Untitled Document

Headline: A LANDMARK CASE
Reporter: By Greg Freeman

Publication: ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Last Printed: Sun., Jul., 18, 1999
Section: METRO, Page: D6, Edition: FIVE STAR LIFT

Like many African-Americans early in this century, J.D. Shelley decided to leave the South. He'd lived in Starkville, Miss., with his wife, Ethel, and five children. He'd worked as a laborer and she as a domestic, but they never seemed to get ahead.
So J.D. Shelley packed up and moved to St. Louis, where he had relatives.

Soon, he would embark on a landmark case that would change housing laws in St. Louis and around the country. Shelley and his family shared cramped quarters in a racially segregated neighborhood. Ethel Shelley went back to work and between the two of them, they saved enough money to buy a home of their own.
They found their dream house at 4600 Labadie Avenue. They bought it in August 1945 and moved in the following October.

A couple of days after moving in, they got a court summons. Louis and Fern Kraemer, who lived a block away, had sued to evict them from their home. The suit said that allowing the Shelleys to live in their home would cause the Kraemers to suffer irreparable injury and irremediable damage to their property.
The Shelleys' house had a restrictive agreement attached to its deed that barred any owners of the property from selling or renting to "people not wholly of the Caucasian race."
The use of such agreements was promoted by the real estate association of the day, which excluded blacks as members.

An elder at the Shelleys' church contacted James T. Bush Sr., a real estate broker, who mobilized other black real estate agents to challenge the practice. Bush was also the father of St. Louis lawyer Margaret Bush Wilson.
The case was dismissed in lower court.
The Kraemers appealed to the Missouri Supreme Court, which ruled against the Shelleys and ordered them to give up their property.

Bush then led the drive to get the Shelleys' case before the U.S. Supreme Court and paid for the services of George Vaughn, the Shelleys' initial attorney in the case.
Before the high court, the NAACP brought in attorney Thurgood Marshall to argue their case. Marshall argued that the 14th Amendment guarantees all citizens equal protection under the law and that it was illegal for the courts to be used to promote housing discrimination.
On May 4, 1948, the Supreme Court agreed unanimously. Until the far-reaching decision, courts in 19 states and the District of Columbia had ruled that enforcement of restrictive covenants was legal. In St. Louis, the agreements had kept blacks from living in 417 blocks in the city and county.

Daniel Schesch - Webweaver

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