Home / Full timeline / A U.S. administrative law judge in Atlanta, Georgia, orders Gordon C. Blackwell, a real estate broker, to pay $75,000 to a Black couple whom he had discriminated against in the sale of a house.
A U.S. administrative law judge in Atlanta, Georgia, orders Gordon C. Blackwell, a real estate broker, to pay $75,000 to a Black couple whom he had discriminated against in the sale of a house.
1989 (Dec 21)
A U.S. administrative law judge in Atlanta, Georgia, ordered Gordon C. Blackwell, a real estate broker, to pay $75,000 to a black couple whom he had discriminated against in the sale of a house, Judge Alan W. Heifetz also found that Blackwell, a sixty-six-year-old resident of Sandy Springs, Georgia, bad flouted the civil rights of Terryl and Janella Herron by refusing to close the sale of a Stone Mountain, Georgia, home. He also ordered the broker to complete the sale of the house. The case was the first in the nation under the recently enacted federal law, which "provides quicker and harsher penalties if bias is proved." Gordon H. Mansfield, assistant secretary for fair housing at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), said the case was "a landmark in civil rights enforcement... making housing discrimination expensive as well as unlawful."
References:
- • Hornsby, Alton. Chronology of African-American History: Significant Events and People from 1619 to the Present. Detroit: Gale Research, 1995.