Shelley v. Kraemer

A restrictive covenant is a rule set up by a property owner that restricts the use of a property for future buyers. It is usually used to prevent unwanted businesses in a certain neighborhood, like stopping a bar  from being established in the middle of a neighborhood or to stop people from damaging . Once states were banned from making racist laws, people began using restrictive covenants and home owner's associations to stop people of other races from living in their neighborhoods.
 Shelley v Kraemer is a case regarding the validity of those rules. The black Shelley family moved into a home with a covenant that banned 'people of the Negro or Mongolian Race' from owning the property. A neighbor, Kraemer, sued to prevent them from living there. The case ended by concluding that the government cannot enforce racist restrictive covenants because it cannot enforce racist laws. In raisin in the sun the Younger family tries to move in to a white neighborhood, but are stopped by the people there, just like the Shelly family in the court case.


Wikipedia's overview of the case of Shelly v Kraemer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelley_v._Kraemer