Dallas / Fort Worth Local News

Whites Only! The History Of New Bush Neighborhood

Reporting
Bud Gillett

DALLAS (CBS 11 / TXA 21) ―

Click to enlarge 1 of 1: This house at 10141 Daria Place in Dallas is expected to be the new home of George and Laura Bush.
KTVT / KTXA

Close

numSlides of totalImages

The neighborhood where George and Laura Bush are buying a house is one of the most exclusive in North Texas.

And until just a few years ago, it was downright restrictive.

As we first reported Thursday, the Bushes are buying a house in the Preston Hollow area of Dallas. The house on Daria Place is in a neighborhood known as the James Meaders Estates.

Until the year 2000, the neighborhood association's covenant said only white people could live there—unless they were servants.

Property records at the Dallas County Clerk's office reveal the neighborhood's original restrictions. The covenant of the James Meaders Estates subdivision says, "Said property shall be used and occupied by white persons only except these covenants shall not prevent occupancy by domestic servants of a different race or nationality in the employ of a tenant."

This is a scan of that part of the original document:

The covenant was enacted in 1956. Eight years earlier, in 1948, the U.S. Supreme Court made it illegal to enforce such covenants. The court said although private groups could legally make agreements to exclude people of certain races from using property, the states could not enforce them.

It's not known whether anyone ever tried to enforce that part of the Meaders Estates covenant.

The residents of the neighborhood rescinded that part of the covenant in 2000.

Click here to read the entire original covenant and the amendments which removed the racially restrictive parts of it.