Court Nullifies Racial Covenants

Court Nullifies Racial Covenants. Worthy Ambition. , In the 1940s, homeowners in the 100 block of Bryant Street breached a contract when they sold their houses to African Americans. Covenants, or agreements, in their real estate deeds prohibited "the sale of the house to anyone of the Negro race" or other specific groups. Although Washingtonians selling houses ignored these covenants when it suited them, a group of white homeowners at this end of the block didn't want African Americans moving in. Led by Frederic and Lena Hodge of 136 Bryant Street, they filed a lawsuit to reverse the sale of 116 Bryant to James and Mary Hurd, an African American couple., The District Court sided with Hodge and his neighbors. But Howard University Law School Professor Charles Hamilton Houston appealed -- all the way to the Supreme Court. In 1948 Hurd v. Hodge was among a group of cases that outlawed the enforcement of racial covenants everywhere. The Hurds remained on Bryant Street., McMillan Reservoir is just up the hill along First Street. Alberta Addison, who grew up at 225 V Street in the 1910s and 20s, remembers strolling beside its waters and rolling Easter eggs in its park. Neighbors would picnic and listen to band concerts there, treating its Olmstead-designed landscape as an extension of Howard's peaceful, green campus. During World War II, the reservoir was fenced off as a security measure., In 1987 the DC government purchased the sand filtration plant and parkland east of First Street from the federal government and planned to have it developed. In 2013 the reservoir and filtration site were listed in the National Register of Historic Places.