From Black Wall Street

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The Ghetto

Disproportionally impacted or targeted systematically?
Trust & Estate Law 105

This is the final publication of the Trust / Estate Law series. I have decided to make it free because of its historical importance and overview of how we got to the conditions we are in today. This specific 105 lesson is more information based, whereas Trust Law 101 – 104 are more solution oriented on what can be done about the mortgage issue, owning land without mortgages, how to challenge foreclosures and the like.

Estate Law & The Feudal System (Mortgage Fraud) Trust Law 104

$25.00

Contents

The Mortgage. 4

Feudal Law.. 6

The Escrow.. 9

18 U.S. Code § 2331. Definitions. 10

The Loan. 10

The Closure. 11

Alldoial Title and the Constitution. 12

Mortgage Writ of Discovery. 13

Supportive Case Law.. 17

MONEY. 17

NOTE.. 17

TREASURY NOTE.. 17

PROMISSORY NOTE.. 17

CONTRACT.. 17

CONSIDERATION.. 17

LEGAL CONSIDERATION.. 18

PAY, V.. 18

United States Supreme Court 19

CRAIG v. STATE OF MISSOURI (1830) 19

No. 44. 19

Argued: Decided: January 1, 1830. 19

H. R. 5404. 20

United States Supreme Court 22

DON E. WILLIAMS CO. v. COMMISSIONER (1977) 22

No. 75-1312. 22

Argued: December 8, 1976Decided: February 22, 1977. 22

First National Bank of Montgomery vs. Jerome Daly. 23

First National Bank of Montgomery,       Plaintiff vs Jerome Daly,       Defendant 24

16 Am Jur 2d, Sec 177 late 2d, Sec 256. 26

H. R. 25. 27

 

 

The Mortgage

 

This booklet will be put into the most colloquial way possible for easy comprehension. This booklet will be written etymologically-sound to the best of my ability and the words used will be true to their definitive definition.

 

1.     A Mortgage, as defined in Henry Campbell Black’s Law dictionary is merely a lien and does not create title to an estate. Easily put, if you get a mortgage, this does not mean you own the home. The same stands true to the deed of trust, this also does not mean you own the estate. The word deed simply means action and a trust is an abstract noun, being an idea, is placed on paper, as the mortgage and promissory note, which is to remain private, is supposed to be reflected in the “Deed of Trust” to ensure private information is not revealed to the public. Of course, just because things should be a certain way, doesn’t mean people will do it the correct way. These reigns true in the fact that you and others, have the right to contract. So, if you wish to do it “incorrectly” or pursuant to feudal law, you are well within your right. Just as if you were contracting pursuant to common-law or constitutional law you would be well within your right: i.e. slavery is a choice. As stated in the Holy Books – “To you your way and to me mine.”

 

Christian Black Codes of 1724 - Article 22: We declare that slaves have no right to any kind of property but that all that they acquire either by their own industry, or by the ability of others, or by any other means or title whatever shall be the full property of their masters; and the children of said slaves, their fathers, mothers, their kindred or other relation either free or slave shall have no pretensions or claim thereto, either through testamentary nor positions or donations inter vivace; which dispositions and donations we declare null and void, and also whatever promise they may have interred into by persons incapable of disposing of anything and or participating to any contract.

 

MORTGAGE. An estate created by a conveyance absolute in its form, but intended to secure the performance of some act, such as the payment of money, and the like, by the grantor or some other person, and to become void if the act is performed agreeably to the terms prescribed at the time of making such conveyance. 1 Washb.Real Prop. *475. A conditional conveyance of land. Mitchell v. Burnham, 44 Me. 299. A transfer of property passing conditionally as security for debt. Potter v. Vernon, 129 Okl. 251, 264 P. 611, 613. A debt by specialty, secured by a pledge of lands, of which the legal ownership is vested in the creditor, but of which, in equity, the debtor and those claiming under him remain the actual owners, until debarred by judicial sentence or their own laches, Coote, Mortg. 1. The foregoing definitions are applicable to the common-law conception of a mortgage. But in many states in modern times, it is regarded as a mere lien, and not as creating a title or estate. Zeigler v. Sawyer, Tex.Civ.App., 16 S.W.2d 894, 896. It is a pledge or security of particular property for the payment of a debt or the performance of some other obligation, whatever form the transaction may take, but is not now regarded as a conveyance in effect, though it may be cast in the form of a conveyance. Muth v. Goddard, 28 Mont. 237, 72 P. 621, 98 Am.St.Rep. 553; Johnson v. Robinson, 68 Tex. 399, 4 S.W. 625; Killebrew v. Hines, 104 N.C. 182, 10 S.E. 159, 17 Am.St.Rep. 672; Stockel v. Elich, 297 P. 595, 597, 112 Cal.App. 588; In re Morgan, D.C.N.J., 39 F.2d 489, 490. Chattel mortgage. A mortgage of goods, chattels, or personal property

 

2.     A promissory note is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a promise, written down, thus, in the form of a note, like when you pass notes in high-school. This is where the 4-corner rule comes into play. As opposed to filing a claim in court based on a verbal promise, which, without video or audio evidence would be difficulty to prove. It becomes easier for everyone to just write things down. This written expression of thought is also where we get the phrase “expressed trust.” It is just that simple.

 

3.     4 Corner Rule, simply means, any civil litigation based on contracts will not be based on what litigants say about the contractual agreement, as far as terms and conditions. But solely and strictly based on the written agreement (law) of the contract itself, this is based in equity. Of course, with other pre-imposed conditions. Such as full-disclosure, honor, mental status, equal valuable exchange and consent, et alia.

 

4.     The word mortgage, etymologically, means dead pledge.

 

5.     The mortgage is merely a lien on the house. Which the mortgage contract / promissory note, states that, if the amount allegedly loaned is not paid in full, based on a default, then the house is taken as collateral. Thus, the home is the collateral interest in the mortgage contract.

