Hurd v. Hodge

The Case
Hurd v. Hodge, 334 U.S. 24 (1948), was a companion case to Shelley v. Kraemer, in which the Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits a federal court from enforcing restrictive covenants that would prohibit a person from owning or occupying property based on race or color. Hurd v. Hodge also involved racially restrictive covenants on houses in the Bloomingdale neighborhood of Washington, D.C.

However, the Equal Protection Clause does not explicitly apply to a U.S. territory not in a U.S. state, and so the decision varied from the Fourteenth Amendment ruling in Shelley v. Kraemer. In Hurd, the Court found against the segregationists by holding that both the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and treating persons in the District of Columbia like those in the states would forbid restrictive covenants.

Background
The Bloomingdale area was an epicenter of legal challenges regarding Blacks attempting to move into racially restricted housing. Bloomingdale was attractive to middle-class Black Families because of the proximity to Howard University.

The Hurd House, located at 116 Bryant Street in Bloomingdale, D.C., was the first house owned and sold to a black family in the area, infringing on the covenant's racial restrictions. This caused the neighboring whites, Lena and Frederic Hodge, to sue the Hurd family for violating the covenant which barred the house’s sale to African Americans.

Charles Hamilton Houston, the Hurd’s family attorney, a black man who attended Howard University, had evidence that revealed the covenants in Bloomingdale did not uphold keeping the neighborhood white, however, the D.C. court upheld the covenant.

Aftermath
Now, the Hurd House is a historical site for the civil rights movement which can be toured.

The Hurd V Hodge decision was a large win for the civil rights movement, in addition to the Shelley V Kreamer decision. These decisions paved the way for the following cases similar to these.