People, Locations, Episodes

Wed, 11.13.1940

Hansberry v. Lee Case is Decided

On this date in 1940, the Supreme Court ruled in Hansberry v. Lee, which ruled that whites cannot bar Blacks from white neighborhoods.

Three years earlier (1937), Carl A. Hansberry, a Black businessman and the father of Lorraine Hansberry, defied the Chicago Woodlawn Property Owners' Association by successfully negotiating the purchase of a building at 6140 Rhodes Avenue. At about the same time, Harry H. Pace, a prominent black attorney and president of the Supreme Liberty Life Insurance Company, purchased a building just east of South Park Way on Sixtieth Street.  Anna M. Lee, a White signatory of the restrictive covenant, filed suit against Hansberry and Pace for $100,000.

When the circuit court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs for equity, the defendants carried their fight to the Supreme Court of Illinois, which also upheld the legality of the restrictive covenant by a vote of six to one. They ordered the confiscation of Hansberry's property.

The United States Supreme Court reversed the decision on this date in 1940 but did not hold that restrictive covenants were void.  It ruled for Hansberry on a legal technicality that an agreement between two property owners respecting the number of signatories to the restrictive covenant agreement is fraudulent. The attorney for Hansberry was Earl B. Dickerson.