 

6.     All mortgages are liner-contracts.

 

7.     The alleged loaning agency (creditor) never loaned you anything of actual value, which makes the entire deed (action) void ab initio. But, since credit is an abstract noun (not physical), and you agreed that they are the creditor and not the lender, they contractually don’t have to give you anything. Since you do not challenge this via an adverse claim and agree via your ignorant (tacit) compliance (acquiescence) and trust that these people are going to be honest with you simply because they have a suit and a smile on their face. You become their Chattel by consent, agreement, and your own ignorant free-will.

Ignorant – Late 14th century., “lacking wisdom or knowledge; unaware.” From Old French (14th Century) ignorant, from Latin ignorantem (nominative /pertaining to - ignorans) “not knowing,” “not to know, to be unacquainted, mistake, misunderstood; take no notice of, pay no attention to.”

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Trust Law 101

$25.00

In ‘Divine law’, ‘Trust law’ & the laws that govern ‘Wills’ and ‘Heritability’, when any individual or group of individuals are not in the Honor of their Mothers and Fathers they then have no right to inheritance, and thus are non-descendible. For example; If I am William P Baker (Grantor), and in my ‘Will’, I leave all my assets, etcetera to my Son Paul B Baker (Beneficiary), if my son Paul is mentally incompetent (unable to inherit), then those assets will be placed in a trust, to be administered by his mother (Trustee) or any other person designated as a trustee, until he either becomes of age (if he is a minor) or becomes mentally competent to manage the assets, which he can either remain a beneficiary or assume the position of trustee and administer the trust for the benefit of his prosperity. If Paul does not recognize his connection (Blood line) to me, his father, and a trust is not established designating a trustee to administer it, then the course of descent is thereby interrupted and all assets revert to ‘the State’ whereas the principles of escheating get invoked whereby the estate becomes abandoned for a lack of an heir competent enough to inherit or make claim thereto. By not recognizing his blood connection and his inheritance, Paul has abandoned his estate. But, if Paul has a child and that child recognizes his connection to me, the grandfather, and can prove that connection as well as prove mental competence, then the inheritance must be returned to him via ‘Reversion’. CHEATERS, or ESCHEATORS, “a cheater came to signify a fraudulent person, and thence the verb to cheat was derived. Wharton.” “In feudal law. Escheat Is an obstruction of the course of descent, and consequent determination of the tenure, by some unforeseen contingency, in which case the land naturally results back, by a kind of reversion, to the original grantor, or lord of the fee.” “In American law. Escheat signifies a reversion of property to the state in consequence of a want of any individual competent to inherit. The state is deemed to occupy the place and hold the rights of the feudal lord.” "Escheat at feudal law was the right of the lord of a fee to re-enter upon the same when it became vacant by the extinction of the blood of the tenant. The word 'escheat,' in this country, at the present time, merely indicates the preferable right of the state to an estate left vacant, and without there being any one in existence able to make claim thereto." Escheating is what all Mortgages are rooted in. Before we get into Escheating, I need to mention that whenever anyone agrees to enter into a Mortgage, the ‘Borrower’ is always listed as a ‘Tenant’ and never the ‘Owner’. CONVERSION. Equity. The exchange of property from real to personal or from personal to real, which takes place under some circumstances in the consideration of the law, such as, to give effect to directions in a will or settlement, or to stipulations in a contract, although no such change has actually taken place: and by which exchange the property so dealt with becomes invested with the properties and attributes of that into which it is supposed to have been converted; Although it is sometimes necessary for certain purposes of devolution and transfer to regard the property in its changed condition as though the change has not absolutely taken place; 

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Trust Law 102

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If you’ve been following along with my lectures and purchasing my literature, you already know that a Mortgage does not mean you are the owner of a home. The only way to own property is via an Allodial Title: dealing with the right of ‘Reversion’, ‘Adverse Possession’, the creation of a ‘Family (tribal) Trust’, the education of your Heirs and the people around you to form a Jural Society to protect your assets and estate (Social Security / Nationhood).

During this lecture we will be going over the following:

i What is a ‘Security’?

ii What is a ‘Bond’?

iii What is ‘Insurance’?

iv What is ‘Assurance’?

v What is ‘Liability’?

vi What is ‘Limited Liability’?

vii How to Securitize your Estate & Assets

viii How to create your own Allodial Home Owners Insurance

ix What a true Creditor is

As a preliminary, it is important to, yet again, go over the fact that Federal Reserve Notes are not money. The only international, lawful, allodial, and constitutional money is Gold Coin or its Silver equivalent (or any precious metals).

Once the American nationals and other American citizens alike fully grasp the gnosis that FRN’s are Private Commercial Paper printed by the Corporate United States Treasury Department, a De Facto Government agency, for the Private Federal Reserve Bank to take complete control of the market like we see today. We will be in a better position with the knowledge that we can do the same within our Moorish nation. (most if not all business on North American Soil, registered with the United States or individual Corporate States agree to only accept FRN’s, which creates a monopoly over the market, trade and industry. Which is a direct violation of Article 1 section 8 and Section 10 of the Constitution- no obligations shall be placed on contracts and only gold and silver may be used to pay off a debt, Article 17 of the Treaty of Peace and Friendship of 1787 and Article 20 of the United Nations Declaration on Human rights). As stated by the Patriot and Prophet of the Moorish nation: We Moors must maintain a grand treasurer, just as in the days of our forefathers; then you are a nationuntil then, you are nothing. - THINK THIS OVER, YOU MOORS by: El Hajj Sharif Abdul Ali 

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On Sale

On Sale

Mortgage Fraud - how to stop a foreclosure: Bey v. Oldfield

$250.00 $20.00

For educational purposes only. Thise is what I did, accepting all the risks of my own decision. this is not legal advice. Our home that we lived in since 1999, is still in my parents' possession (2023).

Watch this testomonial with my parents discussing how we fought for our estate together. - https://www.youtube.com/live/42VstRaemOQ?feature=share

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Trust Law 103 - Probate Court

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How to download your product immediately after purchase

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSlBHmuXPAc

The reason we must establish a living trust expressing our will, is to avoid Probate Court.

