Mapping Inequality shows official redlining maps from history across the country
In the latter half of the 1930s, a now defunct federal agency, the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC), executed a program to categorize the “residential security” of neighborhoods in U.S. cities, and generated maps accordingly.
Launched by researchers at the University of Richmond, Mapping Inequality (at https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining/) is an interactive map that makes these remarkable materials freely accessible and easily explorable. Each of the HOLC maps can be displayed over the contemporary streetscape, and each neighborhood is clickable to read its area description.
While the maps are powerful alone, it’s the underlying area descriptions that provide a far clearer, and sometimes painful, window into the segregationist policies of mid-century America. There is no dog whistle in these HOLC materials — the racism is loud and clear.
Thank you to Jeff Miller at Utica University for passing on this resource!
