Analysis: Shelley v. Kraemer (1948)
**Overview of Shelley v. Kraemer (1948)**
Shelley v. Kraemer was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case that addressed the legality of racially restrictive covenants, which were agreements among property owners to exclude certain racial groups from buying or renting homes in specific neighborhoods. The case originated in St. Louis, Missouri, where an African American family, the Shelleys, purchased a home despite a covenant prohibiting sales to nonwhite buyers. When white neighbors, the Kraemers, attempted to enforce the covenant through legal action, the case escalated to the state and eventually the Supreme Court.
In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court held that while private racially restrictive covenants could exist, their enforcement by state courts constituted a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause. This ruling underscored the constitutional principle that government involvement in enforcing discriminatory practices was unconstitutional, marking a significant step toward racial equality in housing. The decision not only impacted the Shelleys' ability to remain in their home but also set a precedent that challenged systemic racism in property laws, highlighting the ongoing struggle for civil rights in the United States.
Analysis: Shelley v. Kraemer (1948)
Date: May 3, 1948
Author: US Supreme Court, Fred M. Vinson
Genre: court case
Summary Overview
During the era of segregation, neighborhoods across the United States—including in many states outside of areas traditionally associated with “Jim Crow” laws—established rules barring property owners from selling or renting their homes to members of certain racial or ethnic groups. In 1945, an African American family in St. Louis, Missouri, purchased a house located in a subdivision with a racially restrictive covenant of this type from an owner who chose not to enforce it. After the purchase, a resident of the subdivision sued to stop the African American family from moving into their home due to the covenant. After Missouri state courts upheld the limitation, the case went to the US Supreme Court. The Supreme Court's 1948 opinion overturned the Missouri court's support for restrictive covenants on the grounds that legal enforcement of the measure by the state violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, thereby signaling increased legal support for racial equality and African American civil rights.
Defining Moment
During the late 1800s and early 1900s, US society remained largely segregated in practice, even in places where racial divisions were not enforced by law. As the nation's African American populace began to spread from the Deep South to other regions seeking economic, social, and political opportunities, white society developed new ways to keep the races separate. Like other industrial cities of the Northeast and Midwest, St. Louis saw its African American population rise significantly as a result of the ongoing Great Migration of the early to mid-1900s; the city's black population more than doubled between 1910 and 1930 alone. At the same time, overall urban growth led to the construction of new large housing divisions. Property development companies sought to make their housing divisions more desirable to potential white buyers by shutting out black purchasers, as discriminatory attitudes held that nonwhite residents created an undesirable situation and lowered property values.
St. Louis briefly used race-based zoning laws to enforce this segregationist practice, but such municipally-mandated racial zoning was found to be unconstitutional by the 1917 Supreme Court ruling Buchanan v. Warley. Instead, neighborhood developers created private racially restrictive covenants that became part of the contract signed by property buyers; this practice came into use throughout much of the country. The Marcus Avenue Improvement Association of St. Louis had a typical restrictive covenant, which barred property owners from selling their homes to nonwhite—specifically African American or Asian—buyers for a period of fifty years beginning in 1911. As the African American population of St. Louis grew, white-restricted housing divisions came to border on predominantly African American neighborhoods.
J. D. and Ethel Shelley were African Americans from Mississippi who moved with their children to St. Louis in the 1930s. In 1945, they purchased a house in the Marcus Avenue neighborhood using an African American real estate agent. This agent, in turn, set up the real estate transaction using a white straw buyer, ostensibly to obtain better mortgage terms. Completing the sale in this way also allowed the Shelley family to avoid the restrictive covenant attached to the property deed, as the property owner believed he was selling the house to a white buyer. The Shelleys were apparently unaware of the racial restriction, and other houses on the block fell outside of the agreement and were already occupied by African American families. In October 1945, the family moved into their new home; within a short time, fellow Marcus Avenue district property owners Louis and Fern Kraemer sued to have them removed from the house on the grounds that their habitation there violated the neighborhood covenant. A trial court found for the Shelleys, stating that the original covenant was poorly designed and, therefore, unenforceable, but the Missouri Supreme Court overturned that ruling. In 1948, the US Supreme Court heard the Shelleys' case.
Author Biography
The unanimous decision in Shelley v. Kraemer was authored by Chief Justice of the United States Fred M. Vinson. A native of Kentucky, Vinson served as a member of Congress for nearly fifteen years as a US representative before becoming a judge of the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit in 1938. He was later tapped by President Harry S. Truman to act as secretary of the Treasury in 1945. Truman again selected Vinson for high office when he nominated him to the US Supreme Court. Vinson became chief justice in June 1946, remaining in that office until his death in 1953. During his tenure, Vinson tended to support the authority of the federal government over that of the states or individuals. Landmark decisions of the Vinson court barred segregation in higher education as well as in the enforcement of residential restrictive covenants.
Document Analysis
Vinson's conclusion was a clear victory for the Shelley family, but a more mixed success for African Americans seeking civil rights at large. According to Vinson's opinion, the Court's considering of Shelley v. Kraemer focused on a few key legal questions. First, the plaintiffs argued that the Missouri Supreme Court's enforcement of the racially restrictive covenants against the Shelleys had violated the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause, which guarantees that all citizens, regardless of race, enjoy the same treatment under the law. The US Supreme Court, therefore, had to decide whether the act of establishing restrictive covenants in and of itself was unconstitutional. In weighing this matter, the Court also asserted that the issue of whether Missouri's actions should be considered within the context of the Fourteenth Amendment was well established under Court precedent. Thus, the remaining key issue was whether the state's enforcement of the private restrictive covenant violated the Shelleys' constitutional rights.
The Court's consideration of the legality of restrictive covenants found them to be permissible. Based on existing precedent, the Court agreed that the covenants could exist because they were “simply agreements between private property owners” to abide by certain guidelines. Although the covenants were unquestionably based on an unequal treatment of individuals based on their race, they were entered into freely by individuals and lacked the binding force of public law.
However, when local or state governments stepped in to enforce those guidelines—in this case, by attempting to evict the Shelleys from their St. Louis property—the action of government crossed over into unconstitutionality by giving the private guidelines the authority of the state in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. As Vinson noted, “but for the active intervention of the state courts, supported by the full panoply of state power, petitioners would have been free to occupy the properties in question without restraint.” Pursuing such legal action violated the personal property rights guaranteed under the US Constitution and federal laws such as the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and was the basis for the rejection of racially-based zoning laws by the Court in Buchanan v. Warley. Vinson also points to the historical context of the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment and related statutes to inform the decision, noting that the intention of lawmakers was obviously to secure just these kinds of legal rights for African Americans. It was thus the enforcement of the restrictive covenants, rather than the mere existence of the covenants alone, that served to deny affected individuals their constitutionally-guaranteed rights.
Glossary
adjudication: the act of a court in making an order, judgment, or decree
appellants: a person who appeals; a party that appeals to a higher tribunal
certiorari: a writ issuing from a superior court calling up the record of a proceeding in an inferior court for review
panoply: a wide-ranging and impressive array or display; full ceremonial attire or paraphernalia
Bibliography and Additional Reading
Gordon, Colin. Mapping Decline: St. Louis and the Fate of the American City. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 2008. Print.
Klarman, Michael L. From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality. New York: Oxford UP, 2004. Print.
Vose, Clement E. Caucasians Only: The Supreme Court, the NAACP, and Restrictive Covenant Cases. Berkeley: U of California P, 1959. Print.
Ware, Leland B. “Invisible Walls: An Examination of the Legal Strategy of the Restrictive Covenant Cases.” Washington University Law Review 67.3 (1989): 737–72. Print.