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MFP Voices

A Dream Deferred: The Lasting Legacy of Racist Redlining in Mississippi and the Deep South

A region marked by a history of racial violence and targeted exclusionary policies like redlining continues to see widening racial homeownership disparities. The U.S. government agency, Home Owners Loan Corporation introduced redlining in 1935, when it drew literal red lines on maps to delineate the perceived riskiness of making mortgage loans, and in fact directed lenders to “refuse to make loans in these areas [or] only on a conservative basis.” 

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Martin Luther King Jr. statue
MFP Voices

Neighborhoods with MLK Streets Are Poorer Than National Average and Highly Segregated, Study Reveals

Most of America’s MLK neighborhoods, from east Montgomery, Alabama, to Harlem in New York City, were born of legal or de facto racial segregation. And in the second half of the 20th century, they experienced the sharpest decline in urban industry, sending local jobs from the cities to suburbs. These historic events first caused, then structurally perpetuated, deprivation in MLK neighborhoods.

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