A ‘Forgotten History’ Of How The U.S. Government Segregated America
“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.”