{"id":36632,"date":"2025-03-24T21:15:07","date_gmt":"2025-03-25T01:15:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/?p=36632"},"modified":"2025-03-24T21:15:07","modified_gmt":"2025-03-25T01:15:07","slug":"placing-furman-project-examines-racist-real-estate-practices-of-the-past","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/placing-furman-project-examines-racist-real-estate-practices-of-the-past\/","title":{"rendered":"Placing Furman project examines racist real estate practices of the past"},"content":{"rendered":"

An analysis of real estate records from the 1930s and 1940s found that one of the most prominent real estate brokers in the Southeast,\u00a0like many others\u00a0at the time,\u00a0used racist covenants to keep Black families out of more than a thousand homes in Greenville County, South Carolina.<\/p>\n

The president of the brokerage firm, The Furman Company, was Alester G. Furman Jr., a long-time trustee of Furman University and the great-grandson of the university\u2019s first president.<\/p>\n

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Racially restrictive covenants were common across the country in the first half of the 20th Century. Alester G. Furman used them extensively in Greenville.<\/p><\/div>\n

The analysis is part of a research project by Ken Kolb, professor and chair of sociology, and other faculty and student researchers. Their project, \u201cPlacing Furman,\u201d <\/a>includes hundreds of photos, interactive data maps illustrating the scope of the project, and essays by Furman faculty and students providing context for the work.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe think it paints an honest and objective picture of real estate practices in a Southeastern city in the 1940s,\u201d Kolb said.<\/p>\n

Alester Furman Jr. died in 1980, but, Kolb said, his name is still prominent on campus: the administration building, erected in 1957, is dedicated to him; a life-size statue of the man stands outside the visitor\u2019s center; and the signature teaching award, announced each year at commencement, is named for him and his wife Janie Earle Furman. The Placing Furman report did not address changes.<\/p>\n

Controlling real estate<\/strong><\/p>\n

Alester Furman Jr.\u2019s real estate practices were hardly unique, Kolb said. Racist covenants were common across the United States in the early 20th<\/sup>\u00a0century until the Supreme Court ruled them unenforceable in the 1948 case Shelley vs. Kraemer. They were made illegal in the 1968 Fair Housing Act.<\/p>\n

The covenants specified in legal documents that \u201cthe premises shall not be sold, leased or released to any negro or person of negro blood,\u201d or similar language. They became standard in the Southeast, including in Greenville, when textile mills began selling off \u201cmill town\u201d homes to their employees.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a way to control who lived in the neighborhoods and who lived close to the mills\u201d while earning revenue, Kolb said.<\/p>\n

Racism was also a common way to generate wealth in a society where racism was openly accepted, said Kaniqua Robinson, assistant professor of anthropology and co-chair of the Placing Furman team.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlester Furman was a capitalist, and racism was a tool for capitalism. He had to use that tool,\u201d Robinson said.<\/p>\n

Kolb and student Isaac Lewis \u201926 found deeds on 1,238 homes in Greenville County that included racially restrictive covenants written by The Furman Company. But, Kolb said, the firm operated throughout the Southeast. \u201cThere could be thousands more.\u201d He also found evidence of racially restrictive deeds four years beyond Shelley vs. Kraemer.<\/p>\n

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Alester G. Furman Jr. Furman Archives.<\/p><\/div>\n

The negative effects of racially restrictive covenants are still being felt, Kolb said. Owning real estate is a means to produce generational wealth. Without the ability to own property, Black families were placed at a disadvantage that has lasted generations. Banks and local governments were complicit in creating and continuing segregated neighborhoods, Kolb said. \u201cIt\u2019s related to the serious wealth gap we have today,\u201d Kolb said.<\/p>\n

In August of 2022, Kolb and former student Sam Hayes \u201920 worked with Furman\u2019s Shi Institute for Sustainable Communities to map all the racially restrictive covenants in Greenville County. There were more than 5,000 of them.<\/p>\n

Soon after that, Kolb was reviewing materials and, for the first time, saw the name Alester Furman Jr.. It was for land where a Bon Secours hospital parking lot now sits. He soon found another for Graceland Cemetery, restricting Black people from being buried there.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had done all this public scholarship, but we had omitted our own participation in it,\u201d Kolb says of Furman\u2019s name. \u201cWe have a professional obligation to bring information to light, to admit the omission.\u201d<\/p>\n

The research findings are also important for the university and the community at large to move forward, by providing accountability, Robinson said. \u201cThis is a way of countering the erasure of the Black experience and other cultures who were part of Greenville and communities nationwide.<\/p>\n

The website includes essays by other researchers that provide more historical, societal and economic context and detail. Researchers who wrote essays are Robinson, assistant professor of anthropology; Steve O\u2019Neill, professor of history; Kelsey Hample, chair of poverty studies and associate professor of economics, Claire Whitlinger, associate professor of sociology, who worked with Jillian Hall \u201925; Jeffrey Makala, associate director for special collections and university archivist, Taha Kasim, associate professor of economics; and Sarah Archino, associate professor and chair, Stephen Mandravelis, assistant professor, and Kylie Fisher, assistant professor, all of the art department.<\/p>\n

Now that the information is public, Kolb says he wants to hear from the public. He\u2019s inviting comments, even those disagreeing with the research or the essays, on the Placing Furman website. \u201cIn the spirit of thoughtful dialogue, we promise to review and reply to each submission you send us,\u201d Kolb said. \u201cOur goal is to foster a constructive conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alester Furman Jr. wrote real estate covenants that restricted Black people from owning houses throughout Greenville, a common practice throughout the country from the 1920s through the 1940s.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":389,"featured_media":36722,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history","category-sociology"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/389"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36632"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36632\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36850,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36632\/revisions\/36850"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}