This week the FBI released to the pub­lic near­ly 400 pages of doc­u­ments asso­ci­at­ed with the bureau’s 1970s inves­ti­ga­tion of racial dis­crim­i­na­tion in the Trump family’s real estate com­pa­ny, Trump Man­age­ment, Incor­po­rat­ed. Don­ald Trump was at the time the pres­i­dent of the com­pa­ny, while his father Fred Trump was chairman.

The man alleged that Fred Trump told him to “get rid” of the black residents in the complex by offering to pay their $500 down payment for cheap housing elsewhere.

While relat­ed doc­u­ments had already been obtained and report­ed on by the Wash­ing­ton Post and oth­er out­lets via the Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act, this new release is sig­nif­i­cant because it pro­vides the pub­lic imme­di­ate access to mate­r­i­al from the inves­ti­ga­tion. The doc­u­ments offer an unmedi­at­ed view into Trump’s long record of racism, a per­son­al his­to­ry that sheds light on a water­shed moment in civ­il rights history.

The fed­er­al law­suit brought against Don­ald Trump and his father Fred Trump start­ed the same way as so many oth­er civ­il rights cas­es: with a test. In 1972, the Urban League decid­ed to ​“test” the com­pa­nies’ hous­ing poli­cies by send­ing both white and black vol­un­teers seek­ing apart­ments. In case after case, they allege, black appli­cants were told there were no vacan­cies while white appli­cants were shown an apart­ment and giv­en an appli­ca­tion. Hous­ing activists became so con­vinced of their case against Trump Man­age­ment, Inc., that they alert­ed the Depart­ment of Jus­tice (DOJ). The DOJ charged Trump and his com­pa­ny in vio­la­tion of the 1968 Fair Hous­ing Act — which for­bade dis­crim­i­na­tion in hous­ing on the basis of race — in Octo­ber 1973.

The DOJ’s inves­ti­ga­tion into Trump would not have been pos­si­ble with­out pres­sure from a pow­er­ful grass­roots fair hous­ing move­ment, which relent­less­ly advo­cat­ed for inte­gra­tion, expand­ed tenant’s rights, and an end to exclu­sion­ary and exploita­tive prac­tices like redlin­ing, which barred com­mu­ni­ties of col­or from access to mort­gage loans, and block­bust­ing, in which real estate agents would con­vince white home­own­ers in racial­ly tran­si­tion­ing neigh­bor­hoods to sell their homes at low prices, and then re-sell them at inflat­ed prices to black homebuyers.

When Mar­tin Luther King arrived on the West side of Chica­go in 1965, intend­ing to make fair hous­ing a focal point in the North­ern civ­il rights move­ment, he part­nered with a grass­roots open hous­ing move­ment already in full swing. By that year, the Nation­al Com­mit­tee Against Dis­crim­i­na­tion (NCDH), a leg­isla­tive-lob­by­ing orga­ni­za­tion devot­ed to com­bat­ing hous­ing dis­crim­i­na­tion, count­ed 1,000 fair hous­ing groups in the U.S., many of which were con­cen­trat­ed in the urban North. The strength of fair hous­ing activism can be seen in the leg­isla­tive suc­cess of fair hous­ing laws. NCDH sup­port­ers and state and local hous­ing groups suc­cess­ful­ly pres­sured ​“state after state and city after city to pass fair hous­ing laws,” writes his­to­ri­an Thomas Sug­rue in Sweet Land of Lib­er­ty: The For­got­ten Strug­gle for Civ­il Rights in the North. By 1967, 24 states had passed laws against hous­ing discrimination.

In New York City the fair hous­ing move­ment was par­tic­u­lar­ly strong. In 1958, a whole decade before the pas­sage of nation­al leg­is­la­tion, the city enact­ed its Fair Hous­ing Act, which banned dis­crim­i­na­tion in res­i­den­tial hous­ing. Along with the New York Urban League, in 1964 NCDH used fed­er­al fund­ing from the War on Pover­ty to pilot a new pro­gram, Oper­a­tion Open City. A 1967 Open City report stat­ed that the project’s objec­tives were to com­bat ​“the hous­ing dis­crim­i­na­tion which keeps non-white New York­ers in racial ghet­tos.” Along with pro­mot­ing inte­gra­tion through edu­ca­tion pro­grams, Open City pro­vid­ed assis­tance to minor­i­ty fam­i­lies mov­ing into major­i­ty white neigh­bor­hoods. In so doing, how­ev­er, the Urban League uncov­ered wide­spread dis­crim­i­na­tion from land­lords across the city. In 1967, the Orga­ni­za­tion began rou­tine­ly send­ing ​“check­ers” to apart­ments in major­i­ty white neigh­bor­hoods — includ­ing Trump’s properties.

