Bark recently uncovered a restrictive covenant on Redwood’s property deeds on the Marin County Online Database, previously limiting people of color from purchasing the land Redwood sits on.

The deed includes racially restrictive language written in 1943, when the land originally transferred ownership. Superintendent Courtney Goode was unaware of the discriminatory language.

“Everybody understands that racism exists, but think it’s something that is just read about in history books,” Goode said. “To actually see words written like ‘shall not be sold, rented or leased to any person other than of the Caucasian race,’ is disgusting.”

The Supreme Court ruled restrictive covenants unconstitutional in case Shelley v. Kraemer (1948). Marin County Recorder Supervisor Emilee Bozzard is working to have racially restrictive covenant language modified by redacting it from deeds throughout Marin, including the two deeds describing Redwood’s campus.

“We found all the documents and prepared all the modifications. We’re just working on the very last step, which is getting them signed and then getting them recorded,” Bozzard said.

The county legal counsel had to oversee each change in the process of redacting the deed’s language.

“We have over 3,000 left for them to sign, including the two that affect Redwood High School,” Bozzard said.

The process of getting restrictive language redacted from deeds takes a long time. The covenant on Redwood’s deeds was found by the Assessor-Recorder-County Clerk Office in September 2022, and the two modifications for Redwood were ready to be signed by the legal counsel on Sept. 18 and 25, 2025, although there is no set date for the deeds to be approved.

Bozzard said she would try to move the modifications for Redwood’s property to the top of the pile of deeds awaiting approval by the county legal counsel.

During the redaction process, the Assessor-Recorder-County Clerk Office never changes the documents that have been recorded, so the original document will always exist for people to view. The new document with the redacted language, however, legally replaces its predecessor. 

Though it cannot fully be removed, Goode said he wants to see the restrictive language redacted. 

“I take issue with people who say ‘trying to erase the past.’ This isn’t about erasing the past. This is about recognizing and acknowledging our past wrongs and working to make them right. That’s not erasing anything. That’s just being a good and decent human being,” Goode said.

Redwood alum Jack Haubold, currently a student at Dartmouth, researched restrictive covenants in Marin during 2023.

“You can still see the legacy of covenants in Marin today,” Haubold said. “It’s like a metaphor, the fact that you can’t fully remove the language from a deed, and that it can only be struck through, for how the legacy of restrictive covenants still lives on, and how Marin was shaped.” Haubold said.