[1] The neighborhood was the first in the Milwaukee area to adopt formal racial covenant exclusionary restrictions enforcing white-only residences.

In 1919, the subdivision imposed the covenant that cited "at no time shall the land included in Washington Highlands or any part thereof, or any building thereon be purchased, owned, leased or occupied by any person other than of white race.

[6] Further, financial institutions further aligned this segregation through redlining following guidelines of the Federal Housing Administration and Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC) which designated the new subdivision as green or “Grade A” as a “highly restricted and exclusive area,” which prevented Black and other non-white applicants from being approved for home loans in the area.

[7] The federal government justified these rules enforcing segregation, which were enacted nationally, as protecting property values and reducing “credit risk” from the “infiltration of inharmonious racial groups.”[8] A HOLC brochure in the period noted Washington Highlands “permits a wide latitude of discrimination in accepting residents,” which was considered an attractive feature.

[10] However, the legacy of these practices continue to the present, as the neighborhood’s demographics have remained fairly consistently homogenous, with 87% of residents being white as of 2020 US Census.