictive language, and all indicating that the restrictions applied to the entire subdivision. We still need to review a larger sample of deeds.
Montclair. Off East High/Tates Creek Road, south of Chevy Chase shopping area, Montclair subdivision was platted in the 1930s and 1940s into four units. We have found deeds setting out restrictions -- including racial restrictions -- for Units 1 and 4. We need to identify similar deeds for Units 2 and 3 before we can say with assurance that all of Montclair was racially restricted.
Oak Park. Platted in 1936, Oak Park lies between Manchester Street and the Leestown Road overpass. So far, we have not found a subdivision-wide statement of restrictions, but we have reviewed several individual deeds in Blocks A, B, C, and D, and have found the same racial restriction — with the exact wording — in all of them. We have not yet checked Blocks E, F, or G. We need to review several more deeds before we can definitively state that this entire subdivision was racially restricted.
Melrose is right next to Oak Park. So far we have read only one deed for Melrose; it conveys four lots and contains a racial restriction.
Lexington's Central Core. The downtown area is complex because some of the earliest streets had no recorded plats, and the later, platted subdivisions tend to be small and numerous. We have not yet undertaken to study this area, and we may tackle it last. So far we have seen a racially restrictive covenant for Delong Subdivision, which consists of one block of Delong Street (now Maple) between 6th and 7th. Through Rich Schein's article, mentioned earlier (Schein, 2012), we are aware that restrictive covenants were placed on Ross Street and Hampton Court.
Castlewood Subdivision. Adjacent to Castlewood Park subdivision, Castlewood includes four blocks, shown on a plat dated 1923. We are about halfway finished reviewing deeds for this subdivision, and have found racial restrictions on every lot we have reviewed so far.
Miscellaneous subdivisions with probable racial restrictions. From time to time, when examining a page in a deed book, we have noticed racially restrictive language in a deed on the adjacent page. Because restrictive covenants were intended to establish the character of entire neighborhoods, it would be unusual for a seller to impose a covenant on a single house. For that reason, when time allows, we copy or make note of those deeds. Subdivisions we have have identified in this way include:
Arcadia Park
Bell Place
Castle Heights
Chevy Chase
Clays Mill
Deepwood
Elam Park
Fairway
Floral Park
Golf View
Goodwin Acres
Henry Clay Blvd Subdivision
High Point
Lexington Manor
Morris Levy Subdivision (Park Avenue near Columbia Avenue)
Picadome Park
Pinehurst
Seven Parks
Thomas Park Subdivision (Headley Ave)
Walnut Hills
Westgate
These neighborhoods will be the subject of future research to determine whether they were subject to subdivision-wide restrictions.
Do Restrictive Covenants Still Exist?
In May 1948, the US Supreme Court ruled that racial deed covenants could no longer be enforced by state courts (Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 US 1, 1948).
The Court in Shelley v. Kraemer did not rule that racial restrictions were illegal, but simply that they could not be enforced in state courts. As we have shown, some some developers and home sellers continued to write restrictive covenants into their property deeds. The restrictive covenants, even though unenforceable, continued to achieve their segregating purpose, serving as "signals to realtors (who directed blacks to non-covenanted neighborhoods), lenders (who would not grant mortgages to blacks in covenanted neighborhoods), federal housing agencies (that would not guarantee mortgages granted to blacks in covenanted neighborhoods), and insurers (who would not insure blacks in covenanted neighborhoods)" (Brooks 2011, 361). Thus restrictive covenants, even after they were no longer enforceable, helped maintain segregation.
Finding Restrictive Covenants in Lexington
Racially restrictive covenants are clauses within deeds, so one has to read the deeds for a particular property in order to learn if there is a restrictive covenant affecting that property.
The Fayette County property deeds are in huge books at the Fayette County Clerk's Office.
Dedicated computers at the Clerk's office, linked to the Property Valuation Administrator's website, help identify the deeds for a given property by deed book and page number. The property deed will usually identify the plat number for the property's subdivision; the helpful staff people in the County Clerk's office make copies of plats and deed pages.
Every time a property changes hands a new deed is drafted, incorporating much of the language from the previous deed. If the property has changed ownership since 1948 (when Shelley v. Kraemer was decided), any previous racially restrictive covenant might or might not be restated in the newer deed or deeds. If the property has changed hands since 1968 (when the Fair Housing Act was passed), the newer deeds will almost certainly leave out any previous racially restrictive language. As a result, in either case the researcher must go back to the previous deed, or one before that, to discover when restrictive language first appears. Often, as in the case of most examples we cited above, that language appeared either the first time the land was subdivided or the first time the subdivided land was sold.
Searching Your Own Deed
If you are a homeowner, it is relatively easy to learn whether the chain of title for your property includes unsavory and illegal restrictions. It may take more research than simply reading your deed, which may refer to but not spell out older restrictions. A visit to the County Clerk's office, and good help from people who work there, is worth a try. As we noted above, you are most likely to find restrictive covenants if your neighborhood was developed before 1948, although some covenants might exist for areas developed up to 1968.
For properties that were initially subject to restrictive covenants, newer deeds that don't repeat the offensive racial language may still incorporate it by reference. For example, in a 1970 deed for one of the Hollywood Terrace properties the following language is found: "...this conveyance is made subject to... all restrictions conditions and easements affecting the said property which appear of record in the Fayette County Clerk's office." (Deed Book 1001 p. 353) Even when such language is present, however, racially restrictive covenants can no longer be enforced.
As described here and elsewhere, getting a restriction removed from one's own deed can be arduous to impossible, even when the restriction itself is no longer legal. State legislatures in some states, including Virginia, Maryland, Connecticut, Illinois, and California, have passed legislation making it easier for homeowners to remove race-based restrictions from their deeds.