The FBI’s Probe

The Trump files are illu­mi­nat­ing in their abil­i­ty to reveal what Sug­rue describes as the ​“furtive tac­tics” real estate agents used after the Fair Hous­ing Act to main­tain seg­re­ga­tion. The FBI doc­u­ments reveal sys­temic dis­crim­i­na­tion against poten­tial black renters — includ­ing alle­ga­tions of fab­ri­cat­ing rental leas­es, lying about the cost of rent and reject­ing finan­cial­ly qual­i­fied black applicants.

Trump employ­ees, accord­ing to the files, were instruct­ed to write codes, includ­ing the let­ter ​“C” for ​“col­ored,” on the rental appli­ca­tions of blacks and Puer­to Ricans. Trump’s cod­ing sys­tem recalls the real estate codes used by the fed­er­al government’s Home Own­ers Loan Cor­po­ra­tion dur­ing the New Deal. In ​“res­i­den­tial secu­ri­ty maps” based on com­mon prac­tices in state and local ordi­nances as well as the real estate indus­try, the gov­ern­ment col­or-cod­ed areas with high pop­u­la­tions of peo­ple of col­or as ​“red” — high-risk. This prac­tice, known as redlin­ing, denied mort­gage cap­i­tal to neigh­bor­hoods with high pop­u­la­tions of non-whites — shut­ting out African Amer­i­cans from home­own­er­ship and the accom­pa­ny­ing wealth creation.

Many of the FBI doc­u­ments ref­er­ence ​“pho­ny leas­es” that Trump employ­ees alleged­ly showed to black appli­cants to con­vince them that an apart­ment had already been rent­ed. In an inter­view with fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tors, one employ­ee stat­ed that he believed pho­ny leas­es were a ​“com­mon prac­tice” at the com­pa­ny and had heard about their use from at least two build­ing super­in­ten­dents. Anoth­er employ­ee detailed how he was instruct­ed by man­age­ment to lie about the cost of rent to deter black appli­cants. A door­man who had worked at 2650 Ocean Park­way in Brook­lyn sub­mit­ted a hand­writ­ten state­ment alleg­ing that his super­vi­sor instruct­ed him to tell African Amer­i­cans ​“the rent was twice as much as it real­ly was.”

Sub­tler forms of dis­crim­i­na­tion men­tioned in the files includ­ed requir­ing that appli­cants’ income be more than four times the month­ly rent, which made even cheap apart­ments out of reach for many low-income black renters.

Even if black appli­cants could afford the rent, they were rou­tine­ly turned away. A for­mer rental super­vi­sor at Tysens Park apart­ments in Stat­en Island — a com­plex that was over­whelm­ing­ly white — told the FBI that he had been instruct­ed by a supe­ri­or not to rent to African Amer­i­cans or peo­ple on wel­fare. After a finan­cial­ly qual­i­fied black cou­ple sub­mit­ted an appli­ca­tion, the super­vi­sor recount­ed that he was told, ​“they’re black and that’s that.” More­over, the man alleged that Fred Trump told him to ​“get rid” of the black res­i­dents in the com­plex by offer­ing to pay their $500 down pay­ment for cheap hous­ing elsewhere.

Sim­i­lar­ly, a for­mer build­ing super­in­ten­dent at Lawrence Tow­ers Apart­ments in Brook­lyn says he ​“received instruc­tions from the Trump Man­age­ment Office con­cern­ing spe­cial han­dling of appli­ca­tions from Black fam­i­lies.” This two-track sys­tem meant that finan­cial­ly qual­i­fied white appli­cants were auto­mat­i­cal­ly approved, while black appli­cants were sent direct­ly to the Trump office.