 

Probate court deals with the validation of wills, but again, it is a ploy and enforcement of article 22 of the Christian Black Codes of 1724, whereby they divide our estate and tax the heirs out of their inheritance. There is no reason for them to act as a 3rd party to our affairs (Masters authority over their Slaves). Once we establish a trust and our will is expressed then it is ‘written’. Meaning, it is the law and the last order given to the heirs by the trustee or grantor for the next successor viz there is nothing to verify or validate.

Probate court, sometimes called a surrogate court, is a court that has jurisdiction via the birth certificate, 14th Amendment, and the people’s belief in their color of law contracts and transmitting utilities, as well as the people’s ignorance and status, to deal with matters of probate and the administration of estates; with reference to escheat. In some jurisdictions, such courts may be referred to as Orphans' Courts, or courts of ordinary. In some jurisdictions probate court functions are performed by a chancery court or another court of equity, or as a part or division of another court. All of which are guised as assisting people with the validation of wills etc. and often times result in the rightful heirs apparent being taxed out of their property by the European administers because we don’t know law; nor do we assert our right of claim to our land.

Probate courts chicanery (the use of trickery to achieve a political, financial, or legal purpose) administer the distribution of the assets of a decedent (one who has died), adjudicates the validity of wills, enforces the provisions of a valid will (by issuing the grant of probate), prevents malfeasance by executors and administrators of estates, and provides for the equitable distribution of the assets of persons who die intestate (without a valid will), such as by granting a grant of administration giving judicial approval to the personal representative to administer matters of the estate. A surrogate is a substitute, especially a person deputizing for another in a specific role or office when said person is incapable of disposing of anything or participating in any contracts i.e. mentally incompetent.

Article 22 We declare that slaves have no right to any kind of property but that all that they acquire either by their own industry, or by the ability of others, or by any other means or title whatever shall be the full property of their masters; and the children of said slaves, their fathers, mothers, their kindred or other relation either free or slave shall have no pretensions or claim thereto, either through testamentary nor positions or donations inter vivace; which dispositions and donations we declare null and void, and also whatever promise they may have interred into by persons incapable of disposing of anything and or participating to any contract.

The Birth Certificate / Berth Certificate, is, a creation of a thing and that thing is given the ALL CAPITAL LETTERS NAME a STRAW-MAN / Artificial Person, being a homonym, that looks and sounds like our name, but is not. Considering another human cannot transact business in another man’s name and be honorable, the all capital letter name, as an example, JOHN DOE, is distinguished from John Doe. European family names, otherwise known at law as “Christian names,” have been placed on us to keep us in dishonor and to convert all the wealth we generate within that name, over to their family trust.

 

The root word of ‘Birth’ is from PIE *bhrto past participle of root *bher- (1) "to carry; Old English beran "to carry, bring; bring forth, give birth to, produce; to endure without resistance; to support, hold up, sustain; to wear". In reference to maritime law: It is in reference to vessels or ships docking, anchoring or mooring to a port for rest, maintenance, on and offload etc. When the ship or vessel docks, it is given a certificate of berthing, logging in the date, time, arrival, parentage (from whence it came) and the name of the ship, as well as the Capitan or principal agent of the ship. This information is gathered in order to later (bond) collect a docking fee (debt) from the ships Capitan (debtor) and its crew for the compensation of being allowed to dock their ship at the owner or Bey’s port (creditor). This same rule is applied to the attaching of a debt (bond / Berth Certificate to an infant when the Spirits-Vessel (Physical body) is passing though the mother’s water and enters the hands (port) of the Dock-tor. The baby’s anchor is its placenta, attached to its nav-el (navigating (like a ship) El (God)). That placenta is then dropped in the Dock-tors ‘ports’, this, an alleged debt is owed by said baby. Thus, that child would never be able to buy anything, nor sell anything unless they have the name attached to that Berth Certificate or the number associated with that name called a Social-Security-Number: - King James Bible Book of Rev.12:

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Mortgage Fraud Video (Educational Purposes Only)

 The phrase “disproportionally impacted” is often used to coverup, sugarcoat, hide, conceal, obscure and manipulate the fact that our people are targeted. This is done so the individuals doing the targeting can make claims of innocence to avoid liability for the injuries that they induce, cause and inflict deliberately and subtly.

sub·tly. adverb
1.  in a manner that is so delicate or precise as to be difficult to analyze or describe.
2. In a clever and indirect way, in order to achieve something.

Disproportionate Impact means that groups of people who share a protected characteristic may be significantly more affected by a change than other people. Protected characteristics are specific aspects of a person's identity as defined by the Equality Act 2010. The 'protection' refers to protection from discrimination.

Disproportionate Impact means that the percentage of the insured population in one or more enumerated subcategory differs significantly from the percentage of premium that is to be paid by persons in that subcategory as a result of the use of credit reports or credit scores in underwriting or rating. A statistically validated test of the significance of the differences in premium percentage versus population percentage shall be submitted. If the probability that the differences shown is due to chanceis 10% or less then the proposed use of credit reports or scores will have been shown to have a disproportionate impact with respect to that class of persons.

https://www.lawinsider.com/dictionary/disproportionate-impact

My research into mortgages show a pretty ugly picture. Most of the reconstruction era, including the act of Congress of 1871 and the Ku Klux Klan act of 1870, go hand-in-hand with the creation and establishment of mortgages.

In previous writings I show court records of the United States Supreme Court acknowledging that the Ku Klux Klan would ravage black communities simply because they were black; the Klan would murder black Republicans, white Republicans and white abolitionists. I’ve also shown newspaper articles from the daily register discussing the democratic partie's coup within the United States government, and how many Democrats were concerned with the fact that blacks comprise the majority of Republicans in the south. They were concerned that blacks would end up with majority congressional control. I review some of this information in this video (around 20 minutes)
​ https://youtube.com/live/MHPprSgLIAk?feature=share

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What we see from the 1870s up until till the 1930s (60 years or 2 generations) to include the creating of the housing authority within the federal government. Are hundred thriving in flourishing black communities destroyed, fractured, scattered, flooded or burned. This includes the terroristic acts of the Ku Klux Klan murdering people like we see in Tulsa, Oklahoma. But Tulsa Oklahoma was not the only black Wall Street. If you research central park in New York, you will see that the entirety of it, was once a black community that has since been almost erased from history.

