New map shows racially restrictive covenants, highlights historical inequity across Wake County

By Sydnee Scofield

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    WAKE COUNTY, North Carolina (WTVD) — A new map released on Wednesday shows the neighborhoods in Wake County that were established under covenants with racially restrictive language, meaning people of color were not allowed to live there.

Working closely with the Wake County Register of Deeds, the project was coordinated by Bob Williams and Lisa Boccetti, a couple married for 47 years who live in Wake County. Now retired, the two volunteered to spearhead the project.

“The language was ugly. The intent was ugly. The result is ugly. It can be quite painful,” Boccetti told ABC11.

A 1948 Supreme Court decision and the Fair Housing Act of 1968 ultimately rendered the covenants unenforceable, but by then, a lot of damage had already been done.

“The real impact of this is that for generations, for you know 60 years, all of these all these properties were only available to be bought and sold by Caucasians,” Williams said.

Though the documents are public information, no one had taken the time to sort through them and map the racial restrictions they created in the county. It took the help of hundreds of volunteers donating thousands of hours collectively to sort through every covenant in the county.

“No money was spent to do this work. It was just the community coming together, and clearly a lot of people found it interesting and powerful just as we did,” Boccetti said.

The data was then compiled into a map to show which neighborhoods held these covenants preventing people of color from living there.

The map was then compared to a map of socially vulnerable areas around the county, taking factors into account like income, access to resources, and education levels. Comparing the two maps shows there are similarities between the areas that are less socially vulnerable and prevented people of color from living there for decades.

“It was concentrated with generational wealth in that area,” Williams said. “It wasn’t for a few years, it was for 60 years at least. And it’s it’s mind boggling to think of all of that money channeling into this one small area.”

Even Williams and Boccetti found that their Wake County home had a racially restrictive covenant.

“The highest use of this would be to open hearts and minds to approaching some of the inequities around race and class that have been with us for so long,” Boccetti told a crowd of volunteers Wednesday as the map was unveiled publicly for the first time.

Boccetti and Williams were grateful to meet so many of the volunteers who helped with the project in person for the first time, as most of the volunteer work was done remotely.

There are some conversations around adding notations to the racially restrictive covenants or submitting new documents to denounce the racist language in the historic text, but Wake County Register of Deeds Tammy Brunner insisted Wednesday night that the language could not be removed as it would erase history.

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