Blacks See Bias in a Pricier Neighborhood

Real estate agent Donna Mallow said she was shocked by the letters scrawled across the ranch house, which she had planned to sell to a couple from Prince George's County who were seeking a strong school district for their two children.

She figured that Woodland Beach had long since outgrown its old nickname, "Hoodlum Beach," which referred to the tough, white, working-class youth who cruised there. But the racist graffiti that greeted the buyers on the morning they planned to close the deal reminded her that blacks can still face discrimination when hunting for homes.

Her client, Tina-Marie Head, said she and her husband "are still in shock" over the incident. "We talked about looking for another home in the same neighborhood, but my two children are scared of that area now."

Head's 12-year-old son, who had just taken a class on the civil rights movement, worried about walking to school alone there, asking his mother, "They don't still lynch people, do they?"

Most housing discrimination is more subtle than a spray-painted garage, said Philip Nyden, director of the Chicago-based Center for Urban Research and Learning, which has conducted recent national studies on the issue.

"What African American families are finding can be just as unpleasant as graffiti -- like not being waited on in restaurants, being followed around in stores, having their kids treated poorly in schools," Nyden said. "What we've seen is that those kinds of things are convincing minorities to stay away."

Discrimination also turns up in the loan office, according to Squires's research.

Mallow says she has seen that firsthand.

"I have written two contracts for black families this year," the Anne Arundel real estate agent said. "Both of them were turned down by the lender at the last minute. I couldn't prove anything, [but] I had my suspicions that something was going on."

Specific cases of discrimination can be difficult to prove.

In the case of Winchester Homes, the company said it thoroughly investigated the claims by Cromwell and his friend Ricardo Ledbetter and did not find evidence of discrimination.

"I don't really know how constructive it is to get into what he said or she said," said Larry Burrows, the company's executive vice president. "At the time we investigated it, we genuinely felt that the customers were treated fairly and did not feel any discipline [of the sales agent] was called for."

Joseph D. Edmondson Jr., one of the lawyers handling the suit for Cromwell and Ledbetter, said he will attempt to look at Winchester Homes's customer list to see whether other blacks may have been mistreated -- to establish whether a pattern exists.

Cromwell said his only hope is that the suit will lead to some changes at real estate sales offices across the region.

"I told the people at Winchester, 'I want you to change what's going on out there,' " he said. "I don't want my family to feel this way ever again."