Samantha Enlund, a sophomore at Webster Groves High School, is working with city officials to disavow attempts to segregate neighborhoods.
Real estate groups urged white residents to include racially restrictive covenants on a home’s deed. The restrictions kept Black and non-white residents from moving into white neighborhoods. The U.S. Supreme Court barred states from enforcing the restrictions in 1948, and 20 years later, the Fair Housing Act made them illegal.
Decades later, Enlund wants to add new language to renounce the racist covenants. She’s taken more action, growing the effort from a summer camp project. She receives emails from homeowners asking about their deeds, then helps provide their chain of title and explain the process of changing a deed.
“At first, it was a little like, I'm 15, how am I going to be able to be that much of a help?” Enlund said. “But as I have been able to keep going, it's been all right. I can actually do something like this.”
Homeowners became able to release covenants from their home through the recorder of deeds in 2022. Enlund wants residents to amend the wording instead.
“We recognize it's there and we don't want it to be there. But we don't want to like actually remove it, because we don't want to erase that part of the history,” Enlund said.
Webster Groves Mayor Laura Arnold said restrictive documents are a part of the town’s racist past. Arnold said homeowners should disavow the covenants by adding new language, as removing the racist inclusions wouldn’t be sufficient.
"If we're truly going to be the welcoming community that we want to be right now, we have to acknowledge those, own up to those and tell people we don't believe that kind of thing anymore," Arnold said. “What you do is you add a statement that says this was wrong. I disavow that, so then we're not pretending that it never happened. We're acknowledging that mistake.”
Enlund’s advocacy builds on the work of others nationwide. Colin Gordon, a professor of history at the University of Iowa, has found more than 100,000 homes in St. Louis and St. Louis County with racially restrictive covenants attached. Molly Metzger, professor at Washington University, previously worked with Arnold to propose solutions for housing inequity in St. Louis County.
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That information helped Enlund compile the list of 1,000 Webster Groves addresses with such restrictions. She brings it to meetings, schools and homes. She’s helped more than 50 residents make the change.
Enlund said it can be difficult for some residents to gather information on their homes. Arnold wants the St. Louis County recorder of deeds to simplify the process.
“The recorder of deeds office doesn't think that they are legally able to assist residents in finding some of the information they need,” Arnold said. “Whatever the vehicle is, let's find a way so that those recorders of deeds offices throughout the state feel empowered to help people with this in ways that they don't feel empowered right now.”
Arnold said she’ll meet with state legislators in late February, aiming to streamline the process for homeowners.
“The one criticism, and I will say that this is a very legitimate criticism, is that it's a symbolic act rather than something that is providing people with housing or is undoing a past wrong in an economic sense,” Arnold said.
The mayor continues work with Enlund and wants her ideas on an unannounced “strategic plan in the city to look at some housing-related policies.”
Enlund said she’s interested in fostering equity beyond Webster Groves in the future.
“I've only been here for like a year and a half. I had no idea just how like deep it was,” Enlund said. “The fact that segregation existed is obviously widespread and known, but the smaller aspects of it [are] not talked about and more hidden.”
