Mark Brown was flipping through property records in Warwick City Hall when he found something unexpected. As part of his volunteer work with the local historic cemetery commission, he was looking to see if a small cemetery had a right-of-way attached to it.
What he found in a deed from 1940 for a neighboring house shocked him:
“No persons of any race other than the Caucasian race shall use or occupy any building or any lot except that this covenant shall not prevent occupancy by domestic servants of a different race domiciled with the owner or tenant.”
What Brown found was known as a racially restrictive covenant, a relic of a time when property owners and developers could write restrictions into deeds to ensure that individual homes — and sometimes entire subdivisions — would be part of a segregated, all-white community.
“It seems like centuries ago, but 1940 was shortly before I was born,” Brown said.
Though racially restrictive covenants are now illegal, they remain visible in the chain of property records tied to many local homes. They offer a clear window into a recent past in Rhode Island where some communities openly practiced racial segregation. Historians said their use also influenced another planning tool that is still the dominant force shaping cities and towns today: zoning.
This story was reported by The Public’s Radio. You can read the entire story here.
