1 This article is based on research undertaken for the online public history project Mapping Segregation in Washington DC, co-directed by Sarah Jane Shoenfeld and Mara Cherkasky of Prologue DC, and on previously unpublished research by historian and GIS mapping specialist Brian Kraft. It also incorporates research by Prologue DC for the Bloomingdale Historic Designation Coalition, which was recently designated a Historic District based, in part, on the neighborhood’s role in the national battle against racial covenants. The authors thank John Urciolo, Jean Urciolo, and Constance Urciolo Battle for generously sharing their memories of their uncle and father’s involvement in D.C. real estate and the Bloomingdale covenant cases. 2 Mays v. Burgess, I47 F.(2d) 869 (D.C. Cir. I945); David Delaney, Race, Place, and the Law, 1836-1848 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998), 171-173; “D.C. Property Covenants Upheld by Appellate Court,” Baltimore Afro-American, Feb. 3, 1945, 15.

3 Cultural Tourism DC for District Department of Transportation, Worthy Ambition: LeDroit Park/Bloomingdale Heritage Trail, 2015; Carol Rose and Richard Brooks, Saving the Neighborhood: Racially Restrictive Covenants, Law, and Social Norms (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013): 6-14, 183-185; Clement Vose, Caucasians Only: The Supreme Court, the NAACP, and the Restrictive Covenant Cases (Oakland: University of California Press, 1959), 57, 75; Michael Jones-Correa, “The Origins and Diffusion of Racial Restrictive Covenants,” Political Science Quarterly 115, no. 4 (winter 2000): 545-554.

4 The 1902 McMillan Plan called for the development of public buildings and expansive parks in areas where poor and working class people lived. One of its crowning achievements was Union Station, which replaced the longstanding Irish and African American neighborhood of Swampoodle. Legislation adopted in 1926 established the National Capital Park and Planning Commission, the city’s first permanent planning agency, and led to the development of federal buildings in part as a means of eliminating black and racially mixed neighborhoods downtown. Historic black enclaves on the city’s outskirts, for example at Tenleytown’s Fort Reno, were replaced in the late 1920s and ‘30s with parks and whites-only schools. In racially mixed Georgetown, meanwhile, white citizens formed their own association in 1924 and, as more whites began moving to the neighborhood in the 1930s, longtime black residents were displaced. 5 Frederick Gutheim, Worthy of the Nation: The History of Planning for the National Capital (Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1977), 172; National Committee on Segregation in the Nation’s Capital, Segregation in Washington (Nov. 1948), 32-37; E. Franklin Frazier, “Residential Segregation: Discriminatory Housing in the Nation’s Capital,” Confidential Report for the National Committee on Segregation in the Nation’s Capital, E. Franklin Frazier Papers, box 107, folder 2, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard Univ., 12-16, 23-31, 68-72; Howard Gillette, Jr., Between Justice and Beauty: Race, Planning, and the Failure of Urban Policy in Washington, D.C. (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1995); Eileen Zeitz, Private Urban Renewal: A Different Residential Trend (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1979), 63-65; Cameron Logan, “The Constituent Landscape: History, Race and Real Estate in Washington D.C., 1950-1990” (Ph.D. dissertation, George Washington Univ., 2008), 35-36; Garrett Power, “Apartheid Baltimore Style: the Residential Segregation Ordinances of 1910-1913,” 42 Maryland Law Review 289 (1983); David M.P. Freund, Colored Property: State Policy and White Racial Politics in Suburban America (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2007), chap. 2.

6 Washington Times, Oct. 21, 1911, 5. 7 Freund, ibid.; Kevin McGruder, Race and Real Estate: Conflict and Cooperation in Harlem, 1890-1920 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015), 6-7; Jeffrey D. Gonda, Unjust Deeds: The Restrictive Covenant Cases and the Making of the Civil Rights Movement (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2015), 16; Vose, Caucasians Only, 89; Bell Clement, “Pushback: the White Community’s Dissent from Bolling,” Washington History 16-2 (fall-winter, 2004-2005): 92. 8 The neighborhoods around Howard University and just south of Florida Avenue were home to substantial black communities prior to Bloomingdale’s development, which coincided with the early racial transition of LeDroit Park, immediately to the west. Although founded as an exclusively white, gated neighborhood, LeDroit Park lacked racial covenants in its deeds, and it was predominantly African American by 1920.

