In our latest series, “Unlocking the Gates,” Marketplace Special Correspondent Lee Hawkins explores the lasting impact of housing discrimination.

One tool once used to enforce housing discrimination was racial covenants. These were contracts added to property deeds that prevented Black people and other people of color from purchasing, leasing or occupying a property. These clauses were officially outlawed in the 1968 Fair Housing Act, but their impact can still be felt today.

Hawkins joined “Marketplace Morning Report” host David Brancaccio to discuss the lasting legacy of racial covenants. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.

David Brancaccio: I’ve seen them, you’ve seen these — these covenants, even though they’re illegal, they’re there in some cases, and you think they still play out in widening the gap between rich and poor when you’re thinking of it by race?

Lee Hawkins: Oh, 100% because those initial limitations that were put on the Black community played out through the generations, because the attitudes were still there, and there was still a real resistance to sell land to Black people. I spoke with Minneapolis realtor Jackie Barry, who explained it to me this way:

Jackie Barry: If you think about a family being excluded from homeownership, that means now they don’t have the equity within their home to help make other moves for their family.

Brancaccio: Now, if you find you have a racial covenant in the deed on the house that you’re interested in buying or the house you already bought, in Minnesota, among other places, you can apply to have it discharged. But you went pretty high up in the Minnesota government, the office of the Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan, to hear about what’s being done to address the structural problem that underlies this, right, Lee?

Hawkins: Yes, and I think it was critical to do that, because one of the early pioneers of racial covenants policies was a lieutenant governor of the state of Minnesota. Here we are, in today’s times, talking to Lieutenant Governor Flanagan, and so she’s made this a cornerstone of her administration.

Peggy Flanagan: Our legislation that we passed in 2023 was $150 million directed at first-time homebuyers and Black, Indigenous and communities of color. We see that, I think, as a down payment, right, on the work needs to happen. I think when we increase homeownership rates within our communities, it’s a benefit to the state as a whole.

Brancaccio: And you’re talking to realtors with their experience on the ground actually showing homes to prospective buyers, and they had some interesting ideas.

Hawkins: Yes, there were a variety of things that Minneapolis area realtors talked about around the time of George Floyd to actually bring more equity in the real estate industry. Realtor Jackie Barry, who we heard from earlier, sits on the board of Minneapolis area realtors, and here’s her prescription:

Barry: We need to increase our training and development. In Minnesota, a realtor has to complete Fair Housing credits every two years, meaning that they’re getting some type of education related to learning about housing discrimination and how to avoid it, how to represent clients equitably, understanding rules and regulations around fair housing.

Hawkins: One of the things I love about this series, David, is it just doesn’t talk about the history and the problem of racial covenants, but it talks about how there were people, even in those times, who did the right thing, and it wasn’t necessarily about race, it was about justice. And I think that that’s what’s important here. We can’t change the past, but we can certainly shape the present and the future. And all of these people, in some way, have committed themselves to this issue and to talk about it in modern times and acknowledge the modern implication was what we wanted to do for people to know how this affects so many people across the country.