Yet the most damaging episode in the saga of Trump's fractured relationship with the black community came in 1973, when his family's real-estate company, Trump Management Corporation, was sued by the Justice Department for alleged racial discrimination. At the time, Trump was the company's president. Just last month, at Trump's Comedy Central roast, Snoop Dogg referenced the case by
joking about Trump's potential 2012 run for the White House: "Why not? It wouldn't be the first time he pushed a black family out of their home."
The case alleged that the Trump Management Corporation had discriminated against blacks who wished to rent apartments in Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island. The government charged the corporation with quoting different rental terms and conditions to blacks and whites and lying to blacks that apartments were not available, according to reports of the lawsuit.
Trump responded in characteristic fashion -- holding a press conference to call the charges “absolutely ridiculous.” He told the
New York Times: “We never have discriminated and we never would. There have been a number of local actions against us and we’ve won them all. We were charged with discrimination and we proved in court that we did not discriminate.”
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Two years later, Trump Management settled the case, promising not to discriminate against blacks, Puerto Ricans and other minorities. As part of the agreement, Trump was required to send its list of vacancies in its 15,000 apartments to a civil-rights group, giving them first priority in providing applicants for certain apartments, according to a contemperaneous
New York Times account. Trump, who emphasized that the agreement was not an admission of guilt, later crowed that he was satisfied because it did not require them to “accept persons on welfare as tenants unless as qualified as any other tenant.”
But the company didn’t sufficiently fulfill its promise, because three years later, the Justice Department charged Trump Management with continuing to discriminate against blacks through such tactics as telling them that apartments were not available.