get these nets
Veteran
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Hansberry's sister and grand niece discuss what lead up to the Supreme Court ruling
11.13.1940
Hansberry v. Lee Case is Decided
On this date in 1940, the Supreme Court ruled in Hansberry v. Lee, which rules that whites cannot bar Blacks from white neighborhoods.
Three years earlier (1937), Carl A. Hansberry, a Black businessman and the father of Lorraine Hansberry, defied the Chicago Woodlawn Property Owners' Association by successfully negotiating the purchase of a building at 6140 Rhodes Avenue. At about the same time, Harry H. Pace, a prominent Black attorney and president of the Supreme Liberty Life Insurance Company, purchased a building just east of South Park Way on Sixtieth Street. Anna M. Lee, a White signatory of the restrictive covenant, filed suit against Hansberry and Pace for $100,000.
When the circuit court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs for equity, the defendants carried their fight to the Supreme Court of Illinois, which also upheld the legality of the restrictive covenant by a vote of six to one, and ordered the confiscation of Hansberry's property.
The Supreme Court of the United States reversed the decision on this date in 1940 but did not hold that restrictive covenants are void. It ruled for Hansberry on a legal technicality that an agreement between two property owners respecting the number of signatories to the restrictive covenant agreement is fraudulent. The attorney for Hansberry was Earl B. dikkerson.