How century-old racist deed covenants echo in present-day Greenville

Furman University alumnus Sam Hayes ’20, who majored in history and politics and international affairs, and Ken Kolb, professor and chair of the sociology department at Furman, pored over hundreds of thousands of Greenville County property records as part of their “Mapping Housing Inequities Project.” What they found were about 5,000 deeds containing racially restrictive language and covenants. And while these deeds date to the early part of the 1900s, their impact on Black families in particular is still being felt today. South Carolina Public Radio’s Scott Morgan spoke to Kolb and Hayes, a post-baccalaureate fellow at The Shi Institute for Sustainable Communities.