Shortly after re-entering the Oval Office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order targeting “illegal DEI.” The challenge is that “illegal” remains undefined, and the fallout has been large corporations stripping every mention of DEI from their initiatives in anticipation of consequences.
A century ago, Chicago’s Near North Side neighborhood followed a similar trend. The area became the site of the city’s new elite governed by “the Social Register,” which still exists as the publisher of the official lists of the elite in cities around the country. If you wanted to make a name for yourself in Jazz Age Chicago, you had to get on that list.
The main challenge of joining the Social Register was the lack of known criteria. Anonymous judges seemed to decide who would get added or dropped. The result was social desperation. Thus, when the Near North Side Property Owners Association (NNSPOA) sought to bar any person of color from buying or renting property on the Near North Side from 1933 to 1937, residents felt pressured to sign the organization’s “covenant.” (To read the full covenant, see here.)
Standing in 2025 and looking back, it is unclear if the NNSPOA was a group of people or an individual. The neighborhood association’s name was created expressly for the purpose of this covenant and had the sole duty of enforcing this covenant. Regardless, the pressure to conform, even at the cost of what was right, is clear.
The pressure to conform, even at the cost of what was right, is clear.
Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago, located along a stretch of the Near North Side known as “The Magnificent Mile,” became a favorite church for Chicago’s elite during the 1930s. A few of its better-known members, such as the McCormick family of International Harvester Company fame, were among the more than 1,000 other property owners to agree to the NNSPOA’s covenant. Among those other property owners listed in the covenant’s directory: “The Congregation of Fourth Presbyterian Church.”
Racial restrictive covenants are illegal and unenforceable today, but still live in many public archives as relics of a dark past. Most covenants apply only to individual properties. The NNSPOA covenant is an outlier because it was a collective agreement that signed authority over to a “neutral organization” to enforce racial segregation.
I first encountered the covenant in early 2024 when my research partner and fellow Fourth Church member Regan Burke invited me to the Cook County archives. Burke volunteered for the Chicago Covenants Project, a research initiative spurred by Maura Fennelly. Roughly the size of a phonebook, the document contains two main sections: a directory section with the list of legal property owners and a signatory section with signed slips from the door-to-door initiative.
Within minutes of browsing the covenant together, Burke and I were shocked to find a listing in the directory for “The Congregation of Fourth Presbyterian Church” next to a property address southwest of the church’s campus.
This began a journey for me and Burke as we wrestled with our church’s identity and where Carter Memorial Church fit into our history.
At first, we couldn’t believe it. Here was our church’s name on a public document with blatant language in support of segregation. Confusion followed when the signatory associated with our church’s name was identified as Cyrus Moorad, president of “Carter Memorial Church.” This began a journey for me and Burke as we wrestled with our church’s identity and where Carter Memorial Church fit into our history.
We soon found that Carter Memorial Church was a congregation sponsored through Fourth Presbyterian’s former mission incubator program for local immigrant communities.
The church is named after Phoebe Carter, a wealthy Fourth Church member who funded an Assyrian congregation in the incubator mission. Her money supported a worship space and community annex to support Assyrians, most of whom immigrated to escape the Sayfo genocide waged against them in their homeland, which includes parts of modern-day Türkiye, Iran, Iraq and Syria.
Carter Memorial Church was given full independent governance by Fourth in 1920 and still survives today as Carter-Westminster Presbyterian Church just north of Chicago.
As with other signatories such as the Newberry Library, there is no record of the covenant matter being discussed in meeting minutes or official records. Decision-making was likely done on the spot as signatures were gathered door-to-door. However, the gaps of reasoning left by these records can be filled by a story of Chicago’s new elite and the fight they waged to win the Near North Side for their gain.
In his 1929 book The Gold Coast and the Slum, Harvey Zorbaugh describes the near North Side as a neighborhood grappling with its identity. The western side included pockets of immigrant communities stereotyped for violence and “slum” conditions, while the eastern coast along Lake Michigan held some of the city’s finest hotels and mansions.
During the Great Migration, fears were stoked that Black newcomers would cause the “slum” to spill into the elite’s space. Though the Black population represented only around 5% of the Near North Side’s residents at the time, the NNSPOA deemed racial restrictions as necessary for both community – and social – survival.
The NSSPOA pamphlet included a veiled threat that a “neighbor” would be sent to follow up on the covenant’s promise. Because of the Social Register’s undefined requirements, “Keeping Up with the Joneses” reigned supreme and was cited on a couple signatory slips as the primary motivating reason.
Burke and I conducted our research before “illegal DEI” entered the blurred corporate lexicon. The cultural tidal wave of brands turning away from DEI initiatives in 2025 mirrors those who allowed their neighbors to decide their support for the NNSPOA covenant throughout the mid-1930s.
When we presented our research at Fourth Church last fall, attendees made parallels to the arguments made for “White flight,” suburbanization, and the Cold War-era pressures to conform. Others drew comparisons between the 2024 election season and President Trump’s threats to win legal retribution against challengers.
Studying history often forces us to confront how patterns of human behavior repeat over time — especially our desire for acceptance, even at the cost of doing harm. It also reflects how we often embody contradictions despite our good intentions.
Studying history often forces us to confront how patterns of human behavior repeat over time — especially our desire for acceptance, even at the cost of doing harm.
Fourth Presbyterian Church and several of its prominent members are publicly listed in support of a racist document from the 1930s. Yet, during this time, Fourth Church members also actively funded diverse communities of immigrants and featured racial justice articles in the church newsletter and celebrated “Race Relations Sunday.” During the 1960s, Fourth founded a still-functioning tutoring program to support Black children in a nearby housing project. Yet, the church remained notoriously silent during the Civil Rights Movement. Over the past decade, classes, workshops and trainings have been held at Fourth Church to deepen our understanding of racial justice and our church’s past actions worth repentance and reparations. Yet, there is still more work to be done.
As Fourth Church moves through time, each generation of congregants comes to new realizations about how our congregation’s past may have shown “hospitality” but fallen short of Christ’s radical love.
A hundred years may separate us from the NNSPOA agreement, yet in some ways, we live in the same climate where harmful social expectations seek to bend our will in favor of hierarchy. The past and our faith remind us to remain committed to loving all neighbors as ourselves.
Thank you to my research partner, Regan Burke. This article would not be possible without her work.
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