On this day I thought it appropriate to recognize a crusader in the fight for civil rights in Chicago. I hope you take the time to read. Satter, Mark J. (22 Feb. 1916-12 July 1965), attorney and civil rights activist grew up in Lawndale, an immigrant Jewish neighborhood in Chicago. Beginning in 1944 Satter purchased several properties in Chicagos West Garfield Park neighborhood, where he lived with his wife and growing family. This was both a financial decision based on his knowledge that his heart murmur might one day prevent him from working and an idealistic move based on a radical thought--that blacks and whites could live together in well-maintained, owner-occupied neighborhoods. Like many northern cities postwar Chicago experienced a massive increase in its black population. Most black newcomers lived in the overcrowded Black Belt. By the early 1950s, however, vacancies opened in white areas as residents moved to white-only suburbs. Speculators bought low from departing whites and sold high to housing-starved blacks. By purchasing properties in a neighborhood that had some black residents, Satter was acting on the liberal belief that if whites remained in changing areas, all would be well. Then in 1957 Satter stumbled upon the fundamental reason why such neighborhoods often deteriorated. That year a black couple came to him for legal help. They had purchased a property for $13,900, had fallen behind on a payment, and were being evicted. Satter discovered that the real estate agent who sold them their property had himself purchased it only weeks before--for $4,300. This inflated price was particularly perilous because Satters clients had bought the property on contract. Contract purchasers made down payments and paid for taxes, insurance, maintenance, and interest, yet their contracts dictated that they would lose their property if they missed even one payment. If the purchase price was dramatically inflated, then a missed payment, and loss of the property and everything invested in it, was likely. Satter discovered that his clients real estate agent owned scores of buildings in changing areas that he had sold to blacks on contract and then repossessed after his customers missed a payment. The agent was one of dozens of major speculators who purchased properties from whites and resold them at double to quadruple market value on contract to blacks. To keep up their grossly inflated payments, black contract buyers neglected maintenance, subdivided their apartments, and charged their tenants high rents. Their white neighbors witnessed the overcrowding and neglect, but were ignorant of their cause. Satter immediately began a one-man crusade against exploitative contract sellers. He wrote newspaper articles, gave speeches, made radio broadcasts, and penned weekly columns addressed to black audiences. He was responsible for a wave of newspaper and television coverage as he shared his growing knowledge of real estate exploitation with journalists. He insisted that the price of property must not be based on the race of the buyer. Banks must stop creating slums by capriciously and arbitrarily refusing to loan to black buyers, thus forcing blacks to purchase from speculators whose credit practices devastated communities. Satter also fought to have wage garnishment outlawed. Merchants had induced some of his clients to buy overpriced, high-interest items on credit, and then garnished their wages when they missed their payments. They also added inflated legal fees to the garnishment, and some continued docking their creditees wages long after the original debt had been repaid. To Satter the core problem was that garnishment allowed one person to labor and another to collect that persons wages. As Satter continued his public crusades, his private situation grew untenable. He was the sole support of his wife and children. Most of his clients were unable to pay him. The neighborhood where his properties were concentrated declined and he suffered tenants who didnt pay or, worse, severely vandalized their apartments. His financial precariousness, coupled with his distress over his inability to stop the urban decline whose roots he understood, caused him profound stress. In February 1965 Satter collapsed in his office. He underwent open heart surgery that June and died a few weeks later at the age of forty-nine. His properties were sold for next to nothing to the speculators he had battled. Satters ideas about the role of bank redlining and credit exploitation in the creation of slums were picked up by Chicago activists after his death and ultimately helped lead to the passage of the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (1975) and the Community Reinvestment Act (1977). ________________________________________ Bibliography Satters papers are at the Newberry Library in Chicago, Illinois. For his life story set in the broader context of battles over race and housing in Chicago, see Beryl Satter, Family Properties: Race, Real Estate, and the Exploitation of Black Urban America (2009), from which all quotations in the above biographical sketch are drawn. Citation: Beryl Satter. Satter, Mark J.; anb.org/articles/15/15-01327.html; American National Biography Online Feb. 2000. Access Date: Sun Jan 18 2015 04:56:24 GMT-0600 (Central Standard Time) Copyright © 2000 American Council of Learned Societies. Published by Oxford University Press.
Posted on: Mon, 19 Jan 2015 11:25:37 +0000
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