Project Glossary: (link to printable pdf updated: 11 May 2022)

Alien Land Laws: a series of legislation that would limit Asian immigration to the US by limiting their ability to acquire citizenship or own property. In California these were in addition to the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882).

 

• Alien Land Law (1913): prohibited ‘aliens’ ineligible for citizenship from owner property or leasing property for more than three years.

• Alien Land Law (1920) added to the 1913 law by making any leasing agreement to ineligible aliens illegal, as well as barring companies (funding organizations of Asian communities) from purchasing land.

 

Buchanan v. Warley: a 1917 Supreme Court decision that decided racial zoning by public agencies were unconstitutional and violated the fourteenth amendment’s provision for the enjoyment of ‘life, liberty, property, or due process of law.’

 

Chinese Exclusion Act: an 1882 Act that put a 10-year ban on Chinese immigration – this was renewed in 1892 and in 1902 made ‘permanent,’ (in that it was finally repealed in 1943).

 

City Beautiful: a progressive movement of the late 1800s and early 1900s that promoted civic beautification projects not limited to architecture, public art, housing, and the public square. The City Beautiful hoped to reimagine cities from overcrowded centers of pestilence and tenements to a focus on civic beauty and cleanliness through city planning.

Reconstruction Amendments: Key Amendments passed toward the end of the Civil War; these Amendments were intended to expand the civil rights.

 

• 13thAmendment: ratified in 1865 freed enslaved Americans

• 14th Amendment: ratified in 1868 endowed formerly enslaved Americans with citizenship and equal protection under law.

• 15th Amendment: ratified in 1870, prohibited discrimination in voting rights of citizens on the basis of "race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”

 

Covenants: are binding agreements – in the case of restrictive covenants, these are legally binding agreements to restrict certain activity. Racial covenants restricted who could buy a home as well as live in that home.

 

Euclid v. Ambler: a 1926 Supreme Court decision that decided the legitimacy of municipal land-use zoning, (basically codifying Berkeley, California, and other communities’ practice of zoning specific areas as ‘single-family’ or ‘industrial’).

 

FDR: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the 32nd President of the United States – and key architect of the New Deal. He was elected for a record four terms as president (serving three of them completely as he passed on shortly into his 4th term), helping the nation out of the Great Depression and through a most of the Second World War. Important to note in reference to the historic events of the 1930s and 40s, it is this Roosevelt and not his distant cousin, Theodore Roosevelt (the 26th President of the United States) to which is being referred.

 

FHA: Federal Housing Association, created by the National Housing Act of 1934 as an agency established under the Roosevelt administration. The FHA insured mortgages from private lenders to encourage home ownership as part of a wider platform to bring America out of the Great Depression. FHA loans were a protection against loan default – the government would cover unpaid balances to the lender on behalf of the homeowner.

 

The Great Depression: A worldwide economic depression that last from 1929-1939 and in the United States was exacerbated by the Dust Bowl (a period of the 1930s where Midwestern Plaines states suffered land erosion due to over-farming and severe drought that displaced thousands of people). Record unemployment, homelessness and poverty were markers of this period.

 

HOA: homeowners’ associations is an organization that collects fees from homeowners in order to act on behalf of owners to provide services for the community as a whole. Often there are rules of conduct established for the community and enforced through the homeowners’ association, not limited to land restrictive use of individual properties, common areas, fences and --- in many cases throughout the first half of the 20th century --- which parties a homeowner can or can note sell their home.

 

New Deal: The New Deal was two slates of federal programs and agencies established in the 1930s under FDR to restart the economy and get people back to work and housed. Along with several banking acts (the FDIC which insured banks for example) and other popular programs like the WPA (Works Progress Administration) and the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) which employed artists, writers and other creatives in the former, and young men in the latter.

 

Redlining: where areas or zones of communities that have been colored (usually red) in residential security maps of the FHA. These red areas were considered 'hazardous' to investing… often communities with people of color and/or low-income. Individuals in these areas are more likely to be targets of discrimination from banks/lenders, insurers, realtors, and other community developers.

 

Shelley v. Kraemer: a 1948 Supreme Court decision that decided racially restrictive covenants were unconstitutional per the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection under law.  

 

Zoning: Zoning defines what and where people and institutions can and cannot build and operate within a municipality. Zoning creates areas where specific activity such as housing, businesses, mixed-use (businesses with housing on the same parcels of land) or industrial (manufacturing/ factories).