9 Rose and Brooks, Saving the Neighborhood, 13.

10 “To Keep Races Apart: North Washington Citizens Not to Sell Negroes Land, Only Whites Are Wanted,” Washington Post, Apr. 11, 1912; “Citizens to Push Fight for Racial Segregation,” Evening Star, Feb. 3, 1914, 10; “City News in Brief,” Washington Post, Dec. 2, 1913; Power, “Apartheid Baltimore Style, 305. 11 For a detailed history of the Chevy Chase Land Company’s role in eliminating the racially-mixed community of Reno City in Tenleytown for the development of Fort Reno Park and and a whites-only junior high school, see Neil Flanagan, “The Battle of Fort Reno,” Washington City Paper, Nov. 2, 2017

12 Freund, Colored Property, 50-80, 94; Evan McKenzie, Privatopia: Homeowner Associations and the Rise of Residential Private Government (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 65-70; Jones-Correa, Origins and Diffusion, 565-567; Kevin Fox Gotham, “Racialization and the State: The Housing Act of 1934 and the Creation of the Federal Housing Administration,” Sociological Perspectives 43-2 (June 2000) 291-317; Gillette, Between Justice and Beauty, 82-83; Gutheim, Worthy of a Nation, 166-167. 13 Columbia Heights Citizens Association, “A Statement of Some of the Advantages of Beautiful Columbia Heights: A Neighborhood of Homes,” 1904 (Special Collections Research Center, Gelman Library, George Washington University); Gonda, Unjust Deeds, 16; Vose, Caucasians Only, 89; Carl Nightingale, “Spatial Segregation and Neighborhoods”; Stella J. Adams, “Putting Race Explicitly into the CRA,” 168.

14 Code of Ethics, Washington Real Estate Board, Inc., Mar. 31, 1947, Washingtoniana Division, Martin Luther King, Jr., Public Library; “Real Estate Ethics Explained to Class,” Washington Post, Dec. 15, 1929. 15 Kevin Fox Gotham, “Urban Space, Restrictive Covenants and Origins of Racial Residential Segregation in a US City, 1900-1950,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 24 (Sept. 2000): 628; Vose, Caucasians Only, 8-9; Gonda, Unjust Deeds, 27; Wendy Plotkin, “’Hemmed In’: The Struggle Against Racial Restrictive Covenants and Deed Restrictions in Post-WWII Chicago,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 94-1 (spring 2001): 48-49; “Newell Scores Federal Report on Civil Rights,” Evening Star, Dec. 14, 1947; “Property Trusteeships Seen As Racial Covenant Substitutes,” Evening Star, May 4, 1948; Clement, “Pushback,” 90.

16 Corrigan v. Buckley 271 U.S. 323 (1926); Mara Cherkasky, “’For Sale to Colored’: Racial Change on S Street, N.W.” in Washington History8-2 (fall-winter, 1996-97): 41; Gonda, Unjust Deeds, 5; “Washington Ignores High Court Ruling: Citizens Continuing to Take Over Homes,” Chicago Defender, June 19, 1926; “While Lawyers Argue Block Becomes Black,” Afro-American, Jan. 16, 1926; Joan Quigley, Just Another Southern Town (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2016), 110. 17 Grady v. Garland 89 F.2d (D.C. Cir. 1937); “Ban on Colored in 1st St. Home Is Upheld by Supreme Court,” Washington Post, Oct. 12, 1937; Vose, Caucasians Only, 27, 156, n. 24; The Washington Post (1923-1954); Delaney, Race, Place, and the Law, 163-164.

18 Table 2 – Characteristics of Housing by Census Tract: 1940, in Sixteenth Census of the United States, 1940. Housing. Analytical Maps. Block Statistics for Cities, Part 1. Alabama-District of Columbia, p. 5 (Tract 33); U.S. Census, 1940. 19 Sarah Shoenfeld interview with John Urciolo (Raphael Urciolo’s nephew), Mar. 2, 2015; Vose, Caucasians Only, 80.

20 Charles Hamilton Houston Papers, box 33, folder 9, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University; Genna Rae McNeil, Groundwork: Charles Hamilton Houston and the Struggle for Civil Rights (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983), 176-184.

