I’m not up on my US constitution so I had no idea about the Takings Clause in the Fifth Amendment, which “allows the federal government to take private property for public use if the government provides ‘just compensation'”. That sounds nice in theory but the reality is much darker (pun intended?):
Residential segregation isn’t just the work of homeowners, real estate agents, and bankers. Local, state, and federal government governments have also played a major roles in enforcing segregated housing. This history was documented on an intimate scale by scholar Mara Cherkasky and family descendant Athena V. Scott, who detail how the Scotts of Washington, DC, lost five homes to eminent domain between 1912 and 1948 while the government enabled white gentrification and maintained segregated schools in the nation’s capital.
The ending of the article is saddening but not surprising and definitely not a rarity. I implore you to read the full JSTOR Daily article and then read “They Want Us Out of This Place”: How One DC Family Lost Five Homes to Eminent Domain, the journal article that spawned it.
Related: JSTOR’s Black History Month article picks and the gentrification of Black Lives Matter