Dane County Executive Melissa Agard last week joined community members, legal experts and county staff at the Alliant Energy Center for Prejudice in Places — a public event aimed at confronting the legacy of racial covenants and offering residents a pathway to formally renounce discriminatory restrictions in their property deeds.
During this process, Agard learned that her home had a deed restriction within her ownership documents. After the presentation, she was the first Dane County resident to fill out the new state form renouncing the discriminatory restriction on her property deed.
The Prejudice in Places project is a county-led collaboration between the Dane County Planning & Development Department, the Office of Equity & Inclusion and community partners. It highlights the thousands of racially restrictive covenants that were historically written into property deeds across Dane County — language that often excluded Black, Jewish, Asian, Italian and other non-white families from owning homes in certain neighborhoods.
With recent changes in state law, Wisconsin homeowners now have the ability to file a legal Discharge and Release of Discriminatory Restriction form, removing these restrictions from their property records.
In the months ahead, Dane County will continue to digitize records, expand public education and develop long-term policy recommendations. The initiative will result in a public digital archive, community reports and tools to support equity-focused planning across the region.
