When the New Deal was launched during the Great Depression, it represented the largest investment into the public good in the history of the nation. In addition to establishing minimum wage laws and worker standards, it also rolled out a series of public projects and federal programs. One such program was the Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC), which was created to stabilize the housing market after increased foreclosures. This government-controlled entity refinanced roughly one million homes, effectively creating the white middle class with its more generous financing. Less than 1% of the $3.5 billion spent on HOLC between 1933 and 1936 went to Black households–even as the taxes from people of all races were used to fund the program.

This is because HOLC assigned color-coding to neighborhoods across the nation, deeming them as “green” (or “A”) and worthy of mortgages, “blue”/”B” and “yellow”/”C,” which were decreasingly worthy, or “red” or “D” as “hazardous” places to provide loans. Black neighborhoods (and even white neighborhoods adjacent to Black ones) were deemed red.