Black Americans And The Racist Architecture Of Homeownership
This story is part of an NPR series, We Hold These Truths, on American democracy.
Last summer, DonnaLee Norrington had a dream about owning a home. Not the figurative kind, but a literal dream, as she slept in the rental studio apartment in South Los Angeles that she was sharing with a friend.
At around 2 a.m., Norrington remembers, God said to me, Why don t you get a mortgage that doesn t move? And in my head I knew that meant a fixed mortgage.
The very next morning â she made an appointment with Mark Alston, a local mortgage broker well known in South LA Black community, to inquire about purchasing her very own home for the first time.
, on American democracy.
Last summer, DonnaLee Norrington had a dream about owning a home. Not the figurative kind, but a literal dream, as she slept in the rental studio apartment in South Los Angeles that she was sharing with a friend.
At around 2 a.m., Norrington remembers, God said to me, Why don t you get a mortgage that doesn t move? And in my head I knew that meant a fixed mortgage. / Nevil Jackson for NPR
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DonnaLee Norrington in her bedroom in Compton, Calif. Last summer, as she slept in a rental studio apartment in South Los Angeles, she had a dream about owning a home for the first time. Norrington was 59 at the time.
Black Americans And The Racist Architecture Of Homeownership
By Jonaki Mehta
May 8, 2021
, on American democracy.
Last summer, DonnaLee Norrington had a dream about owning a home. Not the figurative kind, but a literal dream, as she slept in the rental studio apartment in South Los Angeles that she was sharing with a friend.
At around 2 a.m., Norrington remembers, “God said to me, ‘Why don’t you get a mortgage that doesn’t move?’ And in my head I knew that meant a fixed mortgage.”
The very next morning she made an appointment with Mark Alston, a local mortgage broker well known in South LA Black community, to inquire about purchasing her very own home for the first time.
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A new horror anthology TV series, “Them: Covenant,” is making news for its grisly depictions of violence against a 1950s Black family in their new home in the then-white city of Compton. Without the supernatural elements, the decades-long stories of Black people trying to take up residence in Los Angeles County’s white neighborhoods are more than scary enough.
L.A. didn’t start out that way. Of the 22 adults among the
the first settlers, who set up housekeeping and created Los Angeles in 1781, 10 had African ancestry. And the last governor of Mexican-ruled California, Pio Pico, was of mixed race.