To Reese, that means having hard conversations about that history with her children, friends and neighbors. She plans to frame the covenant and hang it in her home as evidence of systemic racism that needs to be addressed.

"People will try to say things didn't happen or they weren't as bad as they seem," Reese said. "It's always downplayed."

Gordon argues that racially restrictive covenants are the "original sin" of segregation in America and are largely responsible for the racial wealth gap that exists today.

Gordon said the covenants are not mere artifacts of a painful past. They laid the foundation for other discriminatory practices, such as zoning and redlining, that picked up where covenants left off.

He said white builders and buyers deemed segregation and white supremacy as trendy. Once it was in vogue, people put it in their deeds and assumed that that's what their white buyers wanted. The repetitive language of these deeds, which seems nearly identical from one deed to the next, suggests that racial restrictions were boilerplate clauses.