Central Park is not a unique situation. Many black communities were destroyed and in its place a park was built; a lake was built; highways were built; and often times, a combination of these things, along with the government’s direct participation and enforcement of eminent domain.

This left people displaced, and in the name of desegregation and in the name of fair housing, Europeans were funded by the federal government to build housing complexes which we call today, the projects, hoods, ghettos, and housing.

These were to serve as a holding ground to “temporarily” house the Black people that were displaced by highways, parks, lakes, and fair housing being built. Keep in mind that none of this happened overnight. All of this was a strategic plan and it took several years to come to fruition.

Once the blacks were forced into housing and as a result of a fake market crash, therein lay the emergence of mortgages. Mortgages are used to put blacks into slavery, but by a different name: Peonage. It doubles are to keep blacks exactly where they are by impending upward social mobility.

There are several, independent research studies that show that blacks have always been and still are disproportionately impacted when it comes to homeownership. This is because blacks are charged higher interest rates than so-called whites. This keeps people where they are economically. These systems are maintained under the guise of capitalism, the illusion of fairness, the illusion of color blindness, the illusion of disproportionally impacted and not targeted.

All of this is done for the purpose of Demographic engineering. This effects political power. An example of this is found in political districts and often has major impacts at the municipal level. I have personally seen how there are certain wards that “just so happen to divide a black community.” This results in a lack of black majority votes to place a member of the black community as a councilmen or woman within city hall. It’s nothing but imaginary and could be changed of both segments of the black community demanded change by demanding to be considered their own ward. Through this unity, they can elect one of their own to speak for them.

The Ku Klux Klan and the Democratic Party

$25.00 $15.00

Take, for example, the Hamburg Massacre of 1876. There, a white citizen militia sought out and murdered a troop of black militiamen for no other reason than that they had dared to conduct a celebratory Fourth of July parade through their mostly black town. The white militia commander, “Pitchfork” Ben Tillman, later described this massacre with pride: “[T]he leading white men of Edgefield” had decided “to seize the first opportunity that the negroes might offer them to provoke a riot and teach the negroes a lesson by having the whites demonstrate their superiority by killing as many of them as was justifiable.” S. Kantrowitz, Ben Tillman & the Reconstruction of White Supremacy 67 (2000) (ellipsis, brackets, and internal quotation marks omitted). None of the perpetrators of the Hamburg murders was ever brought to justice.[Footnote 22] Organized terrorism like that perpetuated by Tillman and his cohorts proliferated in the absence of federal enforcement of constitutional rights. Militias such as the Ku Klux Klan, the Knights of the White Camellia, the White Brotherhood, the Pale Faces, and the ’76 Association spread terror among blacks and white Republicans by breaking up Republican meetings, threatening political leaders, and whipping black militiamen. Era of Reconstruction, 199–200; Curtis 156. These groups raped, murdered, lynched, and robbed as a means of intimidating, and instilling pervasive fear in, those whom they despised. A. Trelease, White Terror: The Ku Klux Klan Conspiracy and Southern Reconstruction 28–46 (1995)

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A 'Forgotten History' Of How The U.S. Government Segregated America. May 3, 2017 

https://www.npr.org/2017/05/03/526655831/a-forgotten-history-of-how-the-u-s-government-segregated-america
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​In 1933, faced with a housing shortage, the federal government began a program explicitly designed to increase — and segregate — America's housing stock. Author Richard Rothstein says the housing programs begun under the New Deal were tantamount to a "state-sponsored system of segregation."

The government's efforts were "primarily designed to provide housing to white, middle-class, lower-middle-class families," he says. African-Americans and other people of color were left out of the new suburban communities — and pushed instead into urban housing projects.
Rothstein's new book, The Color of Law, examines the local, state and federal housing policies that mandated segregation. He notes that the Federal Housing Administration, which was established in 1934, furthered the segregation efforts by refusing to insure mortgages in and near African-American neighborhoods — a policy known as "redlining." At the same time, the FHA was subsidizing builders who were mass-producing entire subdivisions for whites — with the requirement that none of the homes be sold to African-Americans.
Interview Highlights
On how the Federal Housing Administration justified discrimination
 
The Federal Housing Administration's justification was that if African-Americans bought homes in these suburbs, or even if they bought homes near these suburbs, the property values of the homes they were insuring, the white homes they were insuring, would decline. And therefore their loans would be at risk.
 
On how federal agencies used redlining to segregate African-Americans
The term "redlining" ... comes from the development by the New Deal, by the federal government of maps of every metropolitan area in the country. And those maps were color-coded by first the Home Owners Loan Corp. and then the Federal Housing Administration and then adopted by the Veterans Administration, and these color codes were designed to indicate where it was safe to insure mortgages. And anywhere where African-Americans lived, anywhere where African-Americans lived nearby were colored red to indicate to appraisers that these neighborhoods were too risky to insure mortgages.
 
On the long-term effects of African-Americans being prohibited from buying homes in suburbs and building equity
Today African-American incomes on average are about 60 percent of average white incomes. But African-American wealth is about 5 percent of white wealth. Most middle-class families in this country gain their wealth from the equity they have in their homes. So this enormous difference between a 60 percent income ratio and a 5 percent wealth ratio is almost entirely attributable to federal housing policy implemented through the 20th century.

African-American families that were prohibited from buying homes in the suburbs in the 1940s and '50s and even into the '60s, by the Federal Housing Administration, gained none of the equity appreciation that whites gained. So ... the Daly City development south of San Francisco or Levittown or any of the others in between across the country, those homes in the late 1940s and 1950s sold for about twice national median income. They were affordable to working-class families with an FHA or VA mortgage. African-Americans were equally able to afford those homes as whites but were prohibited from buying them.
 
On how housing projects went from being for white middle- and lower-middle-class families to being predominantly black and poor
Public housing began in this country for civilians during the New Deal and it was an attempt to address a housing shortage; it wasn't a welfare program for poor people. During the Depression, no housing construction was going on. Middle-class families, working-class families were losing their homes during the Depression when they became unemployed and so there were many unemployed middle-class, working-class white families and this was the constituency that the federal government was most interested in. And so the federal government began a program of building public housing for whites only in cities across the country. The liberal instinct of some Roosevelt administration officials led them to build some projects for African-Americans as well, but they were always separate projects; they were not integrated. ...

