Bethesda’s early- to mid-20th-century housing development was heavily influenced by racially restrictive covenants that excluded nonwhite and non-Christian buyers. Along with other “Downcounty” areas of Montgomery County inside the Beltway, Bethesda contained numerous housing subdivisions whose developers or homeowners included racial covenants in property deeds.

These provisions prohibited the sale, lease, or occupation of homes by members of specified racial, ethnic, and religious groups, including Black, Jewish, Asian, Armenian, Greek, Indian, Japanese, and Syrian residents. Developers in Bethesda and similar suburbs used these covenants to create racially homogeneous white neighborhoods under the belief that doing so would preserve property values and stability.​

These private agreements were legally upheld after Corrigan v. Buckley (1928), which confirmed their validity, and remained common until Shelley v. Kramer (1948) made them unenforceable in court. Even so, they continued to appear in Bethesda-area deeds until the Fair Housing Act of 1968 outlawed them completely.​

Montgomery County’s Mapping Segregation Project is building a database to show where such covenants existed—specifically focusing on the Bethesda region and other inside-the-Beltway neighborhoods. The effort will visualize patterns of racial exclusion and track demographic changes into the 21st century.​

For more, see the Mapping Segregation Project