GOVERNMENT AT all levels became involved in promoting and enforcing the restrictive covenants. Throughout the nation, courts ordered African Americans evicted from homes they had purchased. State supreme courts upheld the practice when it was challenged—in Alabama, California, Colorado, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, New York, North Carolina, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. In the many hundreds of such cases, judges endorsed the view that restrictive covenants did not violate the Constitution because they were private agreements.
