Colin Gordon, professor of history at the University of Iowa, delivered a talk on his new book, “Patchwork Apartheid: Private Restriction, Racial Segregation, and Urban Inequality,” in the Bryan Cave Law School Moot Courtroom on Monday, Nov. 6. 

Gordon has authored several books previously concerning segregation in St. Louis including “Mapping Decline: St. Louis and the Fate of the American City”, and “Citizen Brown: Race, Democracy, and Inequality in the St. Louis Suburbs.” His new book focuses on systematic housing racism from the 19th century until now.

Gordon began his presentation by discussing the data gathering for his book. He digitized many records from midwestern cities, though there were some difficulties in doing this given the time range and extent of records.

 “It was a real challenge doing this work, because the private restrictions are only indexed by the [property] grantor and grantee. The city of St. Louis, for example, [records] over 5 million pages of grants that need to go through” said Gordon. 

From St. Louis, Missouri to St. Paul, Minnesota, Gordon had picked out five different counties to analyze and index. He looked at the zoning laws and property restrictions to understand how cities became geographically racially segregated. 

Gordon discussed how prior to the 1920s, cities were racially segregated on a micro scale. Homesellers would decide on their own who to sell to. Personal beliefs in favor of segregation led many to not sell to African Americans or minorities, which solidified the already segregated cities.

“Prior to 1920, [it] was very common to do this sale by sale…one buyer and one seller would agree that in the future, there would be a restriction with the land [that] the property can never be sold to someone of color or African descent,” Gordon said.

He said this practice of racial segregation became institutionalized through development and petition restrictions.  

“Developers established restrictions that could decisively restrict everything in a large swath of property,” Gordon said. “As we see in St. Louis County, this was done on [an] incorporated plan. The developer had full rein as to restrictions on race.” 

Black Americans faced widespread restrictions on purchasing property. Many cities with small and large Black populations, like Johnson, Iowa, and St. Louis, respectively, had these policies.

Gordon displayed redlined maps of differently sized counties that he looked into when writing his book. The maps illustrated large sections of American cities that used to be completely cut off from Black Americans. Different sections of cities were also intentionally not connected by roads to segregate races. 

“The effect of these restrictions is to create a sort of a suburban barrier that sorts African American migrants on arrival rather than reactive to their prices,” Gordon said. “This contributed to and cemented segregation” . 

As a local example, Gordon showed zoning regulation records for University City and the Delmar Loop. Formerly a residential space, Delmar Blvd was zoned to be a commercial district. Houses north of Delmar were intended to be for African Americans, while houses south were intended for Caucasians. 

“Even though the housing stock north of Delmar is virtually identical to the housing stock  south, it’s zoned differently and ended up with very different views,” Gordon said.

Gordon started his research on St. Louis’s redlining issue after his colleagues in Minnesota completed the Mapping Prejudice Project, focusing on Minneapolis.

“I came back to St. Louis with some housing advocate friends and said ‘Can we do this here?’” Gordon said. “I finally found that catalog that we kept from our title company, and that allowed us to dive into the records and documents.”

When asked if he thinks the situation will change, Gordon discussed how the Mapping Prejudice project in Minneapolis prompted the city to outlaw single-family zoning, but change is slow to take effect since many of the laws are cemented into the housing system and privately controlled.

“You know, it’s like steering a battleship,” Gordon said. “It’s like you can’t turn it [fast] because it’s all been built [moving in a direction].”