In 1950s Chicago, the median income of Black and white residents was fairly close. PULSE OUTLOOK: What is the thrust of the book?īERYL SATTER: The book describes the ways that predatory lending drained Black wealth and damaged Black Chicago communities. The scale of exploitation was so immense that I knew I had to write about it. My father estimated that eighty-five percent of Black homebuyers in Chicago bought their properties “on contract,” and that the practice was extracting $1 million dollars a day from Black Chicagoans (close to $8 million a day in today’s money). Because the properties were sold at grossly inflated prices, the changes of a buyer missing a payment and losing the property were high.Īfrican Americans had no choice but to buy on contract because banks and savings and loans “redlined,” or refused to give African Americans mortgage loans regardless of their credit history. Installment contracts specified that if the buyer missed one monthly payment, they would lose the property. Worse, they sold these overpriced properties “on contract,” that is, on an installment plan. The speculators then sold these properties to Blacks at double to quadruple market value. I discovered that in the 1950s and early 1960s, my father had fought a vicious real estate practice in which speculators purchased properties from whites fleeing racially “changing” areas at close to market value. Satter, who died in 1965, when I was six years old.

PULSE OUTLOOK: Why did you write the book?īERYL SATTER: Family Properties was the product of my curiosity about my father, attorney Mark J. To register for the zoom forum and engage the author visit: and purchase the book here. Satter tells our editor-in-chief Bankole Thompson in this PuLSE OutLOOK why the book is important to the economic justice fight playing out in urban cities like Detroit to ensure that Black people can gain economic empowerment. She will discuss her book, Family Properties: How the Struggle Over Race and Real Estate Transformed Chicago and Urban America, which is about the dreadful story of the naked economic and racist exploitation of African Americans in the Chicago housing market during the 1950s and early 1960s. Beryl Satter, Professor of History at Rutgers University. The PuLSE Literacy Circle, an online author conversation and Q&A series devoted to promoting critical literature that represents a diverse cultural landscape, begins on Thursday, October, 15, 4-5:30pm EST with historian and author Dr.

Family Properties by Beryl Satter