A 1926 property record for the subdivision of Mock Crest, a North Portland neighborhood, excludes various racial and ethnic groups. The document is signed by John B. Yeon, a timber magnate and developer for whom Northwest Yeon Avenue is named, and his wife, Elizabeth Mock Yeon, whose family owned much of the land.

Janet Guss Darwich was flipping through a stack of closing documents to buy her Raleigh Hills home, initialing here and signing there, when a paragraph stopped her cold.

Among the covenants, conditions and restrictions listed in the deed for the house, one line read in part, "No person of any race other than those of the Caucasian white race shall own any part of said property or use or occupy the same as residents."

"I was sick," Guss Darwich recalled two years later. "I was ready to cancel the whole transaction."

Racial covenants like the one on Guss Darwich's home have been legally unenforceable for decades, but they still exist in property records. Some are even more explicit, listing -- sometimes in offensive or antiquated terms -- races or ethnic groups excluded from the neighborhood. And removing racial covenants is a difficult and expensive process, so most remain as a reminder of how segregation shaped modern-day Portland.

Historians working with the city and Portland State University are trying to document and map those racial restrictions. They're asking homeowners to submit examples of such language from their own deeds, including at two events this week.

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A line from the deed to Janet Guss Darwich's home in Raleigh Hills that excludes any non-white residents or homeowners. (Courtesy of Janet Guss Darwich)

"They're evidence," said Greta Smith, a historian with the Portland history nonprofit Vanport Mosaic. "They're evidence of systematic exclusion that didn't just happen in a single point and time, but which reverberates in the present in terms of who's been able to accumulate wealth through property ownership."

Race-restrictive covenants appeared in deeds for homes built during the first half of the 20th century, a time when the real-estate and mortgage industries systematically denied home loans in predominantly African American neighborhoods and refused to sell homes to African American or other non-white buyers in predominantly white neighborhoods.

The racial covenants remained commonplace in title documents in Portland and elsewhere until the U.S. Supreme Court ruled they were unenforceable in 1948. Congress outlawed such restrictions outright with the Fair Housing Act of 1968.

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A map of racial covenants in Portland, compiled from deeds collected from homeowners and independent research.

But the restrictions written during that time remain in property records to this day, and they can be shocking to homebuyers who aren't already aware of them.

Burdean Bartlem, a real-estate transaction coordinator who handled Guss Darwich's home purchase, said she usually asks title companies to include a disclaimer noting that racial restrictions that appear in transaction documents are unenforceable.

"Most people don't like it, but they understand that it's a period in our history that we're not particularly proud of, but there's nothing that you can do about the antiquated wording," Bartlem said. "We indicate to them right away that this isn't something that's legally enforceable."

The restrictions are also difficult to remove. The covenants often were applied to entire neighborhoods when they were first developed, and removing such a covenant requires contacting everyone whose home includes the same covenant.

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A 1944 deed for a home in unincorporated Washington County excludes various racial and ethnic groups. (Courtesy of Greta Smith)

An Oregon law that took effect earlier this year streamlines the process for removing discriminatory restrictions. The homeowner still has to file for a court judgement and contact all other interested parties -- other owners to whom the covenants apply -- via certified mail of the effort.

But Smith said it's important to preserve the historical record, too.

"A lot of people call and ask, 'How can I get this removed?'" she said. "I don't think people are generally thinking, let's scrub this from this historical record. But if we're not careful, that's what could happen."

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A 1913 deed for a home in the Laurelhurst neighborhood in Portland bars Chinese, Japanese and African American buyers or renters. (Courtesy of Greta Smith)

To contribute

Portland State University students will be available as part of the Vanport Mosaic Festival to guide homeowners in examining their deeds with racial covenants, and digitizing those that have them

Sunday: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Interstate Firehouse Cultural Center, 5340 N. Interstate Ave., Portland

Monday: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Portland Expo Center, 2060 N. Marine Drive, Portland

Scanned or photographed deeds can also be emailed to pdxhst@pdx.edu.

To view your deed

Homeowners who don't have easy access to their deed can look up their property by name at their county assessor's office. In Multnomah County, many deeds are digitized and can be printed to 25 cents a page; older deeds can be scanned and emailed upon request for $3.75.

-- Elliot Njus

enjus@oregonian.com

503-294-5034

@enjus

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