Editing Gentlemen's agreement (section)

===As a discriminatory tactic===
{{See also|Old boys network}}
Gentlemen's agreements were a widely used discriminatory tactic reportedly more common than [[restrictive covenants]] in preserving the homogeneity of [[upper-class]] neighborhoods and suburbs in the United States.{{Citation needed|date=February 2025}} The nature of these agreements made them extremely difficult to prove or to track, and were effective long after the United States Supreme Court's rulings in ''[[Shelley v. Kraemer]]'' and ''Barrows v. Jackson''. A 1995 source stated that gentlemen's agreements "undoubtedly still exist", but that their use had greatly diminished.<ref name="Higley">{{cite book |last=Higley |first=Stephen Richard |title=Privilege, Power, and Place: The Geography of the American Upper Class|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WCJTNLyee-kC |access-date=June 28, 2010 |year=1995 |publisher=[[Rowman & Littlefield]] |location=[[Lanham, Maryland]] |isbn= 9780847680214 |pages=40–41, 61 }}</ref>

Until [[Jackie Robinson]] was hired by the [[Brooklyn Dodgers]] in 1946, a gentlemen's agreement ensured that [[African American]] players were [[baseball color line|excluded from organized baseball]].<ref>N. Jeremi Duru, ''Friday Night ‘Lite’: How De-Racialization in the Motion Picture Friday Night Lights Disserves the Movement to Eradicate Racial Discrimination from American Sport'', 25 CARDOZO ARTS & ENT. L.J. 485, 530 (2007).</ref>