My son, Charlie Luband posted this on Facebook about his house
Reminders of Racism Are Everywhere
For example, my house.
My family has lived in our house for almost exactly ten years. The house has an anchor on a rock out front and was completed in 1936. The history of our house is a reminder of racism in suburban New York in the early part of the 20th century. We didn’t know this history when we bought the house.
The anchor is from the SS Yarmouth, a steamship built in 1887 in Nova Scotia. In 1919 the Yarmouth was purchased by the Black Star Line, which had been founded by black nationalist Marcus Garvey, and was known as the Frederick Douglass (although registration papers were never officially filed to change the name). The captain of the all-black crew for the Frederick Douglass was Captain Joshua Cockburn.
Joshua Cockburn and his wife Pauline were prosperous and lived in Harlem in the 1920s. In 1932, they purchased land and built this house in Edgemont Hills. After the house was built, they were sued by a neighbor. Apparently, the original deed covenants for Edgemont Hills said that “Negros” could only reside in the neighborhood as servants and could not own or otherwise use the property.
Discriminatory deed covenants were not found by the US Supreme Court to be unconstitutional until 1948. Refusal to sell a house to a person based on race wasn’t prohibited by federal law until the Fair Housing Act of 1968.
Although Joshua and Pauline Cockburn fought the suit to enforce the racist Edgemont Hills deed covenants (and were represented by Arthur Garfield Hays of the American Civil Liberties Union and a young Thurgood Marshall from the N.A.A.C.P.), the Cockburns lost, and thus lost the right to live in the house that they had built. (The argument at trial was that the United States had no legal definition of “Negro,” which meant that the restriction was unenforceable. Hays argued that “No one but the Nazis of Germany can be certain about a race.” This was 1937.)]
Notwithstanding the fact that the Cockburns had lost the lawsuit brought against them, no order was ever entered to enforce the judge’s decision, and the Cockburns stayed in the house. (The Cockburns’ lawyers convinced the plaintiffs that they could lose on appeal and then the covenants would no longer be enforceable, so the plaintiffs held off.) Joshua Cockburn died in 1942. Pauline eventually moved to Pawtucket, Rhode Island, and died in 1967, the same year I was born, and one year before the Fair Housing Act.
Captain Joshua Cockburn built a great house, and I am pleased to live in it.