Fair Housing Meter’s first historic reading, for July 4, 1776, was 0%. Although the Declaration of Independence proclaimed that “all men are created equal,” the new nation permitted human beings to be owned by other human beings. As explained in that inaugural historic reading, a nation cannot have measurable fair housing while slavery remains legal. So, despite important developments over the following decades, the national Meter needed to remain at 0% for the better part of a century.
Finally, the situation changed on December 6, 1865, when Georgia became the 27th state to ratify the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, providing the three-fourths majority needed for ratification. The amendment, which Congress had approved in January 1865, abolished slavery and involuntary servitude throughout the United States, except as punishment for a crime following conviction. This constitutional milestone finally made it possible for Fair Housing Meter to register a reading above 0%.
President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, had already represented a monumental step toward abolishing slavery. However, it was a wartime measure, declaring freedom for enslaved people in designated areas rebelling against the Union, while excluding loyal border states and certain Union-controlled areas of the Confederacy. Implementing the proclamation also depended heavily on the advancement of Union forces. Although the proclamation transformed the Civil War into a struggle for freedom as well as preservation of the Union, slavery remained legal in parts of the United States. Because Fair Housing Meter measures the nation as a whole, the Meter could not rise above 0%, despite this extraordinary progress toward emancipation.
Ratification of the 13th Amendment marked a fundamentally different achievement. For the first time, the Constitution prohibited the general institution of chattel slavery nationwide. This, of course, had profound implications for fair housing and equal opportunity (FHEO). People who had been legally treated as property were now constitutionally protected against enslavement, removing the most fundamental legal obstacle to establishing independent households, living with family members without the threat of their sale, choosing where to reside, and owning property.
Although the 13th Amendment represented a turning point, it did not automatically establish equal housing opportunities or eliminate racial and other forms of discrimination that had been prevalent in American society since the nation’s founding. Millions of formerly enslaved people faced poverty, hostility, violence, and other obstacles to obtaining land, housing, and economic independence.
By December 1865, Southern states had already begun enacting discriminatory Black Codes, laws designed to preserve many of slavery’s economic and social restrictions. Mississippi, for example, passed a law in November 1865 prohibiting Black residents from renting or leasing land outside incorporated towns and cities. In the meantime, President Andrew Johnson’s policies restoring property to former Confederate owners stymied efforts to help formerly enslaved people acquire land through the Freedmen’s Bureau.
The 13th Amendment also did not itself establish a nationwide guarantee of equal treatment in housing transactions. Further legislation, constitutional protections, and enforcement efforts would be needed to combat discrimination and advance fair housing.
For the first time in American history, Fair Housing Meter can register a reading above 0%. But the increase is just one percentage point, recognizing the historic importance of abolishing slavery while acknowledging that this monumental achievement was only a necessary first step toward fair housing and equal opportunity, not the achievement of those goals themselves.
Historic Fair Housing Meter reading for December 6, 1865: 1%.