80% of St. Louis County homes built by 1950 have racial covenants, researcher finds

Years ago, Kim Rumpsa was researching whether her employer at the time, the Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District, needed to maintain pipes in parts of St. Louis County.

While leafing through old subdivision plat books for answers, she stumbled across something shocking — handwritten documents stating that only white people could live there.

“The thoughts that crossed my mind were: Is this really still happening? You know, surely people are — they don't know about it, or they're ignoring it at this point,” she said.

Thinking back, Rumpsa, who is white, was less surprised by the racist language when she considered the time period; many of the documents were signed in the early 1900s.

https://news.stlpublicradio.org/culture-history/2022-01-26/80-of-st-louis-county-homes-built-by-1950-have-racial-covenants-researcher-finds