Relatively few Black people benefited in the 1930s and 1940s from mortgages backed by the US government

Newly digitized mortgage records from 38 US states reveal the profound racial inequality of two mortgage programmes during the 1930s and 1940s. These loans, supported by the Federal Housing Administration and the Veterans Administration, were mainly responsible for the emergence of a US society that idealized home ownership. However, Black households were systematically excluded from receiving such loans. By contrast, immigrants received mortgages proportional to their number. Immigrants, who were mainly from Europe at the time, were proportionally represented among loan recipients in the United States.