THE COMBATIVE TACTICS OF THE NAACP AGAINST UNFAIR HOUSING LAWS AND PRACTICES: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE DYNAMIC CHANGES IN URBAN AND RURAL LANDSCAPES 1920-1960

Abstract

By utilizing the records of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and numerous state and local repositories, this dissertation argues that the NAACP continuously attempted to methodically confront the Federal Housing Administration’s (FHA) incessant exclusion of prospective African American homebuyers. This research highlights the evolution of NAACP’s strategies to challenge the FHA’s discriminatory practices. Furthermore, this scholarship chronicles the NAACP’s organizational history by centering the activism of prominent and lesser-known leaders by showcasing the fair housing ideologies they constructed. This dissertation also explores the significance of the NAACP’s housing campaign to the contemporary material culture of African Americans and the physical landscape they inhabit. Ultimately, this research provides an innovative intervention within the historiography by demonstrating the intended roles public historians and historic preservationists must play in maintaining the historical integrity of many of African American communities and landscapes to ensure their preservation. Historically, the deterioration of African American communities resulted, in part, from inequitable FHA underwriting procedures. When attempting to preserve historic African American communities, historic preservationists and public historians must consider the divestment of these historically marginalized neighborhoods to ensure these spaces are not eradicated from both the landscape and the historical record. By binding preservation with the history of systemic lending bias ensures that African American communities do not ultimately suffer perpetual marginalization.