Racial Covenants

This data layer shows racial covenants in multiple Minnesota counties that have been mapped so far. This dataset is a work in progress and is being developed by the Mapping Prejudice Project at the University of Minnesota. Please note that there are differences in record practices between counties. Racial covenants were legal clauses placed in property records that restricted ownership and occupancy of land parcels based on race. In 1948, the United States Supreme Court ruled racial covenants to be legally unenforceable, and the Minnesota state legislature outlawed new racial covenants in 1953 and made racial covenants illegal in 1962.