The white projects had large numbers of vacancies; black projects had long waiting lists. Eventually it became so conspicuous that the public housing authorities in the federal government opened up the white-designated projects to African-Americans, and they filled with African-Americans. At the same time, industry was leaving the cities, African-Americans were becoming poorer in those areas, the projects became projects for poor people, not for working-class people. They became subsidized, they hadn't been subsidized before. ... And so they became vertical slums that we came to associate with public housing. ... The vacancies in the white projects were created primarily by the Federal Housing Administration program to suburbanize America, and the Federal Housing Administration subsidized mass production builders to create subdivisions that were "white-only" and they subsidized the families who were living in the white housing projects as well as whites who were living elsewhere in the central city to move out of the central cities and into these white-only suburbs. So it was the Federal Housing Administration that depopulated public housing of white families, while the public housing authorities were charged with the responsibility of housing African-Americans who were increasingly too poor to pay the full cost of their rent.

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How Interstate Highways Gutted Communities—and Reinforced Segregation
America's interstate highway system cut through the heart of dozens of urban neighborhoods.
FARRELL EVANSOCT 20, 2021

https://www.history.com/news/interstate-highway-system-infrastructure-construction-segregation

When Congress approved the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, it authorized what was then the largest public works program in U.S. history. The law promised to construct 41,000 miles of an ambitious interstate highway system that would criss-cross the nation, dramatically expanding America's roadways and connecting 42 state capital cities and 90 percent of all American cities with populations over 50,000. Its goal was to eliminate unsafe roads, inefficient routes and traffic jams that impede fast and safe cross-country travel. President Dwight Eisenhower called the massive infrastructure project “essential to the national interest.”
But the highway expansion, implemented largely between the late 1950s and the early 1970s, came at a huge cost to America’s urban communities of color.

According to estimates from the U.S. Department of Transportation, more than 475,000 households and more than a million people were displaced nationwide because of the federal roadway construction. Hulking highways cut through neighborhoods, darkened and disrupted the pedestrian landscape, worsened air quality and torpedoed property values. Communities lost churches, green space and whole swaths of homes. They also lost small businesses that provided jobs and kept money circulating locally—crucial middle-class footholds in areas already struggling from racist zoning policies, disinvestment and white flight.

The neighborhoods destroyed and families uprooted by highway projects were largely Black and poor, wrote New York University law professor Deborah N. Archer in her article “White Men’s Roads Through Black Men’s Homes: Advancing Racial Equity Through Highway Reconstruction.” And that was by design, she noted. Policymakers and planners saw highway construction as a convenient way to raze neighborhoods considered undesirable or blighted. And they deployed the massive infrastructure elements—multi-lane roadbeds, concrete walls, ramps and overpasses—as tools of segregation, physical buffers to isolate communities of color. Hardly a major city with a significant minority population went unscathed by the legislation: New York, Miami, Chicago, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, Oakland, Nashville, Baltimore, Atlanta—and more. “By the time the interstate highway system was completed...” Archer wrote, “it had fundamentally restructured urban America.”

One of the most influential post-World War II urban planners was New York City’s “construction coordinator” Robert Moses, who oversaw all public works projects in the nation’s largest metropolis, including an astonishing array of its roadways, bridges, tunnels, housing projects and parks. Not only was Moses arguably the most powerful unelected official in the state’s history, but his influence on federal highway policy extended well beyond New York. He was a leading proponent of the idea that the best way to eradicate the supposed slums where Black people lived was to build highways through them.

Our categorical imperative is action to clear the slums,” Moses said in a 1959 speech. “We can’t let minorities dictate that this century-old chore will be put off another generation or finally abandoned.” Moses, who was also the chairman of the New York City Slum Clearance Committee, said that the highway construction must “go right through cities and not around them.” Two of the city’s main arteries he created, the Cross-Bronx and Brooklyn-Queens Expressways, did just that, cutting through the heart of the Bronx and Red Hook neighborhoods.

The 1956 federal highway act ran with this strategy, offering to paying 90 percent of the cost of states’ new roadways—with the caveat that they consent to build them through every major city to connect the emerging suburbs to downtown centers where commuters worked and shopped. According to Archer, highway engineers came to think of “killing two birds with one stone” to “improve traffic conditions and remove undesirable populations.

Black Neighborhoods Were Decimated
In the first half of the 20th century, Miami’s culturally vibrant Black community of Overtown was widely considered the “Harlem of the South” and “Little Broadway.” But after the passage of the 1956 highway bill, the expansion of I-95 through Miami led to the destruction of 87 acres of housing and commercial property in the community. According to Richard Rothstein’s The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America, only 8,000 of an estimated population of 40,000 remained in Overtown after the highway expansion. Blocked from moving into white neighborhoods, displaced residents were forced to crowd into nearby sections of the city already struggling with poverty and urban decay.
Cities around the country experienced similar devastation. Shortly after the highway bill, the construction of a vast roadway system cut through the Black neighborhood of Rondo in St. Paul, Minnesota, a mixed-class community known for its thriving cultural life, social clubs and integrated schools. Despite neighborhood resistance, an estimated 600 families lost their homes, and 300 businesses were shuttered when I-94 divided the community.
 
“It wasn’t just physical—it ripped a culture, it ripped who we were,” Minnesota governor Tim Walz later commented. “It was an indiscriminate act that said this community doesn’t matter...this convenient place to put a highway so we can cross over this place and go from the city out to the suburbs.”

At the time the highways were being built, the civil rights movement was gaining momentum. Congress and federal courts began to outlaw racist housing tactics such as restrictive housing covenants that prevented Black residents from buying into white neighborhoods and “redlining," a longstanding governmental zoning practice that had denied federally insured home loans to anyone living in a designated Black community.
As anxiety rose about the prospect of integrated neighborhoods, highway construction offered a solution: substantial physical barriers that could be used to reinforce racially determined neighborhood boundaries. The federal government often predicated highway funding on a state or city’s promise to use it for that purpose.

