How DC’s Brightwood Park Changed from All White to All Black
Principal Investigator: Tanya Golash-Boza. Contributors: Louis Perez, Lily Lindros, Ukamaka Ezimora
In 1940, Brightwood Park had no Black residents. Just two decades later, the neighborhood was majority Black. By 1990, 96% of the residents of Brightwood Park were Black. How and why did this neighborhood transition from White to Black?
Most scholars who study White flight – which describes the departure of White residents from U.S. cities in the 1950s and 1950s –would argue that White flight was provoked by real estate agents who engaged in blockbusting – when Realtors used scare tactics to frighten White families to sell their homes by telling them that Black people are moving in. Realtors engaged in blockbusting because of the profits they could generate from speculation – which is when Realtors buy homes from White residents and sell them to Black people for a handsome profit.
Did blockbusting happen in Brightwood Park? There is clear evidence that blockbusting did take place in Brightwood Park. However, what is less clear is the role that blockbusting played in prompting the neighborhood’s transition from White to Black.
Until now, no researcher has systematically studied blockbusting in Brightwood Park. Our team set out to change that.
In 1957, a White man named Marvin Caplan moved into Manor Park, the neighborhood adjacent to Brightwood Park. Caplan soon realized real estate agents were stoking the fears of his neighbors and trying to convince them to sell their homes. Caplan tried to get the Manor Park neighborhood association to do something about this, but the all-White neighborhood association refused to admit Black members. Thus, in 1958, Caplan formed an inter-racial organization called Neighbors, Inc. whose goal was to prevent White flight from the neighborhood.
While real estate agents were sending cards to White residents’ homes to entice them to sell their homes, Neighbors, Inc members were knocking on their doors and encouraging them not to leave the neighborhood.
The Neighbors Inc. archives held at the Martin Luther King Jr. Library in Washington, DC contain multiple instances of blockbusting, such as these cards distributed by real estate agents.
In the 1950s and 1960s, real estate agents used aggressive sales tactics to try and convince White homeowners to sell their homes to them. Did these tactics work?
Analyzing home sales
We analyzed every home sale in Brightwood Park between 1940 (when the neighborhood was 100% White) and 1970 (by which time the neighborhood had become nearly all Black). The neighborhood was all White because the homes in this neighborhood had racially restrictive covenants - language in the deeds that forbade the sale or rental to Black people. In 1948, the Supreme Court rules that these covenants were not legally enforceable. This decision granted Black people the legal right to purchase homes in this neighborhood.
By mapping home sale trends, we were able to identify clear trends in home sales patterns. The number of home sales held fairly steady between 1940 and 1954, with slight fluctuations from year to year. Then, there was a significant increase in 1955, 1956, and 1957, when there were nearly 300 home sales a year. This was more than twice as many as there had been in the 14 years prior. Home sales remained high until 1963, when they began to decline to levels even lower than they had been in the 1940s. These figures point to a fairly stable White home owning population, then a significant increase in home sales when schools were desegregated in 1954, and eventually a stable Black homeowning population.
We then collected additional information from the Office of Recorded Deeds for each of the 151 properties in Brightwood Park. This data includes:
- Address today
- Year first sold
- Date the pre-1948 owner sold
- Number of times property sold before 1971
- Whether or not the lot was resold in less than six months post-1948 (a quick sale)
- The first resale date (if there was a quick sale)
- The second resale date (if there was a quick sale)
- Number of days elapsed between quick sales
- Name of the first and second middle person in quicksales
- Whether or not the lot was resold to the previous owner
In our analyses we found the following:
1) Homes on blocks dominated by homeowners were sold in very quick succession 2) Some of these transactions involved real estate agents who bought homes from White families and quickly resold them to Black families for a handsome profit 3) In other cases, White allies were helping Black people gain access to homeownership.
In 1950, everyone who lived on this block was White. Most of the residents – 56 out of 64 – were homeowners. Between 1950 and 1960, 55 of these 56 White homeowners sold their homes. Click on the map to learn more.
Each red polygon represents one lot sold.
Real Estate Profits and Speculation
To understand how and why these homes so quickly, we looked at each deed of sale for the properties in this block.
The interactive map displayed to the left allows you to see which homes in Brightwood Park were sold and resold in quick succession. As you can see, there are several blocks where nearly every house was sold and resold in less than six months. You can click on each individual property to see the sale dates. In addition, each middle person is shaded in a different color - showing that there were dozens of different middle persons involved in the home sales. If you click on the legend, you can see the list of all of the middle persons involved in these sales. Our research into these property sales reveals that some - but not all - of these quick sale involved speculators. For example, Sol and Ethel Oremland bought 117 Ingraham Street NW from Howard Greenberg on November 19, 1952 for $18,500. After living at 117 Ingraham for six years, the Oremland, a White family, sold their home at a significant loss to the Sindler Realty Company. The Sindlers are clearly speculators: they bought the home from the Oremlands for $13,500 and resold it four days later to a Black family for $17,000.
In this case, the White family – the Oremlands – sold low and the Black family – the Colberts – bought high. The speculators – the Sindlers – earned at least $3,500 from this transaction.
