Sourced history — racist.systems

1972 US — Midwest

Pruitt-Igoe: from federal showcase to demolished symbol

The Wendell O. Pruitt Homes and William Igoe Apartments opened in St. Louis in 1954–1956: thirty-three 11-story towers, 2,870 units, originally designed by Minoru Yamasaki and federally funded under the Housing Act of 1949. The complex was racially segregated by design — Pruitt for Black tenants, Igoe for white — …

Source: Walter Johnson, ``The Broken Heart of America: St. Louis and the Violent History of the United States`` (Basic Books, 2020), ch. 10. See also ``The Pruitt-Igoe Myth`` (dir. Chad Freidrichs, 2011). · view ↗

1973 US — South

San Antonio v. Rodriguez locks school funding to property tax

Demetrio Rodríguez and other parents in the Edgewood Independent School District in San Antonio sued Texas, arguing that funding public schools primarily through local property tax violated the Fourteenth Amendment. Edgewood — overwhelmingly Mexican-American — spent $356 per pupil; nearby Alamo Heights spent $594. The gap was a direct function …

Source: San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, 411 US 1 (1973). US Supreme Court. · view ↗

1973 US — Northeast

The Rockefeller Drug Laws and the template for mass incarceration

New York's 1973 Rockefeller Drug Laws imposed mandatory minimum sentences of fifteen years to life for possession of four ounces or sale of two ounces of narcotics. The laws were enacted at the urging of Governor Nelson Rockefeller and became the template copied, expanded, and federalized over the following two …

Source: Michelle Alexander, ``The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness`` (New Press, 2010; rev. 2020). Original statute: NY Penal Law art. 220 (1973). · view ↗

1974 US — Midwest

Milliken v. Bradley locks segregation across district lines

After a federal district court found that the Detroit Public Schools were intentionally segregated and ordered a metropolitan desegregation plan involving fifty-three surrounding suburban districts, the Supreme Court reversed 5–4. The Court held that absent proof of intentional discrimination by each suburban district, the remedy could not cross district lines. …

Source: Milliken v. Bradley, 418 US 717 (1974). US Supreme Court. See Gary Orfield et al., ``Brown at 70``, UCLA Civil Rights Project (2024). · view ↗

1984 US — Northeast

Civil asset forfeiture and the Comprehensive Crime Control Act

The Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984 expanded federal civil asset forfeiture and created the federal Asset Forfeiture Fund, allowing law-enforcement agencies to keep the proceeds of seized property without an underlying criminal conviction. The Equitable Sharing program lets state and local agencies route seizures through federal partnership and retain …

Source: Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984, Pub. L. No. 98-473, tit. II, ch. III. Institute for Justice, ``Policing for Profit: The Abuse of Civil Asset Forfeiture`` (3rd ed., 2020). · view ↗

1984 US — Northeast

Cash bail: a screening mechanism for liberty

The federal Bail Reform Act of 1984 authorized pretrial detention for defendants determined to pose a danger to the community, and preserved cash bail as the default mechanism in most state systems. The Pretrial Justice Institute and the Prison Policy Initiative document that, in 2024, approximately 450,000 people were in …

Source: Bail Reform Act of 1984, Pub. L. No. 98-473, tit. II, 98 Stat. 1976. Prison Policy Initiative, ``Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2024``. See Bryan Stevenson, ``Just Mercy`` (Spiegel & Grau, 2014). · view ↗

1987 US — South

McCleskey v. Kemp: statistical proof of racial bias, ruled insufficient

Warren McCleskey, a Black man sentenced to death in Georgia for the killing of a white police officer, challenged his sentence with the Baldus study — a Northwestern University statistical analysis of 2,484 Georgia murder cases finding that defendants charged with killing white victims were 4.3 times more likely to …

Source: McCleskey v. Kemp, 481 US 279 (1987). US Supreme Court. Baldus, Pulaski & Woodworth, ``Equal Justice and the Death Penalty: A Legal and Empirical Analysis`` (Northeastern UP, 1990). · view ↗

1994 US — Northeast

The 1994 Crime Bill and the federal-state mass-incarceration partnership

The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 was the largest single piece of federal anti-crime legislation in US history. It funded 100,000 new local police officers, $9.7 billion for prison construction conditioned on states adopting truth-in-sentencing laws, an expansion of federal death-penalty offenses to sixty crimes, and …

Source: Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, Pub. L. No. 103-322, 108 Stat. 1796. The Sentencing Project, ``Trends in U.S. Corrections`` (2024 ed.). · view ↗

1996 South Africa

South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission

Established by the Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act of 1995 and chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission held public hearings from 1996 through 1998 in which victims of apartheid-era human rights violations testified and applicants for amnesty disclosed their roles in those …

Source: Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa, Final Report (1998). Available via the SA Department of Justice. · view ↗

2012 US — South

Wells Fargo's targeted-by-design subprime lending

In July 2012, the US Department of Justice and Wells Fargo entered into a $175 million settlement over discriminatory subprime mortgage lending. The complaint and accompanying internal documents established that, between 2004 and 2009, Wells Fargo loan officers had referred Black and Latino borrowers to subprime mortgage products at higher …

Source: United States v. Wells Fargo Bank, NA, No. 1:12-cv-01150 (D.D.C., consent order July 12, 2012). See Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, ``Race for Profit`` (UNC Press, 2019). · view ↗

2013 US — South

Shelby County v. Holder gutts the Voting Rights Act

The US Supreme Court ruled 5–4 that Section 4(b) of the Voting Rights Act — the coverage formula determining which jurisdictions required federal preclearance under Section 5 — was unconstitutional because it was based on data from the 1960s and 1970s. The decision did not formally repeal Section 5, but …