“Instead of going through Black communities, some interstate highways encircled them in an attempt to contain and confine black residents and skirt constitutional prohibitions on racial zoning,” wrote Archer. “In this way, the highway system was a tool of segregationist agenda, becoming ‘a protective maze of freeways, moats, concrete parapets and asphalt no man’s lands’ that separated white communities from Black communities and protected white people from Black migration.”

In Atlanta, according to Princeton University historian Kevin Kruse, I-20 was designed to serve as a boundary between the Black and white communities. “By razing impoverished areas downtown and segregating the races in the western section, Atlanta leaders hoped to keep downtown and its surroundings a desirable locale for middle-class whites,” wrote Kruse in The New York Times in 2019. But, he added, the “so-called urban renewals and the new Interstates only helped speed white flight from the city.” According to Kruse, roughly 60,000 whites left Atlanta for the suburbs in the 1960s and another 100,000 in the 1970s.

I-81 was built through the heart of Syracuse, New York to destroy the 15th Ward, a Black community that city planners believed was too close to the city’s jewels—Syracuse University and the downtown. “[I-81] decimated a close-knit African American community,” wrote Alana Samuels for The Atlantic. “And when the displaced residents from the 15th Ward moved to other neighborhoods, the white residents fled.”
Moving, she wrote, had just gotten a whole lot easier: “There was a beautiful new highway that helped their escape.”

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5 Black American Towns Hidden Under Lakes And Ultimately From History Books
Benson , Nyc , Oscarville , Susannah , Vanport
Parker Diakite • Jul 9, 2021

https://travelnoire.com/amp/black-american-towns-hidde

1. Oscarville, Georgia
Oscarville was burnt down in 1912 and more than a thousand residents were forced to flee following the allegations of rape… After the trials and executions, white men, known as Night Riders, forced Black families out of their homes by burning their land, churches, and schools. Once Black families fled, Lake Lanier was built on top of what was burned down.

2. Kowaliga (Benson), Alabama
Turns out, Alabama’s Lake Martin is built on the previous majority-Black town of Kowaliga. It is home to the first Black-owned railroad started by William E. Benson and the Black school Kowaligia Academic & Industrial Institute… After William’s death and the closing of the school,  Kowaligia was destroyed to make room for Lake Martin.

3. Seneca Village In New York City
Seneca Village began in 1825 and, at its peak, spanned from 82nd Street to 89th Street along what is now the western edge of Central Park in New York City.

By the 1840s, half of the African Americans who lived there owned their own property, a rate five times higher than the city average, as reported in Timeline.

In 1857, Seneca Village was torn down for the construction of Central Park. The only thing that remains is a commemorative plaque, dedicated in 2001 to the lost village.

4. Susannah, Alabama
Susannah, or Sousana, was also flooded by Lake Martin.
According to Alabama Living, more than 900 bodies were moved from cemeteries before the land was submerged.

The town once included a gold mine, a school, two mercantile, a grist mill, a flour mill, a sawmill, a blacksmith shop, and a church.

 5. Vanport, Oregon
In the 1940s, Vanport was the center of a booming shipyard industry because of World War II and quickly became the second-largest city in the state.

But as World War II saw white males drafted to serve overseas, a labor shortage pulled in a great migration of Blacks from the south.
With soldiers being drafted overseas to fight in the war, Oregon saw a labor shortage.  This resulted in a great migration of Black Americans from the south.

These new workers needed places to live, as the Albina neighborhood was the only place where Black people could live legally. It became too small for the growing population of Black Americans, and Vanport was built as a temporary housing solution.

At its peak, 40,000 residents, or 40 percent, were African-American.
But then, in 1948 massive flooding erupted in the neighborhood, and city officials didn’t warn residents of the dangerously high water levels, Many didn’t evacuate in time.

The town was wiped out within a day. 18,500 families were displaced, more than a third Black American.
​
Today, that area is known as Delta Park

The Civil Rights Implications of Eminent Domain Abuse
A Briefing Before
The United States Commission on Civil Rights Held in Washington, DC

https://www.usccr.gov/files/pubs/docs/FINAL_FY14_Eminent-Domain-Report.pdf

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states that government shall not take private property except for “public use” and with “just compensation.”1 In Berman v. Parker, 2 the Supreme Court held that eliminating blight qualifies as a permissible “public use” under the Fifth Amendment. In so doing, the Berman Court permitted Washington, DC, to take a department store that was not itself in poor condition and to transfer it to a private development corporation for the purpose of curing blight in the surrounding neighborhood, in which most of the residences were considered uninhabitable and beyond repair. Pursuant to that decision, the District of Columbia was able to expel some 5,000 low-income blacks from their homes in the name of “urban renewal.”3 Critics argue that the decision opened the door to the use (or abuse) of eminent domain by expanding the term “public use” to mean “public purpose”— an interpretation that they believe has no constitutional basis.

Subsequent to the Berman decision, state court decisions invoked “public use” broadly. They concluded that possible “public benefits” from increased tax revenues or job creation, which could flow from a more desirable private owner (such as a large business), justified the transfer of private property from one owner to another through eminent domain, regardless of the property’s condition.4

Some civil rights advocates have argued that local governments historically used the urban renewal condemnations Berman permitted to target racial and ethnic minorities. “Indeed, the displacement of African Americans and urban renewal projects were so intertwined that ‘urban renewal’ was often referred to as ‘Negro removal.’”5 Too often, “blight,” a facially-neutral word, masked the discriminatory motives behind certain takings.6 Today, some critics claim that officials often declare areas blighted and, therefore, in need of redevelopment that are not actually blighted, and the owners seldom receive just compensation. Critics also charge that the burden falls disproportionately on those lacking the money, political power, and influence needed to rebuff attempted takings, with the “deck stacked against” property owners…