21 Houston Papers, box 33, folder 9, MSRC, HU. 22 McNeil, Groundwork, 177; Houston Papers, box 33, folder 9, MSRC, HU.

23 Gonda, Unjust Deeds, 78-79; Houston Papers, box 33, folders 9-13, MSRC, HU. 24 Document no. 192510060083, Washington, D.C. Recorder of Deeds; 1940 Census: Population & Housing Data (Minnesota Population Center, National Historical Geographic Information System: Version 11.0 [Database], Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2016); David Delaney, Race, Place, and the Law, 148-149, 172-75; Vose, Caucasians Only, 75-46; Mays v. Burgess. 25 Mays v. Burgess; Hundley v. Gorewitz, 132 F.2d 23 (D.C. Cir. 1942); Gospel Spreading Ass’n v. Bennetts, 147 F.2d 878 (1945); “Restrictive Covenants,” Baltimore Sun, May 5, 1945; Vose, Caucasians Only, 94, 156; Delaney, Race, Place, and the Law, chap. 6; Gonda, Unjust Deeds, 41.

26 Plotkin, “’Hemmed In,’” 56; Vose, Caucasians Only, 57, 60-61; Gonda, Unjust Deeds, 92-94, 103-112. 27 Shoenfeld interview with John Urciolo, Mar. 2, 2015; Hurd v. Hodge 162 F.2d 233 (D.C. Cir. 1947); Vose, Caucasians Only, 84-92; Gonda, Unjust Deeds, 11-12, 15-16, 39-52, 79-84.

28 Gonda, Unjust Deeds, 99-101; Vose, Caucasians Only, 95-99; Hurd v. Hodge 162 F.2d 233 (D.C. Cir. 1947). 29 Vose, Caucasians Only, 159, 187, 199-200; McNeil, Groundwork, 180-184; Gonda, Unjust Deeds, 137-150.

30 Rose and Brooks, Saving the Neighborhood, 181; David Alpert, “Where D.C. used to bar black people from living, May 5, 2016. 31 Armstrong High School Spanish teacher Edna M. Holland, who reportedly broke the color barrier on the 1300 block of Harvard Street NW, narrowly escaped death when her home was bombed in April 1941. According to newspapers, the local white citizens association had pressured Ms. Holland into agreeing to sell the house, but after negotiating down the price, they had not yet raised the money to buy it. ("Mystery Blast Jars D.C. Homes," Washington Post, Apr. 13, 1940; "FBI Probe of Home Blast to Be Asked," Washington Post, Apr. 14, 1940; "Dynamite Used in Terror Drive Against Teachers," Atlanta Daily World, Apr. 18, 1940). 32 Lauren Ober, “How Racial Covenants Shaped D.C. Neighborhoods” (Jan. 17, 2014);

“Citizens Unit Studies Plan to Circumvent Covenant Ban,” Washington Post, Oct. 11, 1948’ “Mutual Faith Covenant Here Names Negroes,” Washington Post, June 6, 1948; “Voluntary ‘Option’ Proposal to Be Laid Before Citizens’ Federation Tonight,” Washington Post, June 5, 1948; “House Bought By Neighbors Is Being Sold,” Washington Post, July 19, 1948; Philip Marcus, “Civil Rights and the Anti-Trust Laws,” University of Chicago Law Review 18-2 (1951): 171-217, n. 214; “Realty Covenants Still Barring Minority Groups in U.S. Cities,” Washington Post, Jan. 17 1949; “Broadway Drama Comes to Life in D.C. Housing War,” Afro-American, June 25, 1949; “Police to Probe Stoning of Home,” Washington Post, Apr. 5, 1949;

Kenneth T. Jackson, “Federal Subsidy and the Suburban Dream: The First Quarter-Century of Government Intervention in the Housing Market,” Records of the Columbia Historical Society, 50 (1980): 426-450.

33 U.S. Census of Housing: 1960. Vol III, City Blocks. Series HC(3), No. 105, 1961; D.C. Public Interest Research Group, Institute for Local Self-Reliance, and Institute for Policy Studies, Redlining: Mortgage Disinvestment in the District of

Columbia (June 1975): 2, Chart XII; Bloomingdale Civic Association, Social and Architectural History of the Bloomingdale Neighborhood, 2015; Allison Suppan Helmuth, Exclusion and Space in Washington, D.C.: Exploring the Neighborhood Terrain of Race, Class and Gender (M.A. thesis, George Washington Univ., 2014), 15.