I’ve posted before on this: a large number of home owner’s associations in my area here had anti-Jewish covenants in their bylaws. There have been a couple of reports in the local media about how these hateful things are still attached to the homes of all these happy, shiny WASP Americans and the HOAs are in no hurry whatsoever to repeal or remove the covenants. An interview with HOA officers in one division on TV, with the faces blacked out, had them saying on camera that they didn’t want to bring the issue to a vote, because they were afraid too many anti-Semites would vote to keep the (unenforceable) restrictions in place!
I forget if this happened in the 1930s or 40s, but apparently the factory my Grandmom worked at was laying people off. The owner asked my Grandmom if she’d been to the local synagogue, if she knew the rabbi & various Jewish families. Grandmom had & told him so. So the boss goes off & later on annonced the layoffs.
My Grandmom kept her job.
When she thought about it, she realized it could have been because the owner was philo-Semitic & thought she was Jewish.
The bunch of us are 1850s-immigrant Germans. L
It’s a touchy subject all around.
Since I am the go-to guy for neighborhood matters, people sometimes call me about this; prospective homeowners are sometimes to learn what will be on their deed, and liberal types that are ashamed to find what is already on there.
One person wanted to take the whole matter to the courts and get all the covenants removed just on principle. IANAL, but I imagine that could be done, at considerable expense (and who would pay for that?), but this would not be without repercussions. It’s like airing your worst dirty laundry, even if your generation didn’t dirty it up. I’m sure it would make the front page of the local paper. It’s hard to see what good would come of it.
And as a journalist and amateur historian, I really want to document this aspect of local history. But when I wrote a 120 page history book for our town recently, I thought it wise to leave this item out, since I was under contract with the town government and they most certainly did not want to see this situation soiling their beautiful Sesquicentennial picture book.
A short family anecdote…My grandmother claimed to have the first (and for a while, only) integrated cast in St. Louis community theater starting in the 1930s. When she bought some property in what is now my neighborhood in 1937, she refused to sign the part of the deed with the racial restrictions.
Her attorney said, “It doesn’t matter if you sign it or not, it will still be the law.”
But times change. Now, new buyers are told, “It doesn’t matter if you sign it or not, it has no legal merit at all.”