Source: Shelby County v. Holder, 570 US 529 (2013). US Supreme Court. · view ↗

2014 US — Midwest

Flint, Michigan: emergency management as policy lever

In April 2014, the Flint, Michigan, emergency manager — appointed by Governor Rick Snyder under Public Act 436 (2012), which allowed the state to override locally elected officials in fiscally distressed cities — switched Flint's drinking water source from treated Detroit water to the Flint River as a cost-saving measure. …

Source: Michigan Civil Rights Commission, ``The Flint Water Crisis: Systemic Racism Through the Lens of Flint`` (2017). M. Hanna-Attisha et al., American Journal of Public Health 106(2), 2016. · view ↗

2015 US — South

EJI documents 4,084 racial-terror lynchings

The Equal Justice Initiative published 'Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror,' documenting 4,084 racial-terror lynchings of Black people in twelve Southern states between 1877 and 1950. A subsequent report (2017) extended the count outside the South, bringing the total documented to over 4,400. The report systematized fragmentary …

Source: Equal Justice Initiative, 'Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror' (3rd ed., 2017). · view ↗

2016 US — South

NC NAACP v. McCrory: a court names the racial intent

After Shelby County v. Holder (2013), North Carolina's General Assembly passed House Bill 589, an omnibus elections law that imposed a strict photo-ID requirement, cut a week of early voting, ended same-day registration, ended pre-registration of 16- and 17-year-olds, and ended out-of-precinct provisional voting. The Fourth Circuit, in ``North Carolina …

Source: North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP v. McCrory, 831 F.3d 204 (4th Cir. 2016), cert. denied, 137 S. Ct. 1399 (2017). · view ↗

2018 US — South

Post-Shelby voter-roll purges, by the numbers

The Brennan Center for Justice's two-cycle audit of voter-roll removals ('Voter Purges' [2018] and the 2020 update) compared purge rates in jurisdictions previously covered by Voting Rights Act Section 5 preclearance to non-covered jurisdictions, before and after Shelby County v. Holder (2013). Between 2014 and 2016, the median purge rate …

Source: Brennan Center for Justice, Jonathan Brater et al., ``Purges: A Growing Threat to the Right to Vote`` (2018; updated 2020). See Carol Anderson, ``One Person, No Vote`` (Bloomsbury, 2018). · view ↗

2021 US — South

Black maternal mortality: the CDC's persistent finding

The CDC's Pregnancy Mortality Surveillance System has tracked pregnancy-related deaths since 1986. The 2024 update (covering 2017–2019) found that Black women in the United States die of pregnancy-related causes at 2.9 times the rate of white women: 39.9 deaths per 100,000 live births among Black women versus 14.1 per 100,000 …

Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Pregnancy Mortality Surveillance System, 2017–2019 data. Linda Villarosa, ``Under the Skin`` (Doubleday, 2022). · view ↗

2021 US — South

Cancer Alley: zoning, the Clean Air Act, and Title VI

The 85-mile stretch of the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans hosts more than 150 petrochemical facilities. Census tracts along the corridor are predominantly Black and low-income. The EPA's National Air Toxics Assessment has flagged St. James, St. John the Baptist, and Iberville parishes as having some of …

Source: Robert D. Bullard, ``Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class, and Environmental Quality`` (Westview, 1990; 3rd ed. 2000). UCC Commission for Racial Justice, ``Toxic Wastes and Race`` (1987). EPA, NATA 2018 air-toxics dataset. · view ↗

2022 US — South

Stop W.O.K.E. Act and the AP African American Studies fight

Florida's Individual Freedom Act of 2022 ('Stop W.O.K.E. Act') restricted K-12 and public-university instruction on race and racism by prohibiting teaching that an individual 'must feel guilt, anguish, or other forms of psychological distress' because of past actions by members of the same race or sex. In January 2023 Florida …

Source: Florida H.B. 7 (2022). PEN America, ``America's Censored Classrooms 2024``. See Eddie S. Glaude Jr., ``Begin Again: James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own`` (Crown, 2020). · view ↗

2022 US — Northeast

The racial wealth gap, measured in the Federal Reserve survey

The Federal Reserve's 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances measured median white family net worth at $284,310 and median Black family net worth at $44,890. The white-to-Black wealth ratio was 6.3 to 1 — wider than at any point since the SCF began tracking by race in 1989, and largely unchanged …

Source: Federal Reserve, ``Survey of Consumer Finances`` (2022). William A. Darity Jr. & A. Kirsten Mullen, ``From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century`` (UNC Press, 2020). Mehrsa Baradaran, ``The Color of Money`` (Harvard, 2017). · view ↗

2023 US — South

Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard ends race-conscious admissions

In ``Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard`` and ``Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina`` (2023), the Supreme Court ruled 6–3 (6–2 in the Harvard case, Justice Jackson recused) that race-conscious admissions programs at private and public universities violated the Equal Protection Clause and Title VI of the …

Source: Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, 600 US 181 (2023). Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. University of North Carolina, 600 US 181 (2023). US Supreme Court. · view ↗

2023 US — Northeast

Book bans 2021–2024: the catalog of removed titles

PEN America's ``Banned in the USA`` tracker recorded 10,046 instances of book bans in US public schools across the 2022–2023 and 2023–2024 academic years, affecting 4,231 unique titles. The American Library Association's separate count of formal challenges in 2023 was the highest since the ALA began tracking in 1990. PEN's …

Source: PEN America, ``Banned in the USA: Beyond the Shelves`` (2024). American Library Association, ``State of America's Libraries 2024``. · view ↗