Integrating East Lansing

Despite the 1948 U.S. Supreme Court decision ending state enforcement of restrictive housing covenants, in the 1960 census only eleven non-whites, likely aided by white proxy buyers, owned homes in East Lansing. Real estate agencies let homeowners pick the buyer they sold to. This helped sustain housing segregation and kept people of color from owning property. In 1964 realtors blocked Robert Green, a Black professor at Michigan State University and an East Lansing Human Relations Commission member, from buying a home. Green wrote to Governor George Romney, who advised him to file a complaint with the Michigan Civil Rights Commission, which Michigan’s 1963 constitution had empowered with “general authority to investigate alleged racial discrimination.” A housing discrimination complaint filed by Robert Green in 1964 led the Michigan Civil Rights Commission to order a local realty company to sell to Green. Not wanting the company to profit from him, Green purchased a different home at 207 Bessemaur Drive. Green’s high-profile case spurred local advocacy against housing discrimination. Student organizations and civil rights groups, united under the title of the “East Lansing Civil Rights Movement,” led protests and sit-ins for fair housing. The East Lansing Human Relations Commission pushed for a fair housing ordinance, but the city council delayed action until April 8, 1968, four days after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Ordinance No. 213 prohibited housing discrimination and penalized violators.