Shelley Family

In the 1940s, J.D. Shelley and his family sought a home in St. Louis, Missouri, in hopes of securing better opportunities and stability. Like many Black families at the time, they faced numerous obstacles due to widespread racial covenants, legal agreements embedded in property deeds that prohibited homeowners from selling to nonwhite buyers. The Shelleys eventually purchased a home at 4600 Labadie Avenue, unaware that it was restricted by such a covenant.

Shortly after the purchase, a white neighbor, Louis Kraemer, sued the Shelleys to enforce the covenant, arguing that their presence violated the agreement meant to keep the neighborhood exclusively white. Lower courts initially ruled against the Shelleys, upholding the covenant and ordering them to vacate the home. With support from the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, the family appealed the case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In 1948, the Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling in Shelley v. Kraemer, declaring that while racial covenants themselves were legal, they could not be enforced by the government. This decision struck a blow against legally sanctioned housing segregation, setting an important precedent for future civil rights cases. However, despite this legal victory, de facto segregation remained deeply entrenched.

Redlining, discriminatory lending practices, and white flight continued to deny Black families access to homeownership and generational wealth. The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and banks still refused to insure mortgages for Black buyers, pushing them into predatory lending agreements or forcing them into segregated areas with fewer resources and lower property values. The effects of this exclusion are still visible today, with St. Louis remaining one of the most segregated cities in America.

The Shelley house still stands today as a National Historic Landmark, symbolizing the long struggle against racial housing discrimination. Though the Supreme Court’s ruling in Shelley v. Kraemer was a pivotal step, it took decades of activism and the passage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968 to formally outlaw race-based housing discrimination nationwide. Even then, disparities in homeownership, wealth, and neighborhood investment remain stark reminders of America’s history of exclusion.