Political Quotes

“Mr. President, 50 years ago today, Congress enacted the Fair Housing Act, exactly 1 week after the assassination of Martin Luther King as he fought for economic justice for sanitation workers in Memphis. It also came just weeks after the Kerner Commission issued its report on the origins of urban unrest in the 1960s. This report contained the now famous warning that ``our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white--separate and unequal.'' In the wake of these events, the Fair Housing Act made discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing illegal for the first time. For generations, redlining, restrictive covenants, and outright discrimination kept families of color locked out of entire neighborhoods, often far from where jobs were, and they created segregated communities that linger to this day. They denied these families the opportunity to build wealth through home ownership. Many of these exclusionary practices were carried out by private entities and local governments. But as Richard Rothstein reminds us in his new book, ``The Color of Law''--and I recommend to everybody listening that they read that book--Federal policies also played a significant role in reinforcing segregation. From 1934 through 1962--30 years, three decades--98 percent of all FHA mortgages went to White homeowners. In a country that in those days was about 10 percent African American, 98 percent of mortgages went to White homeowners.…”