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Prejudice does more than twist individual human lives. It shapes the landscape itself — determining where people live, and whether their neighborhoods will fall to a wrecking ball.

Over the past several years, 91���� Associate Professor of History Wendy Wall’s Source Project stream, Mapping American Prejudice, has investigated the way racism has shaped Broome County’s residential communities. Their research continues today through a digital humanities incubator project focused on racial covenants, or clauses inserted into deeds to prevent targeted groups from buying, leasing, or occupying land.

“A lot of us are more familiar with redlining and urban renewal, which are terms for how the government has perpetuated segregation,” explained Cynthia Chen, a junior majoring in sociology and Asian and Asian American Studies. “A racial covenant is a legal restriction, a way to prevent people on the private level from occupying a neighborhood.”

The communities targeted by racial covenants vary; researchers in other parts of the country have found deeds excluding people of African, Asian, Middle Eastern, Mexican, Southern and Eastern European descent, as well as Native Americans. In Broome — the upstate New York county where the University is located — almost all covenants banned the sale or lease of property to people of color. The vast majority of covenants written before 1920 also targeted Italians, while some later covenants banned “aliens,” Chinese, Eastern Europeans, and Jews.

Developers across the country introduced racial covenants in the early 20th century, and their use lingered for decades, only stopping after the passage of the 1968 Fair Housing Act. In Broome, the oldest date is just after the turn of the 20th century, a decade earlier than those yet found in most of the country. Unless the covenants contained an expiration date, they “ran with the land” — remaining in effect even when the property changed hands.

Searching historical deeds, Wall’s students have unearthed more than 1,200 racial covenants in Broome County, which the University calls home; affected neighborhoods range from Endicott and Vestal to Windsor and Chenango Bridge, sometimes covering entire subdivisions.

“Because of the methods we have needed to use to search for these deeds, those we have found undoubtedly represent the tip of the iceberg,” Wall said.

The first racial covenants in Broome

All students in Wall’s 2023-24 and 2024-25 Source Project streams investigated the county’s racial covenants in the fall. Some students in each class built on this work when they turned to independent projects in the spring. Kristen Cho, Cynthia Chen, Kristen Li and Jade Torres developed a website on residential segregation in Broome County that they presented during Research Days, explained Cho, now a junior majoring in political science. Sharif Zaky, a sophomore majoring in history and philosophy, politics and law (PPL), focused his research on a land developer in Broome County, and all five eventually joined the digital humanities incubator team. Trevor Grimes, a junior PPL major, joined the research team this semester.

Until very recently, Broome only digitized its deeds back to May 1946. To access older documents, the students trekked down to the County Clerk’s office to flip through massive deed books.

The earliest racial covenants they found date from around 1900, on par with cities such as Baltimore or St. Louis. In most areas, however, racial covenants didn’t begin to take hold until around 1910. Their use skyrocketed in the 1920s as a measure to keep real estate prices high.

In Broome County, the concept may have been introduced by Boston-area developer Walter B. Perkins. In 1900, Perkins established a subdivision in Lestershire, now Johnson City, that banned “Italians or colored people.” A prior Perkins development in western Massachusetts sported the same language, as did subdivisions he sold in other parts of the country.

Local developers selling land in Lestershire and Endicott soon adopted the same wording, including Cora Keyes and the Endicott Land Company.

“It’s an example of how racial covenants spread in this early period,” Wall said. “Walter Perkins was one of the people who helped plant the seed in different communities.”

In the 1880s, the county’s percentage of African Americans was higher than that of most other counties in upstate New York, possibly because of the Underground Railroad. However, the percentage of non-whites in the county fell between the 1880s and 1950s, starting to creep up only in the 1960s. The Great Migration that brought African Americans out of the South to other regions of the country — including cities such as Albany, Syracuse, Rochester and Buffalo —between 1910 and 1970 largely bypassed Broome County.

Why? The region’s biggest employers — Endicott-Johnson and IBM — hired few, if any, African American workers. Racial covenants ensured that housing remained largely out of reach.

While discrimination against people of color was widespread nationally, Broome stands out in its early targeting of Italians; in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, people from southern and eastern Europe weren’t considered entirely white, and many faced discrimination as a result, Wall explained. The shoemaker Endicott-Johnson hired large numbers of Italians and, after acquiring land from the Endicott Land Company, developed housing where they were permitted to live.

Locally, Perkins may have been viewed as an innovator. By searching newspaper archives, Zaky discovered the developer elicited a good deal of public support, including a letter of endorsement written by the 91���� mayor.

“They were never explicit about saying why, but every single Perkins deed that has been found had racial covenants,” Zaky said.

Shaping the present

People may associate racial segregation primarily with the American South, but northern states also experienced considerable segregation, the students discovered. Li, a junior majoring in philosophy, politics and law, was shocked when she first learned about the Ku Klux Klan’s presence in the Broome County area, she said. Seeing those prejudices in print in official, physical deed books drove the reality home.

Even when minoritized groups were able to establish neighborhoods, they could be subject to forced removal and the taking of their property through urban renewal projects. That’s what happened with the construction of 91����’s North Shore Highway, which displaced residents of a historically Black community in the city’s seventh ward, explained Torres, a junior majoring in political science. The ousted residents were promised housing assistance that they never received, prompting court cases.

“The goal of our project is to spread awareness to 91���� residents,” said Kristen Cho, a junior political science major. “Hopefully, they can learn from mistakes and do urban renewal in a way that will actually benefit the community.”

The team plans to build a public-facing website with an interactive map that shows the spread of racial covenants across the county. In other areas of the country, similar research has helped spark civic conversations about structural racism and even led to changes in zoning and other laws, Wall said.

While racial covenants are no longer enforceable, the language remains in official documents — and their effects are still felt today. Houses are more than just a place to stay; they represent generational wealth, passed down through families, and access to resources such as good schools.

“As a sociology major, I started to think very deeply about how historical disparities have contributed to worsening socio-economic outcomes,” Chen said. “Our project is very applicable to what we see in the region today, where around 30% of residents live in poverty, further exacerbated by a housing crisis.”