In the 1930s, the United States Federal Housing Administration (FHA) established the Home Owner's Loan Corporation (HOLC) as part of the New Deal to improve Americans' opportunity to keep and purchase homes during the Great Depression when many mortgages were in default. Detroit, like many other major American cities, was subject to redlining, a practice in which banks and other lending institutions refused loans in certain neighborhoods based on their racial and/or ethnic composition. Across the country, HOLC developed color coded maps that designated certain neighborhoods purportedly in terms of their mortgage lending risk as "Best" (green), "Still Desirable" (blue), and "Definitely Declining" (yellow). Areas marked in red were designated "Hazardous" and said to have been "redlined."

Discriminatory housing policies and practices invisibly enforced boundaries between neighborhoods in Detroit. In one striking exception, a physical barrier was erected. The "Detroit Wall" or "Eight Mile Wall" was built in 1941 to separate neighborhoods designated for Black and white homeownership. Though it no longer functions as a racialized barrier, it still stands today, five feet tall and stretching about half a mile from Pembroke Avenue at Van Antwerp Park to 8 Mile. 

The 8-Mile Wall separating a Black Detroit neighborhood from a new suburban housing development designated for white occupancy.

UAW Public Relations Department Records, Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University

By the time Bradley v. Milliken was first filed in 1970, racial segregation in public spaces was no longer legal in the State of Michigan. So what explains the then-disproportionately Black student body in Detroit's schools? More than by law or education policy, racial segregation in Detroit schools is explained by housing conditions.

Since public schools are typically organized into districts or zones based on neighborhoods and other geographic boundaries, public school enrollment is typically dictated by a student's home address and the district it falls in. As a result, the demographic composition of an individual school will often match that of the neighborhoods it serves. To understand how schools became predominantly Black, it helps to first understand how the city became less white. Several policies and practices helped shape Detroit neighborhoods and, in turn, the schools.

In the context of school segregation, centralization and decentralization refer to where responsibility and control to desegregate schools is allocated. Prior to Milliken v. Bradley, a centralized approach to school desegregation allowed federal courts to actively oversee, coordinate, and enforce desegregation measures. Before the case left Michigan to be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court, Bradley v. Milliken resulted in an order requiring surrounding suburban districts to cooperate with Detroit schools to desegregate them - a "metropolitan remedy."

The Detroit Board of Education proposed interdistrict busing, a plan to transport students to schools outside of their residential districts as a method to overcome segregated residential patterns that resulted in segregated schools. However, in Milliken v. Bradley, the Supreme Court ruled to decentralize, which reallocated responsibility for desegregation from the federal government to state and local authorities and school districts. A limited busing plan was implemented briefly amid both tremendous support and vehement opposition before the federal ruling relieved suburban schools of responsibility to cooperate.

Clauses barring non whites from purchasing or occupying property began to be included in property deeds in the 1930s. This practice was a direct response to the changing racial compositions of Northern cities over the course of the Great Migration. During this time, the Southern United States maintained racial segregation through de jure (legal) means in the form of Jim Crow laws, private and contractual terms such as racially exclusive covenant clauses were tools to enforce racial segregation in parts of the country where Jim Crow laws were fewer.

An example clause in a property deed for the Blackstone Park Subdivision in Detroit dated 1939 reads: "LIMITATION AS TO OCCUPANTS: No part of said property shall be used or occupied in whole or in part by any person not of pure, unmixed, white Caucasian race, except that domestic servants, chauffeurs, or gardeners or other employees of other than the pure, unmixed, white Caucasian race, may live on or occupy the premises where their employer resides."

The Federal Housing Policy of 1949 established the practice of urban renewal. Federal funds were distributed to cities for "slum clearance" projects targeting "blighted" neighborhoods for redevelopment, using eminent domain to seize privately-owned homes. Detroit underwent numerous projects during the mid 20th century with the goal of clearing blight and revitalizing the local economy, although urban renewal projects have faced criticism for their failure to improve urban living conditions in Detroit and other major cities. Urban renewal projects affected Black Detroiters adversely and disproportionately. Unfair housing and employment practices limited Black renters and homeowners to neighborhoods most impacted by disinvestment, and their state of neglect by the city often made these "slums" the first to be cleared and redeveloped, displacing those who called them home.

In a particularly notable episode, Black Bottom and Paradise Valley were razed in the late 1950s and early 1960s as part of a highway construction project funded by the Federal Highway Act of 1956 - not formally an urban renewal project, but a proxy to achieve the same means. The neighborhood and entertainment district was predominately Black, densely populated, and deeply poor. With unfair housing practices - redlining and racial covenants - still regulating where Black Detroiters could live and afford, the area's residents and businesses were displaced with limited options to relocate within the city. Interstate 375 was erected where the neighborhood once stood.

Three boys pose in front of a five and dime store in Detroit's Near East Side, circa 1938-1942.

Edward Stanton Photographs, Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University

The Central Business Redevelopment Project in the early 1960s was a plan to transform the "blighted" corridor surrounding Michigan Avenue between Fifth and Cass Avenues into a vibrant commercial district. The neighborhood known as Skid Row - a name given to impoverished and neglected neighborhoods across the country that were deemed dangerous and otherwise undesirable - was demolished to proceed with the plan, but redevelopment was abandoned when developers failed to secure funding. Newly vacant lots were largely left empty, with predominately Black residents already pushed out from Detroit's valuable city center.

One effect of urban renewal projects is that they systematically eliminated Black neighborhoods, reducing the already limited housing options available to Black Detroiters. This ultimately resulted in the formation of fewer, more densely populated Black neighborhoods across the city. Over time, white communities fled the city for the surrounding suburbs, making Detroit a predominately Black city. What was once a problem with segregation within Detroit transformed into a problem of segregation between Detroit and the suburbs.