According to Professor Somin, the Supreme Court’s and lower federal courts’ weakening protections of property rights against takings diminished the economic and social well-being of many Americans, displacing hundreds of thousands since World War II. According to Professor Somin, the majority suffering from blight condemnations and economic development takings were racial and ethnic minorities, mostly poor African Americans or Hispanics. Yet, as disproportionate victimization of minorities continued across decades, the motives for the takings changed. Professor Somin stated that during the 1950s and 1960s, urban renewal takings showed blatant prejudice against minorities, but today it is rarely evident.7 Instead, he believes that local governments often target poor urban minorities for such condemnations because of their political weakness, which stems partly from the past discrimination these groups have suffered. Furthermore, Professor Somin said that, although the governing entities financially compensate most of the displaced property owners, they rarely, if ever, fully cover their losses, leaving the victims of eminent domain worse off than before.8
…
Americans of all racial and ethnic backgrounds have suffered from government violations of constitutional property rights. But minority groups have often been disproportionately victimized, sometimes out of racial prejudice and at other times because of their relative political weakness. Minorities are especially likely to be victimized by private to private condemnations that test the limits of the Public Use Clause of the Fifth Amendment, which requires that property can only be condemned for a “public use.” These include takings allegedly justified by the need to alleviate “blight” and promote “economic development.”
…
The Displacement of Minorities By Eminent Domain. Private to private condemnations are often used for the benefit of the politically powerful at the expense of the politically weak.21 For most of American history, African Americans and other minority groups have fallen into the latter category. As a result, they have often been victimized by the use of eminent domain for “blight” and economic development takings. The Historic Impact of Blight Condemnations. Beginning in the 1930s, many states adopted laws and constitutional amendments allowing the condemnation of “blighted” property for transfer to private parties in order to alleviate “slum-like” conditions.22 Over the next fifty years, as many as several million Americans were expelled from their homes as a result of blight and urban renewal condemnations.23 Numerous businesses, churches, and other community institutions were also destroyed. The vast majority of those uprooted from their homes have been poor minorities, primarily African Americans.24 The use of eminent domain to evict poor blacks during the post-World War II era was so common that many, including famed African American writer James Baldwin, referred to urban renewal as “Negro removal.”25 Similarly, “slum clearance” was sometimes dubbed “Negro clearance.”26 Between 1949 and 1973, some two-thirds of the over one million people displaced under takings sponsored by the Urban Renewal Act of 1949 were African American.27 This figure understates the total impact of blight takings on blacks, because many blight condemnations were also undertaken by state and local government without federal backing.28 Hispanic groups, such as Puerto Ricans, were also commonly targeted.29 In many cases, the disproportionate impact on African Americans was not merely an accidental byproduct of efforts to “clean up” bad neighborhoods. It was deliberately intended by local officials.30 Local governments sometimes sought to rid themselves of what they called “niggertowns.”31 In most cases, those displaced by blight condemnations ended up worse off than they were before, and were not fully compensated for their losses.32
​
In 1954, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of blight condemnations in Berman v. Parker. 33 Significantly, Berman upheld a blight condemnation that was part of a project that forcibly displaced over 5,000 people in a poor Washington, DC neighborhood.34 Some 97.5 percent of them were African American.35 Only about 300 of the 5,900 housing units constructed on the site after the takings were affordable to the former residents of the area, most of whom ended up in worse conditions elsewhere.36 By the 1960s, the neighborhood in question was majority white.37

As prominent legal scholar Wendell Pritchett points out, “[t]he irony is that, at the same time it was deciding Berman, the Court was deciding Brown [v. Board of Education], which reflects a distrust of government (particularly local government) to protect the interests of minority groups and to treat all citizens equally.”38 Unfortunately, the Supreme Court and most other legal elites failed to grasp the contradiction between aggressive judicial oversight of school segregation on the one hand and giving local governments a blank check to use eminent domain to forcibly displace African Americans on the other. For many years, Berman’s permissive approach to blight takings set the pattern for both state and federal judicial decisions.
…
Prior to Kelo, the most famous economic development taking in American history was the 1981 Poletown case, in which the Michigan Supreme Court upheld a condemnation that displaced some 4,000 people in Detroit for the purpose of transferring the land to General Motors for the construction of a new factory.52

The negative impact of eminent domain on minorities is partially offset by compensation payments. However, compensation often falls far short of fully making up for all the losses suffered by victims of eminent domain. Many studies find that property owners often do not even get the “fair market value”54 compensation required by the Supreme Court.55 Undercompensation is particularly likely in the case of “low value” properties of the kind often occupied by poor minority group members.56 Even when fair market value compensation is paid, owners still are not compensated for the loss of the “subjective value” they attach to their property over and above its market valuation.57 Subjective value includes such elements as community ties and business good will that are often lost when victims of eminent domain are forced to move their homes or businesses.
…
This hearing addresses claims that the use of eminent domain for economic development unfairly and disproportionately harms racial and ethnic minorities. These claims draw on the history of urban renewal prior to the 1960s, when many African Americans and others were displaced by publicly funded projects that bulldozed their homes in largely failed attempts to modernize cities. Justice Clarence Thomas’s dissent in Kelo v. City of New London further argued that the use of eminent domain for economic redevelopment would inevitably harm minorities and the poor.

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Redlining: CFPB and DOJ action requires BancorpSouth Bank to pay millions to harmed consumers
By Daniel Dodd-Ramirez and Patrice Alexander Ficklin – JUN 29, 2016

https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/blog/redlining-cfpb-and-doj-action-requires-bancorpsouth-bank-pay-millions-harmed-consumers/

Redlining is a term used for an illegal practice where people living in a certain area or neighborhood are not given the same access to credit as people in other areas or neighborhoods on the basis of race, color, or for some other prohibited reason. Though the practice has been illegal for decades, it still goes on today.  

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ECONOMICS, RACE & GENDER
Soaring rents and plunging home values: How 1930s housing practices eroded black wealth
In neighborhoods that shifted from white to black in the prewar era, housing rental prices soared while home values plunged, according to a new NBER working paper.
by Clark Merrefield | May 9, 2019 

 https://journalistsresource.org/economics/racist-lending-before-redlining/

Banks consider lots of factors when determining if a mortgage applicant is a good credit risk. Race can’t be one of them — but that wasn’t true before the Fair Housing Act became law in 1968.

