The US Fair Housing Act of 1968, enacted as Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act in the week after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr, outlawed discrimination in the sale, rental and financing of housing on the basis of race, colour, religion and national origin (later extended to sex, disability and family status). It directly confronted the redlining, restrictive covenants and discriminatory lending that had segregated American cities. Enforcement initially relied on individual complaints and was widely seen as weak. Later amendments strengthened its provisions.
The Act named the spatial logic of residential segregation as a matter of federal law and made housing discrimination formally illegal. Although patterns of segregation proved durable, it established the legal basis for challenging the mechanisms that had divided cities by race.
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