March 2025 Update:
The updated videos below show the spread of racial covenants across Wake County by year as well as how the searchable map will work:
Click the images below to view expanded maps of Raleigh and the overall Wake County view of the area covered by covenants in 1950. View the Earliest Deed containing a Racially Restrictive Covenant.
Download a Comma Separated Data file that can be loaded into a spreadsheet. This data file contains ALL the covenant data identified (including the covenants that can't yet be placed on a map).
Download GIS Data via a county-wide shapefile and sidecar files to display a map of the individual covenants and all associated attributes (grantor, grantee, execution date, property description, etc). The GIS Data includes about 98% of the covenants in the Comma Separated file above. The GIS Data excludes documents not mapped yet, like those with vague property descriptions ("Beginning at the pile of rocks..."). Research continues on these deeds and the ones that can be resolved will be included in future releases. Review Current Release Notes.
A covenant search action in GIS will be coming soon. Preview the covenant search by clicking on the above Wake County Deed Search video. The covenant search is a geospatial title search (rather than the usual text-based grantor-grantee) of the covenants. This search will enable non-technical people to display any racial covenants that may be placed on their property.
Raleigh and Wake County View of Area Covered by Covenants in 1950
Work is nearing completion on the Racially Restrictive Covenants Project. Volunteers have been working over the past year to explore the Wake County Register of Deeds archives and uncover historic insights into our community’s past. Through the Racially Restrictive Covenants Project, our goal is to catalog and map “restrictive covenants” embedded in legal documents across hundreds of properties. These covenants imposed racial restrictions on who could buy or live on certain lands in Wake County. The project will result in a searchable, interactive map that raises awareness and fosters understanding of how these practices impacted our neighborhoods and the community today.
New Process Developed for Documenting Covenants
Using Optical Character Recognition, volunteers were able to scan and search approximately 600,000 pages of documents from the Register of Deeds database, covering the period from 1900 to around 1950. From this, 14,500 deeds were identified as containing racially restrictive covenants. This method represents a significant step in historical documentation, and the process is being documented so that it is accessible for other jurisdictions interested in similar projects.
A Community-Driven Effort
Community volunteers have been essential to this project. A call for volunteers led to nearly 200 responses from community members to undergraduate college students to legal scholars and more. Thanks to their dedication, all 20,000 deeds were read, indexed, reviewed, and are now being mapped, representing around 8,000 hours of unpaid work. This response demonstrates a strong community desire to understand and confront the forces that have shaped Raleigh and Wake County and to use this knowledge to address current issues.
Discovering History Through Deeds
Reading through thousands of these deeds reveals a broader historical narrative, reflecting significant events such as the Great Depression, both World Wars and the growth of Wake County. Each deed offers a window into the personalities, power structures and conflicts that shaped our community’s physical and social landscape.
Early results from our map reveal patterns: areas that historically restricted African Americans often align with present-day neighborhoods that struggle with lower income levels, limited access to services and fewer opportunities for generational wealth. Although we’re still completing the map, a preliminary view of about 10% of the deeds (from select downtown neighborhoods for 1900–1950) reflects these disparities.
While cataloguing the deeds is completed, the work to build the interactive map continues. Check back here for updates!