Join Mapping Prejudice as it documents and maps racial covenants. These racist restrictions were embedded in property records to prevent people who were not White from owning or occupying land. Volunteers transcribe racial covenants from historic property records, and we map the results.
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About Mapping Prejudice
Mapping Prejudice is a trans-disciplinary group of activists and researchers working to identify and map racial restrictions buried in property records. These restrictions, known as racial covenants or racially-restrictive deeds, were used in every American community before 1968 to prevent people who were not White from buying or occupying property. These “unjust deeds” were used to create highly segregated cities that reserved areas seen as desirable for White people.
Housing provides a foundation for human wellness, determining health, safety, access to education, and family wealth. Racist housing policies have driven the growth of the racial wealth gap and a raft of other racial disparities in the United States.
None of this is possible without Zooniverse volunteers. Digital technologies make it possible to survey millions of property records at lightning speed. But we need humans to generate the clean, verified data necessary for this historical reckoning.
The process is simple. You transcribe racial covenants from historic property records, we map the results.
Mapping Prejudice was conceived in a place with some of the highest racial disparities in the country. Our team pioneered the use of crowdsourcing to map covenants and is now working to support other members of the Coalition for Covenants Research that have adopted this methodology.
Mapping Prejudice is based at the University of Minnesota Libraries. Click here to see our work.