Government at all levels embraced racial covenants that forbade even well-to-do African-Americans from purchasing homes outside of black communities. Cut off from homeownership — the principal avenue of wealth creation — African-Americans lost the opportunity to build the intergenerational wealth that white suburban families took for granted. The vast wealth gap that exists today between whites and African-Americans has its roots in this era.

The argument for what became the Fair Housing Act emerged forcefully in the 1968 Kerner Commission report, which blamed segregation in large measure for the riots that ravaged the country in the 60s and called for national fair housing legislation. The housing law might well have died in committee had the country not erupted in fresh violence after the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1968. It was signed into law a week later.

The housing act put the federal government on record as supporting open housing and prohibiting the pervasive discrimination that had locked most African-Americans out of decent accommodations and homeownership. But the version that passed in 1968 had been declawed — stripped of enforcement provisions that would have given HUD strong authority to root out discrimination. Nearly a quarter-century would pass before Congress strengthened the law. So during that time, African-Americans were left subject to the harsh discrimination the original act was supposed to preclude.

This progressive sounding law — which requires entities that receive federal money to “affirmatively further” fair housing goals — was consistently undermined by officials of both parties who had little appetite for confronting entrenched segregation.

That realization came home with particular force to George Romney, Richard Nixon’s HUD secretary, who initially took the law at its word and tried to enforce it by turning down grant applications from communities that continued to segregate themselves racially.

When white communities complained directly to the Oval Office, Nixon shut down Romney’s effort and eventually forced him out of government. Subsequent administrations shied away from enforcing the law in ways great and small — but the Reagan administration sold it out in an egregious fashion that angered even Republicans in Congress. The administration conspired with the real estate industry to undermine HUD’s already limited powers, brought cases that attacked integration programs and showed scant vigor in enforcing civil rights laws.

THE NEXT FAIR HOUSING FIGHT

The Fair Housing Act received new life three years ago when the Supreme Court endorsed the doctrine known as disparate impact, ruling that housing discrimination did not have to be intentional to be illegal. The court reminded the country that the statute does indeed bar governments from spending federal money in a way that perpetuates segregation.