The Supreme Court: Device for Division

A lot of people who are for housing integration in theory do not care so much for it in practice—and many are the devices that have been used to avoid court bans against neighborhood covenants. Three years ago, Deerfield, 111., an upper-middle-class suburb of Chicago, thought up a new way to keep Negroes out of white areas. Last week the U.S. Supreme Court, in effect, upheld Deerfield's device.

In 1959 Morris Milgram, a product of New York's Lower East Side and an ar dent tilter at the windmills of social injustice, announced plans for a 51-home development in Deerfield. Milgram is in the business of building houses—and his passion is building them for both Negroes and whites.

Deerfield was horrified. Home owners moved fast, voted overwhelming approval of a $500,000 bond issue for new city parks—laid out, as it just so happened, to include the 22 acres Milgram had bought for his development. Milgram refused to sell, so city officials applied their power of eminent domain and condemned his land. The reason for all this was clear:

Deerfield simply did not want integrated housing.

Milgram sued, claiming that the city had violated the 14th Amendment by grabbing up land meant for integrated homes. The Illinois Supreme Court heard the case, turned Milgram down, saying: "The power of eminent domain cannot be made to depend upon the peculiar social, racial, religious or political predilections of either the condemning authority or the affected property owner." Milgram's attorney appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Last week the Supreme Court refused to consider the case, thereby upholding Deerfield's action—and in effect giving sanction to segregation-through-condemnation. Commenting on the court's refusal, Federal Housing Administrator Robert Weaver said: "The danger now lies in just how prevalent this condemnation device will become. That's the real crux."