Glossary
Subject-Specific Terms
Fair housing: For our collection, we understand fair housing to have two meanings. First and foremost, the term relates to the Fair Housing Act of 1968, which cemented access to housing without discrimination as a legal right for citizens of the United States (The United States Department of Justice, 2015)(U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, n.d.). As suggested by the few materials in this collection alone, this legal victory was the result of decades of advocacy by marginalized groups in this country. While the Fair Housing Act in its current form offers protection for a variety of specific classes of identity, we recognize that the right to safe, affordable housing without harassment or discrimination extends to everyone, including those without resident status.
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (n.d.). Housing Discrimination Under the Fair Housing Act. U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Retrieved December 4, 2021, from https://www.hud.gov/program_offices/fair_housing_equal_opp/fair_housing_act_overview
The United States Department of Justice. (2015, August 6). The Fair Housing Act. The United States Department of Justice. https://www.justice.gov/crt/fair-housing-act-1
Housing discrimination: For our collection, we understand housing discrimination to be any effort to deny or restrict the movement and sheltering of people on the basis of identity (e.g. race, ethnicity, class, etc.) or perceived difference. As evidenced by the legal definition provided by the National Archives and Records Administration (2016), this term’s meaning is often tied to the Fair Housing Act’s legalistic application towards “discrimination in the advertising, sale, and rental of housing including 'blockbusting' and 'redlining.'" While we recognize such, we also want to push for a recognition of the many tacit, often systemic, forms of discrimintation that have and continue to restrict movement.
National Archives and Records Administration. (2016, August 15). Classification 177: Discrimination in Housing. National Archives. https://www.archives.gov/research/investigations/fbi/classifications/177-housing-discrimination.html
Racially-restrictive covenants: A common way developers enacted housing discrimination in Ann Arbor and the greater Washtenaw County was through the creation of “restrictions and regulations” for the lots in newly designated “subdivisions” (Justice InDeed, n.d.-a). With each new neighborhood they registered with local government, developers could impose legal restrictions, known as covenants, that limited the ability for tenants to rent, lease, or buy property on the basis of race, ethnicity, appearance, religion, and other personal identifiers (Justice InDeed, n.d.-a). In effect, many white landowners utilized covenants to enact segregation and inflict racial and ethnic violence against marginalized people, specifically Black residents, who sought shelter.
It is important to note that racially-restrictive policies surrounding renting in Ann Arbor did not need to be codified into law to be enacted. For an example of a property where exclusion was pursued with no known covenant in place, our collection contains a letter (CW: racially-violent language, intimidation tactics, racist violence) about a boarding house at 307 N. State St. (Justice InDeed, n.d.-b).
Justice InDeed. (n.d.-a). Mapping. Justice InDeed. Retrieved December 6, 2021, from https://www.justiceindeedmi.org/mapping
- - -. (n.d.-b). Subdivisions with Racially Restrictive Covenants in Washtenaw County, MI. Subdivisions with Racially Restrictive Covenants in Washtenaw County, MI. Retrieved December 6, 2021, from https://umich.maps.arcgis.com/home/webmap/viewer.html?webmap=eb92f80451a4467384fd1b4687271e78
Segregation: We rely on the Library of Congress’s (LOC) definitions of two types of segregation. These are “de jure”, which the LOC defines as discrimintation “sanctioned by law,” and “de facto,” that which is “true in fact but not officially sanctioned” (Library of Congress, 2014). In our collection, examples of both exist, including practices that since 1968 have constituted de jure segregation under the Fair Housing Act and de facto segregation of Black children through the public education model of Ann Arbor that was occurring almost two decades later.
Library of Congress. (2014, October 10). Legal Timeline - The Civil Rights Act of 1964: A Long Struggle for Freedom. Exhibitions - Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/civil-rights-act/legal-events-timeline.html
Urban renewal: Within our archive, a 1959 report by Council of the City of Ann Arbor, Michigan defines urban renewal as a “nationwide, Federally-assisted program to prevent and eliminate urban blight and deterioration.” Within this short summary, there are several key takeaways that shape how our team defines the term. As a historical force, urban renewal is often linked to efforts by the United States government in the middle of the 20th century to fund the redevelopment of cities. This connection is critical to note as acts of urban renewal, such as those in Ann Arbor, were enabled by the backing of local and/or national government, making it possible (as seen in this report) for residents to be “legally” displaced. Looking towards the terms “urban blight and deterioration,” we note the long history of viewing non-white people as unclean in the United States and the way that these terms, if not challenged, can support the idea that urban renewal is a benevolent intervention. With this in mind, our team defines urban renewal as a governmentally-facilitated movement of the 20th century that used ideas about cleanliness to disproportionately sever communities of color from property that city governments found to be valuable.
Metadata Terms
Metadata: For our team, we use the word metadata to mean the various ways we describe the context of, character of, and relationships between items in our collection. This project uses the terms in the following glossary entries to standardize the way we talk about key aspects of each item, whether that be the people it represents or the location it relates to.
Annotation Creator: This field provides the person or people who have visibly contributed to the item by leaving comments, drawings, or other mark-ups. For materials where this information is unclear or not available, our team will provide the word “Unknown”.
Bibliographic Citation: This field provides an APA citation for the source of the digitized item.
Content Warning: This field provides information about an item’s harmful content, such as racist language, violent imagery, and other sensitive material.
Contextual Citation(s): This field provides APA citations for material that helped our team to build descriptions of the material that accurately reflect the people, places, events, and themes covered in the item.
Creator(s) of the Record: This field provides the person, people, or groups who were instrumental in the production of the item, such as writers and photographers. For materials where this information is unclear or not available, our team will provide the word “Unknown”.
Date: This field provides the date most associated with the item, which is often the day of its creation. For materials where this information is unclear or not available, our team will provide an approximate timeframe for the item’s creation beginning with the word “circa.”
Description: This field provides information about both the item itself and the broader history surrounding it. When important context is not clear within the document, specifically for visual materials, our team has attempted to offer such with citations for outside sources.
Location: This field provides a geographical location that is essential to an item, whether that be where it was created (e.g. an address of a building in a photo) or a place it describes. For items that cover multiple or unclear locations, our team has done our best to provide context for our choice. Each item can be found by its location on our Interactive Map feature.
Manuscripts: This label used in our tags section defines works that are unpublished or personal in nature, such as letters.
Medium: This field provides the physical material of the item. Examples include paper, film, and audio tape.
People Represented in the Record: This field provides the names of important people represented in the record, whether visually or textually. For materials where this information is unclear or not available, our team will provide the word “Unknown.”
Related Item: This field provides links to items with similar content in the archive.
Rights Holder: This field provides the name of the person or group that oversees the copyright permissions for an item.
Rights: This field provides a description of the rights reserved by the person or group that oversees the copyright permissions for an item.
Source: This field provides the name of the repository where the digitized copy of an item comes from.
Subject: This field provides the thematic subject or subjects of the record as designated by our team. These are Mapping Housing Discrimintation, Mapping Reparative Legal Efforts, and Mapping Resistance and Community Action.
Tag: This field provides a searchable element for the items that provides a shortened name of each subject (i.e. MHD, MRCA, and MRLE) and a record type (e.g. “city_records,” “letters_and_manuscripts,” etc.).
Title: This field provides the given title of an item, often directly as provided by the source of its digitized copy. If no title was provided, our team has done our best to provide one that fits the content of each item.
Type: This field provides the kind of record that the item is (e.g. newspaper clipping, map, etc.).