Redlining as an official government practice began with a now-defunct government-sponsored agency that created residential security maps in the 1930s. The agency filled in red the neighborhoods it determined to be the most risky for home loan prospects. These were usually black neighborhoods. Or, white neighborhoods near black neighborhoods.
 
New insight from a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper suggests that even without federally sanctioned redlining, areas of major U.S. cities that shifted from white to black during the 1930s would have suffered economically. Many black families faced a double whammy of soaring rental prices and plunging home values as they moved from the American South to cities in the North and Midwest.

From 1930 to 1940, rental prices increased 40% in areas that went from white to majority black, relative to areas that stayed white, according to the paper. The authors surmise from historical accounts that white investors purchased rental properties in black neighborhoods and that some white homeowners moved but continued to rent their homes.

“Both considerations underscore the fact that in our setting the owners of rental properties were most likely white,” the authors write.

At the same time, home values fell by more than half in areas that went from white to majority black in cities that were major landing spots for black families during the prewar years, including Chicago, Philadelphia and Detroit — relative to areas that stayed white.
…
A brief history of racist lending practices
After the turn of the 20th century, millions of black families in the U.S. started moving from the South to cities in the North. The first Great Migration happened from 1910 to 1940. One motivator was the glut of decent-paying jobs to build new mass-produced things, like cars.
The federal government officially began sanctioning racist home lending practices in the late 1930s. By 1936 the Home Owners Loan Corporation had drawn up its residential security maps, which outlined neighborhoods the agency determined had risky home loan prospects.
Without access to credit, many black neighborhoods deteriorated.
…
Racial segregation was not a side effect but a feature of federal housing policy around this time. From the 1938 Federal Housing Administration Underwriting Manual:
“Areas surrounding a location are investigated to determine whether incompatible racial and social groups are present, for the purpose of making a prediction regarding the probability of the location being invaded by such groups.”
…
Research methods
The authors used Census tabulations from 1930 and 1940 covering nine major cities and two boroughs in New York City: Baltimore, Boston, Brooklyn and Manhattan, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and St. Louis.

They call Baltimore, Cincinnati and St. Louis “border cities.” These cities are closer to the south and had large black populations by 1930. Boston, Brooklyn and Pittsburgh had fewer migrants during the first Great Migration, so they’re called “low-migration” cities. Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Manhattan and Philadelphia are called “high-migration” cities.
“You can do a real apples-to-apples comparison,” Shertzer says. “You can go look at the same house and it has white occupants [in 1930] and now [in 1940] it has black occupants.”

The authors built a dataset of 591,780 unique home addresses across 100,000 city blocks with an average of 10 to 15 addresses per block. They focused on blocks that changed from 95% white in 1930 to majority black by 1940.

“We are looking at city blocks, one section of one road located in a very specific geographic area,” Shertzer says. “Our control group is a block in that same neighborhood that does not undergo racial transition.”
By 1940, home values in transitioning blocks in high-migration cities were 54% lower than home values on blocks that remained white. Home values increased slightly on transitioning blocks in border cities, but rents on those blocks increased 86% relative to blocks that stayed white, driving the overall rental premium across the cities.

Topline findings
Here’s what the researchers determined by matching housing data from 1930 and 1940:
·         In neighborhoods that shifted from white to majority black, rental prices increased 40%.
·         Across cities, home values in blocks that transitioned to majority black fell on average by 10% compared to blocks that stayed all white.
·         In high-migration cities — Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Manhattan and Philadelphia — home values on transitioning blocks were 54% lower than on blocks that stayed white.
·         Home prices fell most on blocks that were more than 50% black by 1940.
·         In border cities — Baltimore, Cincinnati and St. Louis — rents on transitioning blocks increased 86% compared to blocks that stayed white.
·         Across cities, the capitalization rate — the income a property brings in compared to the property’s market value — was 17% on blocks that turned majority black compared to 11% on white blocks, meaning higher rents in black neighborhoods led to more relative profit for landlords.

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Before Central Park: The Story of Seneca Village
JAN 18, 2018
By The Central Park Conservancy

https://www.centralparknyc.org/articles/seneca-villag

Before Central Park was created, the landscape along what is now the Park’s perimeter from West 82nd to West 89th Street was the site of Seneca Village, a community of predominantly African-Americans, many of whom owned property. By 1855, the village consisted of approximately 225 residents, made up of roughly two-thirds African-Americans, one-third Irish immigrants, and a small number of individuals of German descent. One of few African-American enclaves at the time, Seneca Village allowed residents to live away from the more built-up sections of downtown Manhattan and escape the unhealthy conditions and racial discrimination they faced there.

Nearly 200 years ago, Central Park’s landscape near the West 85th Street entrance was home to Seneca Village, a community of predominately free African-American property owners.

A THRIVING AFRICAN-AMERICAN COMMUNITY
For African-Americans, Seneca Village offered the opportunity to live in an autonomous community far from the densely populated downtown. Despite New York State’s abolition of slavery in 1827, discrimination was still prevalent throughout New York City, and severely limited the lives of African-Americans. Seneca Village’s remote location likely provided a refuge from this climate. It also would have provided an escape from the unhealthy and crowded conditions of the City, and access to more space both inside and outside the home.

Compared to other African-Americans living in New York, residents of Seneca Village seem to have been more stable and prosperous—by 1855, approximately half of them owned their own homes. With property ownership came other rights not commonly held by African-Americans in the City—namely, the right to vote.

THE CREATION OF CENTRAL PARK
During the early 1850s, the City began planning for a large municipal park to counter unhealthful urban conditions and provide space for recreation. In 1853, the New York State Legislature enacted a law that set aside 775 acres of land in Manhattan—from 59th to 106th Streets, between Fifth and Eighth Avenues—to create the country’s first major landscaped public park.

The City acquired the land through eminent domain, the law that allows the government to take private land for public use with compensation paid to the landowner. This was a common practice in the 19th century, and had been used to build Manhattan’s grid of streets decades earlier. There were roughly 1,600 inhabitants displaced throughout the area. Although landowners were compensated, many argued that their land was undervalued. Ultimately, all residents had to leave by the end of 1857.