The sale of 117 Ingraham is a classic case of blockbusting for three reasons: 1) The home was bought and resold quickly; 2) The speculator made a profit; and 3) The Sindler Realty Company is a known speculator.
On that same block, 21 of the homes were also bought and sold quickly. This proportion holds true across Brightwood Park – fully one third of the properties sold in Brightwood Park between 1948 and 1970 were bought and resold in less than three months.
In the case of 117 Ingraham, the Sindlers were the middle persons in this transaction. We call them middle persons because we can’t be sure that each quick resale involved a speculator. In some cases, a home may be passed from one family member to another, and this could show up in the records as a quick resale. We also found something unexpected: in some of the transactions, the middle person made no profit at all.
White Allies?
On July 25, 1958, Charles Miller sold 5124 Kansas Avenue to Frances Gravatte for $6,000. We can assume that Charles Miller was White because he bought this home before 1950 when the Census shows that this block was 100% White.
Frances Gravatte was the wife of LeRoy Trice Gravatte, Jr, who worked at his father’s company, L.T. Gravatte and Sons Realtors, until 1955, when Gravatte, Jr. opened his own real estate brokerage company, L. Trice Gravatte Jr. Realtor.
Frances Gravatte is listed as the purchaser of 5124 Kansas Avenue in 1958, just three years after her husband opened this company. On October 2, 1958, just three months after purchasing the home, Frances Gravatte sold the home to James and Vera Bullock, a Black couple, who remained in this home until their deaths.
This sounds like a classic blockbusting story – a real estate broker bought a home from a White family and resold it to a Black family. However, the property records reveal that Frances Gravatte sold the home to the Bullocks for the same price she purchased it for: $6,000.
Why did she do this? Perhaps it was to profit off of the loan? James and Vera Bullock borrowed $4964.98 from the Gravattes and $676.50 from Ralph Cohn (another local real estate broker) to purchase this home. Both of these loans were at 6% interest, the prevailing rate. But, profiting off of a loan is not blockbusting. And, the loan was at the prevailing interest rate, which was not particularly high.
Another possibility is that the Gravattes sold this home to the Bullocks to scare the other White families on the block to sell their homes. Blockbusters could stoke racial fears by enticing one Black family to move into an all-White block, and then using that sale to scare the remaining White people to sell.
It is also possible that the Gravattes were helping the Bullocks buy a home. In the 1950s, it was difficult for Black people to secure conventional as well as government loans, so brokers may have stepped in to fill that gap.
Our analysis of property records in Brightwood Park reveal that there was a mix of actors involved in real estate transactions.
Speculators like the Sindlers were actively convincing White homeowners to sell their homes. Real estate brokers like the Gravattes were lending Black people money to buy homes. Community members in the Neighbors, Inc. organization were trying to convince White homeowners to stay and send their kids to the local integrated schools.
In the end, nearly all the White homeowners sold their homes and Brightwood Park became a Black neighborhood.Neighbors, Inc was more successful in maintaining integration in the neighborhoods north of Brightwood Park such as Shepherd Park and Takoma Park. But, by the time Neighbors, Inc began to organize in 1958, most of the White residents of Brightwood Park had already sold their homes and left.
Our analyses of these sales data led to a few key findings.
To understand the extent to which blockbusting is linked to racial transitions in Brightwood Park, we had to dig deeper into our analyses.
We took a close look at the sales that involved a middle person to try and discern patterns. Figuring out the price of each sale requires looking at the property records, reading the deeds, and calculating the sale price based on the number of stamps on the deed.
Conclusion: Today’s home flipping is yesterday’s speculation.
Over the past 20 years, White and Latinx people have been moving into Brightwood Park, and this has created an opportunity for investors.
Today, Brightwood Park is 58% Black, down from 96% Black in 1990. The neighborhood is about 28% Latino and 11% White. Housing prices have also increased significantly.
In the 1950s, White people moving out created profit potential. Today, White people moving in creates new profit potential.
Across the street from 117 Ingraham is another modest brick home, 126 Ingraham. A look at more recent home sale patterns allows us to draw a connection between speculators like the Sindlers in the 1950s and home flippers today.
An investor purchased 126 Ingraham in December 2019 for $445,000. They sold the home a few months later for $795,000 in September 2020. The Black family that lived there for decades and moved out in 2019 barely profited from their long-term investment, yet the investor made $300,000 profit in a matter of months.
This type of home-flipping profit is common in this area. A house the next block over, 231 Ingraham, sold for $406,250 on April 1, 2020. It then resold on January 4, 2021, for $805,000.
It was only when White folks started moving in that homes began to increase in value. Brightwood Park is part of the Petworth Assessment Area. The part of Petworth that is closer to the Petworth Metro Station hasmore White residents and homes are even more expensive over there.
In 2016, Petworth was named the most profitable neighborhood in the country for home flippers . A real estate agent even commentedthat the best investment in this neighborhood was “grandma’s house.”
In the 1950s, speculators like the Sindlers profited from the fact that White people were anxious to leave the neighborhood. Today, real estate investors are profiting off of the fact that White people once again are willing to move into this neighborhood.
