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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. In what year did the U.S. Supreme Court uphold racially restrictive covenants as well as exclusionary zoning ordinances?

2. After the post-war housing shortage ended, what does Rothstein say the real estate industry lobbied for?

3. What did the FHA’s 1948 report conclude about prices in integrated neighborhoods?

4. What is de facto segregation?

5. What does Rothstein say binds Americans to solving the problem of housing segregation?

Short Essay Questions

1. How was housing policy affected by the 1968 Jones decision?

2. What was the Supreme Court’s logic when it upheld an exclusionary zoning ordinance in Arlington Heights, Chicago in 1977?

3. What does Rothstein say the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights concluded about the American government’s role in creating segregation?

4. What strategies would blockbusters use to create panic in white families?

5. What was the importance of the Supreme Court’s Buchanan decision in 1917?

6. What effect did the Communist Revolution in Russia have on American housing policy?

7. How do the political parties that operated in America in the late 1800s correspond to today’s political parties?

8. What backing does Rothstein say the FHA presented to support its claim that African Americans lowered property values?

9. Why did Roosevelt’s New Deal leave African Americans behind, according to Rothstein?

10. Why does Rothstein say that Robert Mereday did not even bother filing an application for a mortgage?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

How could you address the same material as Rothstein addresses here through a reading list of films and books? What other works show other views of the experience African Americans endured as a result of American institutional racism? What artists or writers have taken this material on in different ways? How have their treatments and conclusions differed?

Essay Topic 2

What do you think it would take, to change the laws on a national level, to remedy the injustice that was perpetrated since reconstruction began in 1877? Could a charismatic leader do it? Would it take a grass-roots movement? Would it take a crisis that would allow hard decisions to be made?

Essay Topic 3

How does reading The Color of Law change your perspective about America’s history? What was the most important thing you learned from this book? Why do you think this fact or view was not taught elsewhere in your education?

(see the answer keys)

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