Throughout the twentieth century, lenders withheld mortgages from African Americans and other people of color. During the appraisal process, the Federal Housing Authority (FHA) ordered local lenders to use its color-coded Home Owner’s Loan Corporation (HOLC) residential security maps to assess financial risk. Areas outlined in green and blue, populated by whites, were in good standing, while lenders considered areas outlined in yellow and red, often made up of Jewish communities, immigrants, white laborers, and African Americans, a high risk. This practice, known now as redlining, outlined neighborhoods in red, often leading to financial disinvestment.

Mapping Inequality is a digital humanities project including the original HOLC maps for major cities across the United States in the mid-1900s, and other state/local maps showing similar lending practices.

In class, you previously explored images of HOLC maps for Philadelphia, PA, and Camden, NJ (as pictured above). Use the digital versions of each map to further explore each city, selecting one or more neighborhoods on the map. 

• Be sure to select at least one neighborhood from each category by hovering over the color-coded map key.  
• Select the AREA DESCRIPTIONS for each neighborhood, or SCAN to view the original primary source documents for each map (when available).
• The CONTEXT tab provides essays written by local historians, geographers, and other scholars for some of the cities on the map, including Philadelphia.

As time permits, select one or more other cities to analyze and compare/contrast the data from these cities with the maps of Philadelphia, PA, and Camden, NJ you explored earlier.