(l-r) The Rev. Kojo Nantambu, president of the Charlotte NAACP; the Rev. William Barber, president of the North Carolina NAACP; and Stella Adams, housing chair for the North Carolina NAACP, at a press conference Monday at Little Rock AME Zion Church. (Photo: Qcitymtro.com)

The Myers Park Homeowners Association violated Charlotte’s Fair Housing Ordinance in 2007 when it posted on its Web site a sample deed that included a racist housing restriction, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Community Relations Committee has found.

The sample deed, which related to a hypothetical home in the upscale community, read in part: “The lot hereby conveyed shall be used for residential purposes only and shall be owned and occupied by people of the Caucasian race.”

The document has since been removed.

Restrictive housing deeds based on race, religion and ethnicity were once common in the United States but were rendered illegal by court rulings and the 1968 federal Fair Housing Act.

The Charlotte NAACP said it received numerous complaints about the Myers Park document when it was first posted online. The local chapter, along with the state NAACP, filed a complaint with the community relations committee after failing to reach a settlement with the homeowners association.

The community relations committee is a statutory agency established to monitor race relations in the county and city. Among its duties is investigating claims of housing discrimination.

“Nobody enjoys having to point out the continuing legacies of racism,” the Rev. William Barber, president of the state NAACP, said at a press conference Monday night at Little Rock AME Zion Church. “This was not written on a document 50 years ago or 60 years ago, but in 2007.”

In a statement emailed to Qcitymetro.com, homeowners association president Pamela May called the document’s language “offensive.” But because the document is an "historic relic," she said, the association had no authority to change the wording.

“We did not publish this with the intent to discriminate,” the statement read. “We did not publish it with the intent to harm. It is regrettable that these words appeared on our site, particularly without an explanation. To those who read and were offended, we apologize.”

The Myers Park Homeowners Association has never attempted to discriminate against anyone, May said. (Read the full statement below.)

The NAACP, however, is not accepting that explanation. Barber noted Monday that the Myers Park group had been careful to delete from the sample deed the homeowner’s name and address, the date of the document and other identifying information – but not the racist clause.

Barber said it was impossible to know whether, or how many, black, Hispanic or Asian families may have seen the posting and been discouraged from buying homes in Myers Park, one of Charlotte’s most affluent and least racially diverse neighborhoods.

Barber said the issue is important to the civil rights group because housing patterns are now being used as a proxy to re-segregate public schools.

“If the neighborhoods are restricted and you build schools to accommodate the neighborhoods,” he said, “then you have de facto segregation.”

The two sides have 30 days from the committee’s Dec. 8 ruling to negotiate a settlement. If no agreement is reached, the NAACP must decide whether it will file a lawsuit. The committee’s ruling has no force of law.

In earlier negotiations, the NAACP had requested, among other things: A $12,000 donation from the Myers Park group, $10,000 for a joint conference on the legacy of restrictive housing covenants and a full-page newspaper ad denouncing such covenants.

Barber declined to discuss the organization’s current demands but said the former offer is no longer on the table. He said the Myers Park group cannot avoid penalty by simply removing the offending document.

"It's kind of like being caught speeding,” he said. “You can't just slow down; you've got to pay the fine... You would hope that somebody like Myers Park would own up, man-up... We go back to the table in a very, very serious way.”

***

Below is the statement emailed to Qcitymetro.com:

At one time, Myers Park Homeowners Association (MPHA) published a sample of recorded deed restrictions for Myers Park on our web site. These were published solely for the purpose of making homeowners and developers aware that there were set-back and other building-related restrictions to be adhered to when making any modification to, addition to, or redeveloping an existing property.

These deed restrictions were recorded almost 100 years ago by the developer of Myers Park. They contain discriminatory language which was, at that time, enforced. The deed restrictions of many neighborhoods that were developed prior to World War II contain similar language. The restrictions on race were, of course, declared invalid in the the 1940's. However, the language remains in the documents recorded as historical relic. MPHA has no authority to change this wording as recorded. The original language is offensive. We did not publish this with the intent to discriminate. We did not publish it with the intent to harm. It is regrettable that these words appeared on our site, particularly without an explanation. To those who read and were offended, we apologize. The Myers Park Homeowners Association has never attempted to discriminate against anyone.

We consider our neighborhood a place of special beauty within Charlotte. That beauty can only be enhanced by diversity.

Pamela May
President, Myers Park Homeowners Association

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