ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) - Behind the well-manicured facades of many Albuquerque tree-lined neighborhoods lurks a dirty little secret.
The evidence is stashed away in a nondescript government warehouse in southeast Albuquerque. Inside the secure facility, a cache of dusty documents hidden away for decades shatters the perception of Albuquerque as a racially tolerant community. Television station KRQE reports that the documents show bigotry and prejudice was an accepted practice in the city some 70 years ago.
New Mexico State Historian Rob Martinez calls the documents “very disturbing.”
“This is distasteful. It’s offensive, it’s inflammatory, and it’s racist,” says NAACP Albuquerque Chapter President Harold Bailey.
As an example, there’s nothing unusual about a nondescript home on Tyler Road. But when you dig up real estate papers filed 74 years ago, you’ll find a provision in the property’s restrictive covenant that does not allow the premises to “… be sold, leased or occupied by any person of Oriental or African descent.”
Real estate documents filed in 1945 for a home on Cypress Drive prohibits the sale, rental or occupancy by anyone “… not of the white or Caucasian race.”
In northeast Albuquerque’s McDuffie Place neighborhood, 1946 property restrictions dictate “…no person of any race other than the Caucasian race shall own, use or occupy any building … of this subdivision.” The restrictive covenant provided an exception for “domestic servants.”
It’s a historical chapter you won’t find in the history books.
“To be honest with you, I was shocked. The city was essentially racially restricted in virtually the entire city,” says academic researcher Stephon Scott, who focused on the subject for his master’s thesis.
“Based on the research … about 85% of the city was racially restricted. It was to the benefit of whites only, every single part of the city. Northeast, northwest, southeast, southwest,” Scott said.
Beginning in the 1920s and continuing for another 30 years, scores of newly developed neighborhoods, from the West Mesa to the Sandia foothills, were designated “whites only.” Some of the city’s most fashionable addresses specifically excluded minority ownership and included homes in Nob Hill, the area around the University of New Mexico, the Albuquerque Country Club neighborhood and Ridgecrest.
And it wasn’t just Albuquerque. Flagrant racial segregation surged nationwide after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1926 that the use of racially restrictive real estate contracts were lawful. So, when a home on Smith Avenue in southeast Albuquerque was sold in 1926, the deed listed just one restriction: No ownership by “…any person of oriental or African descent.”
“Racial Covenants were designed to maintain the homogeneity of neighborhoods … to exclude people who were deemed undesirable,” says University of Pennsylvania Professor Michael Jones-Correa, who teaches racial and ethnic politics and is director of the Center for the Study of Ethnicity, Race and Immigration.
“At that time period, buyers and sellers were being encouraged by their real estate agents only to sell to people of the same race,” Jones-Correa says. “The realtors are kind of the villain of this whole thing. They play a role at every step of the way in enforcing (and) policing these neighborhood boundaries.”
Scott, in his thesis, wrote that national and local real estate boards, along with neighborhood and homeowner’s associations, played a role in creating racially restrictive covenants.
In the late 1920’s, Albuquerque real estate developer William Leverette peddled homesites in the Monte Vista Addition east of the university. According to covenants drafted by Leverette’s company, none of the homes in the neighborhood could be occupied, leased or sold to “…any person of Oriental or African descent.” Monte Vista property deeds routinely excluded minority ownership up until 1947.
When homesites in southeast Albuquerque’s Skyline Heights neighborhood were sold by Berger and Briggs in the 1940s, the real estate contracts specifically excluded ownership by any person who was 1/8 or more Black or Asian.
The research found that developers, bankers, lenders, lawyers and community leaders all actively participated in blatant discrimination by allowing homeowners to do practically anything with their property, except sell to minorities.
Even cemeteries were segregated. According to records filed with the Bernalillo County Clerk, in the 1930’s and 1940’s, Sunset Memorial Park sold cemetery plots only for “…the burial of the human dead of the white race.”
Blacks and Asians were not the only targets. In 1932, property deed covenants in northwest Albuquerque’s Navajo Addition excluded Mexicans and those of Spanish decent.
In 1948, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled racial restrictions in housing were unconstitutional. However, the television station’s investigation found the practice continued in Albuquerque and Santa Fe for another decade.
With the passage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968, neighborhood racially restrictive covenants were deemed illegal.
Martinez said he was shocked to find out it happened in his hometown. “It was discrimination. It was racism, blatant laid down in documents that people were typing,” he said.
“Anyone who would read that should feel offended,” says Bailey of the NAACP. “You have to just wonder what were they thinking? What was in their hearts and what was in their minds to just go along with something like that.”
Today, thousands of Albuquerque residents live in homes that once excluded minorities. In fact, Mayor Tim Keller says he was appalled to learn a 1928 deed to his own residence contains a racial restriction.
“I think it’s really a reflection of how explicitly racist everything was,” he said.
Bernalillo County Clerk Linda Stover says she was shocked to find it was common practice to restrict home ownership to “whites only.”
Even though racial covenants are today illegal, county clerks cannot remove offensive language from legally binding documents that have been recorded.
“The facts are unavoidable. It really is a history in which rampant, blatant discrimination was practiced,” says state Sen. Jerry Ortiz y Pino, a Democrat from Albuquerque. “When you read those covenants, they are clearly part of Albuquerque’s history. This was part of the way we thought about things in the 30s and 40s. And it’s a complete scandal, an embarrassment.”
Ortiz y Pino plans to address the issue when the Legislature convenes in January.
Sen. Daniel Ivey-Soto of Albuquerque has prepared an affidavit that any homeowners can sign and file with the county clerk renouncing racially offensive wording in real estate documents. A copy of the affidavit will be available at the Bernalillo County Clerk’s office.
The last racial covenant in Albuquerque was written 62 years ago.
“It’s important for us to remember how we got to this place so that we never, ever find a way to go back,” Ivey-Soto said.
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