The Shelley’s home in St. Louis was ground zero for the 1948 ruling that struck down neighborhood Freedom of Association. That year, a weaponized Supreme Court invented a “right” of forced entry that a more sober and diverse Supreme Court had unanimously rejected in 1926. Urban chaos exploded when the Court got it wrong.
As detailed in Part 1, dozens of major U.S. cities experienced a cooling of growth in the 1930s and then suffered huge losses after WW2, reversing over a century of previous expansion and prosperity. Two big factors in that decline were the unprecedented federal assaults on the historical work/save/invest ethic via nationalizing home mortgages (instant bank credit) in the 1930s and the 1935 nationalization of unions triggering the downfall of urban manufacturing that froze millions of middle-class jobs.
A third and more devastating federal action was inventing the “right” of forced entry by blacks (or anyone else) into previously peaceful English, German, Irish, Polish, Italian and other diverse ethnic communities. This final act of reckless social engineering permanently chased away millions of established urban residents and replaced them with a new class of predominantly poor, rural, uneducated people who often had little or no experience with the rigors of owning and maintaining property.
The federal imposition that chased people out of stable urban communities was the Supreme Court’s 1948 Shelley vs. Kraemer decision that abolished Freedom of Association in American neighborhoods.
This radical decision reversed the 1926 Corrigan vs. Buckley ruling that had unanimously protected those community rights in a very similar case. Unfortunately, both rulings have been largely forgotten in today’s climate of extreme aversion to anything branded “racism.” That reflexive avoidance has left enormous gaps in the public record.
How freedom of association died. Freedom of association is arguably one of our most important rights. Work where you want, employ who want, live where you want — all based on who you want to associate with. ABN
American Buddhist Net 