Frog Hollow. Susan Campbell

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      The bulk of Frog Hollow was rated “C,” the next-to-lowest ranking. One appraisal report described the land as “slightly rolling,” and favorable influences included “nearness to places of employment.” However, the buildings, said the report, were older and business and industry were encroaching into residential areas. As for the inhabitants, most were factory workers, according to the report; the families were “mixed” racially and the number of “relief families” was “quite a few.” The report said the neighborhood was “very old and congested” and suggested that lenders should “exercise utmost caution.”¹⁴ From the 1937 map, green-tinted “A” areas—the highest ranking—were nonexistent in Hartford, though there were a few scattered blue (B) areas in the extreme north and south ends of the city.

      The corporation ranked blocks with larger minority populations with a “D” as the riskiest neighborhoods for issuing mortgages. Even the presence of a small number of minority families could drop the ranking of a neighborhood to a “C.” Defaults were assumed to be most likely where people of color lived. The effect was the equivalent of shutting the door on black home ownership. As those rent neighborhoods deteriorated, residents who could afford to began to move to the suburbs, taking with them their taxes and support of local schools.¹⁵

      Meanwhile, the former Hartford residents who had moved to the suburbs pulled the rope up after themselves by writing racist covenants that excluded black residents, thereby pushing suburban dwelling even further out of reach and consigning generations of families of color to low-resource neighborhoods. The Federal Housing Administration, while encouraging more home ownership, allowed illegal restrictions on mortgages in favor of whites. In 1955 one writer said: “From its inception the FHA set itself up as the protector of the all white neighborhood. It sent its agents into the field to keep Negroes and other minorities from buying houses in white neighborhoods. It exerted pressure against builders who dared to build for minorities, and against lenders willing to lend on mortgages.”¹⁶

      After redlining and withholding resources from vulnerable neighborhoods, the FHA called for restrictive covenants in the suburbs that helped keep neighborhoods homogenous—and white. Racial or ethnic mixing was considered “undesirable encroachment.”¹⁷ The FHA protected “all-white neighborhoods” and its field agents were charged with keeping “Negroes and other minorities from buying houses in white neighborhoods.”¹⁸ What had been a relatively integrated city became divided strictly by race, and then again by class.¹⁹ All this happened with the support of—in fact, the blessing of—the federal government.

      By this point, the Frog Hollow neighborhood had peaked in population, and the apartments that had been home to factory workers stood empty. And then the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Prior to December 1941, city officials polled personnel managers, who all said that Hartford needed more housing for its workers. Though manufacturing was moving elsewhere, the town continued to grow from a population of 138,000 in 1920 to 165,000 in 1930. The immigration wave slowed, but southern African Americans were streaming into the city.