Reason # 19: Racial Discrimination in Rental Housing.
Why do we need to defeat Donald Trump and ensure that a Democrat occupies the White House?
Before we dig into the federal lawsuit against Fred and Donald Trump and Trump Management in 1973, join me in a brief time machine voyage. The first setting is to 1927, taking us back to New York City, where NY’s finest arrested 7 men after a melee, when Ku Klux Klan members disrupted a parade. Fred Trump, (confirmed by the given address of one of the arrested seven), was represented by the same attorney as the other six men. Although the Trump family has long denied that Fred Trump was a Klansman, the evidence is damning.
Now let’s set the time machine to August 2024 and observe the behavior of Donald Trump at a convention of African-American news professionals where, in speaking of his Democratic opponent Kamala Harris, he astonished the group by asserting. “I didn’t know she was black until recently, when she happened to turn black.”
Without considering his birther slanders of Barack Obama, his campaign to execute a group of innocent black and Latino men in New York City and his reference to Nazi-emulating proud boys as “good people”. Our brief time travel experiment demonstrates that pere et fils Trump have been blatantly racist for almost a century.
That brings us to the best documented evidence, introduced in an indictment in 1973 in New York. Within two years of his appointment as corporation president, the U.S. Department of Justice sued Donald Trump, his father and Trump Management for systematic racial discrimination against African Americans in the rental properties they owned.
The DOJ instituted the suit based upon evidence collected by the NYC Human Rights Commission. When the commission received complaints from black prospective apartment renters, who had been told that advertised apartments had already been rented, the group sent white “testers” to apply for same apartment. The white applicants were accepted. Trump Management employees defended their conduct by testifying that they were only doing as they had been directed by the Trump organization.
Donald Trump defended himself by stating that other realty groups had been similarly charged; one of his early deployments of the “what about him” defense.
After fighting the case for two years, Trump Management came to a settlement with the feds. Donald Trump accepted a consent decree, compelling him to place ads in newspapers inviting African-Americans to apply for apartment housing and promising to read the Fair Housing Act. He has never admitted guilt in any form
The Fair Housing Act does not prohibit discrimination against racists in housing applications. Tell Donald Trump that the White House has already been rented, by voting for Kamala Harris in November.
Have a heart; use your mind, search your conscience, and vote for Democratic candidates – across the ballot – on November. 5th.
Please share this message with your friends and please, add your thoughts, to expand upon what are only brief sketches here.
Fred Grannis
August 3, 2024