Many homeowners don't even know that the language against selling property to African Americans and people of Jewish, Hispanic or Asian descent is in their covenants, says James Gregory, a history professor at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Gregory, who is the director of the university's Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project, says the project has identified racially discriminatory language in more than 400 properties alone in Seattle and its suburbs.

"These restrictions just sit there quietly ... kind of casting a shadow of segregation in neighborhoods to this day," Gregory says.

The Supreme Court ruled in 1948 that racially restrictive covenants were unenforceable, but it wasn't until the passage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968 that they became illegal, says Wendy Plotkin, a former history professor at Arizona State University who is writing a book about the history of the covenants in Chicago.

Some states, including California, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Ohio and Washington, have passed legislation making it easier to remove racially restrictive language from property records, says Carol Rose, a law professor at the University of Arizona.

Even so, many others haven't streamlined the process to expunge the racial language in the records, Rose says. "It's more of a psychological issue than one having legal bite," she says.

In Cape St. Claire, Md., a community tucked between Annapolis, Md., and the Chesapeake Bay, the homeowners covenant still contains such language.

Sam Gallagher, who became president of the Cape St. Claire Improvement Association in January, has been trying to change the covenant in the community of more than 2,300 homes. State law requires that 85% of lot owners give their consent, Gallagher says. Since January, 1,796 of the 2,154 signatures needed have been collected, he says.

The Cape St. Claire covenant reads, in part: "At no time shall any lot or any part thereof be sold, leased, transferred to or permitted to be occupied by any Negro, Chinaman, Japanese, or person of Negro, Chinese or Japanese descent. "

Gallagher says some owners have told him that although they find it offensive, the language is a part of the community's history and worth preserving.

Representatives of both the NAACP and the Anti-Defamation League said that although such efforts to remove the language are laudable, their organizations don't consider it a priority because the restrictions are already void.

"We'd be supportive of someone trying to do it. But the law already says it's unconstitutional, immoral and all of that," says Steven Freeman, director of legal affairs for the Anti-Defamation League.

Hilary Shelton, director of NAACP's Washington bureau and senior vice president for advocacy and policy, says the NAACP is focused on fighting forms of housing discrimination that still exist, such as racial disparities in mortgage lending.