Transcribe Covenants

In February of 2024, we launched a crowdsourcing transcription project, in partnership with Mapping Prejudice, to document racist covenants in more than 12,000 Washtenaw County property records.

As of April 2025, more than 1000 volunteers from our communities shared more than 5,000 hours of their time to complete this important stage of Justice InDeed’s work. We are incredibly grateful to those volunteers who gave their time and expertise to help us accomplish this monumental task!

In the coming weeks and months, the Justice InDeed team will post updates on results of this effort, including maps of where covenants were most used in Washtenaw county, data for community members and storytellers to utilize, and a toolkit to help those wishing to repeal racist covenants on their property.

Join the Justice InDeed mailing list to hear about these results and how you can stay involved in our efforts to reckon with and repair the harms done by racist covenants and other policies of housing segregation that continue to shape our communities today.