So neighborhood groups vigilantly enforced racial covenants. Racial covenants were promises made by homeowners that they would never sell, rent, or lease their homes to nonwhites, guaranteeing that a neighborhood association could sue any white homeowner who stepped out of line by selling to blacks. The FHA only stopped recommending racial covenants in February 1950, two years after the Supreme Court found such covenants unenforceable in the landmark 1948 case Shelly v. Kramer.27