While the files do not clar­i­fy what hap­pened to black appli­cants once they arrived at the Trump office, evi­dence sug­gests they were direct­ed to apart­ment com­plex­es with major­i­ty non­white res­i­dents. This prac­tice, known as steer­ing, involves direct­ing white renters and buy­ers to major­i­ty-white neigh­bor­hoods, and black buy­ers and renters to major­i­ty-black neigh­bor­hoods. It was com­mon with­in the real estate indus­try after the pas­sage of the Fair Hous­ing Act in 1968. The Wash­ing­ton Post reports alle­ga­tions that Trump and his asso­ciates fre­quent­ly steered minori­ties to one Brook­lyn com­plex, Patio Gar­dens, that was 40 per­cent black. Oth­er Trump-owned loca­tions, includ­ing Ocean Ter­race and Lin­coln Shore apart­ments, had almost no black residents.

The Fair Hous­ing Legacy

Ulti­mate­ly, the DOJ suit result­ed in a fed­er­al court order — called a ​“con­sent decree” — in which the Trumps and gov­ern­ment offi­cials came to an agree­ment on a pro­posed rem­e­dy. The Trumps were ordered to ​“thor­ough­ly acquaint them­selves” with the Fair Hous­ing Act and place ads inform­ing peo­ple of col­or that their prop­er­ties were open for all.

Don­ald Trump, for his part, con­tin­ues to deny any wrong­do­ing, con­sis­tent with his posi­tion at the time. He filed a $100 mil­lion coun­ter­suit for defama­tion against the gov­ern­ment in 1973 (the coun­ter­suit was dis­missed). The lan­guage of the con­sent decree itself states that the set­tle­ment was ​“in no way an admis­sion” of guilt.

The Jus­tice Depart­ment felt dif­fer­ent­ly. As the Wash­ing­ton Post has report­ed, DOJ lawyers regard­ed the set­tle­ment as a vic­to­ry for the enforce­ment of the Fair Hous­ing Act, ​“one of the most far reach­ing [set­tle­ments] ever negotiated.”

The lega­cy of the Fair Hous­ing Act and the open hous­ing move­ment is itself mixed. While some view pas­sage of the 1968 law as a vic­to­ry against hous­ing dis­crim­i­na­tion, which had been exclud­ed from pre­vi­ous civ­il rights bills, oth­ers see the law as most­ly sym­bol­ic. Accord­ing to soci­ol­o­gists Dou­glas Massey and Nan­cy Den­ton, the act was ​“inten­tion­al­ly designed so that it could not work.” They argue that the bill was stripped of all enforce­ment mea­sures as a way to ensure Repub­li­can votes. Indeed, the leg­is­la­tion does not per­mit the Depart­ment of Hous­ing and Urban Devel­op­ment to bring law­suits. Instead, the DOJ retains full pow­er of enforce­ment, with mixed results. Sug­rue argues that the tooth­less­ness of the law puts most of the onus of enforce­ment on ​“pri­vate indi­vid­u­als” and ​“under­fund­ed open hous­ing groups.” Even when DOJ suits were won, dam­ages were usu­al­ly low. Set­tle­ments like the one in the Trumps’ case were most common.

And even with full enforce­ment of the hous­ing law, it is not clear that the prob­lem of res­i­den­tial seg­re­ga­tion would be solved. Seg­re­ga­tion per­sists today, and it is not only a result of income dis­par­i­ties. Massey and Den­ton have found that mid­dle- and upper-class blacks are not more like­ly to live near whites than low­er- and work­ing-class blacks. Entrenched seg­re­ga­tion con­tin­ues to dev­as­tate black com­mu­ni­ties, pro­pelled and exac­er­bat­ed by job loss due to the sub­ur­ban flight of busi­ness­es away from cities, mas­sive dis­in­vest­ment in urban low-income com­mu­ni­ties and preda­to­ry bank­ing prac­tices like the ones that fueled the Great Recession.

Don­ald Trump today bills him­self as an ally of black Amer­i­cans, con­jur­ing up dystopi­an images of the dilap­i­dat­ed inner city and threat­en­ing to call in fed­er­al troops to address the ​“car­nage” of vio­lent crime in Chica­go. In light of such bom­bast, it is worth tak­ing a first-hand look at the case that put him in the news four decades ago. It will tell you all you need to know.