Letter: Deleting restricting housing covenants

The article “How a Crystal Lake native is deleting a painful relic of race and housing” (Northwest Herald, Jan. 5) describes one individual’s efforts to delete a restrictive housing covenant from property records.

The practice of using restrictive covenants is a sad legacy of America’s past. A colleague recently sent me an article about “Sundown” towns, which, loosely defined, are municipalities that have used laws, intimidation, and violence to exclude non-whites. The term “sundown” stems from signs used in some towns that “colored people” had to leave town by sundown.

A database of Sundown towns available at justice.tougaloo.edu estimates that 70% of Illinois towns and cities have at some point been sundown towns, mostly in the 1890-1940 period. Crystal Lake is listed (restrictive covenants, KKK, signage in Lakewood) and all of McHenry County (restrictive covenants, KKK). Another resource is Richard Rothstein’s “The Color of Law — A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America.”

I hope more individuals take the time and effort and take advantage of the opportunity described in your article. Removing these restrictive covenants is one way of making amends, an important step on the path to addressing the structural racism that continues to infest our society.

Michael A. Rugh

Woodstock