A Tuskegee Airman's VA loan helped build a family legacy of homeownership. Now, his granddaughter is working to expand that opportunity.
Julia Lashay Israel bought her first home at 19, never considering it a remarkable achievement.
Only decades later did she begin tracing that sense of possibility to a VA mortgage her grandfather, one of the original Tuskegee Airmen, secured after World War II.
"We never talked about the house. We always talked about the Tuskegee Airmen," Israel tells Realtor.com®.
Her family's experience stands apart from that of many Black Americans. Just 44.4% of Black households owned their homes in the third quarter of 2026, compared with 75.1% of non-Hispanic white households, according to Realtor.com research.
Israel, now a real estate broker and educator, has spent years teaching agents about the discriminatory housing policies that helped create that divide—and how their own practices can perpetuate it.
Ahead of Veterans Day, she shared her grandfather's story at the National Association of Realtors® NXT conference in New Orleans, illustrating what access to homeownership could make possible for generations of a family.
The opportunity so many Black veterans were denied
Israel's grandfather Sgt. Morrissey Whitley was just 20 when he entered the military aviation training program in Tuskegee, AL, in 1942—eventually serving in intelligence as a draftsman for the 332nd Fighter Group, according to Israel.
Just a year earlier, the U.S. Army Air Corps had begun admitting Black men after decades of exclusion, following pressure from civil rights organizations.
But the training program remained segregated, and the Tuskegee Airmen faced hostility, unequal treatment, and military officials who questioned whether Black servicemen were capable of flying combat missions.
Despite those systemic obstacles, the Tuskegee Airmen distinguished themselves in combat, helping challenge the racist assumptions that had excluded Black Americans from military aviation.
Whitley made sure his descendants understood their achievements, too.
When Israel told him an elementary school teacher had claimed Black Americans hadn't served in WWII, he assembled a folder of evidence for her to take to class.
The Tuskegee Airmen broke racial barriers in military aviation during World War II. Their famed 332nd Fighter Group, known as the "Red Tails," earned a reputation for protecting U.S. bombers on dangerous missions over Europe. (Afro American Newspapers/Gado/Getty Images) 
Sgt. Morrissey Whitley, one of the original Tuskegee Airmen, "was a draftsman for the legendary 332nd Fighter Group," Israel says of her grandfather. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images) 
"We all had to do presentations in school," she recalls. "He made sure that we all knew about the history of it." (Afro American Newspapers/Gado/Getty Images) But the racial barriers facing Black servicemen didn't end when they returned home.
And in the housing market, those divisions were reinforced by redlining, which restricted where Black families could obtain mortgages—and, ultimately, where they could build wealth.
In 1940, just 22.8% of Black households owned their homes, compared with 45.6% of white households, according to historical U.S. Census Bureau data.
And even while the GI Bill subsequently helped millions of returning veterans purchase homes through government-backed mortgages, lenders often refused to finance properties in predominantly Black neighborhoods.
On top of that, racially restrictive covenants excluded Black buyers from many white neighborhoods.
As a result, just 5.1% of VA-guaranteed loans in an early federal mortgage sample went to Black borrowers, according to a 2026 study published in Nature.
Whitley was among those who secured financing, purchasing a home in Gary, IN, after moving his family from Chicago, according to Israel—a move that she believes was made necessary because of discriminatory lending practices.
"You can't use your VA loan in Chicago," she says. "You have to live where Black people are redlined to live."
In 1968, the Fair Housing Act banned racially motivated redlining. But decades later, studies show modern-day redlining persists. (National Archives/Interim Archives/Getty Images) The barriers agents can still create
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Israel developed a course teaching real estate agents about the history of housing discrimination—including redlining, restrictive covenants, and the industry's role in perpetuating segregation.
She later taught it through Keller Williams' social equity task force, established after George Floyd's killing in 2020. Her training has since reached more than 40,000 agents, according to NAR.
What surprised Israel was how many agents were unfamiliar with that history—or how their own decisions could perpetuate its consequences.
"There's been different buyers, different sellers," she says of the persistence of residential segregation. "The only common denominator is the Realtor®."
Israel has witnessed discrimination firsthand.
"I've had people not sit in closings with us because we were Black," she says, recalling a Minnesota home closing in the mid-2000s.
Other barriers are less overt.
Black applicants were 7.8 percentage points more likely than white applicants to be denied mortgages, even after accounting for financial characteristics and lender differences, according to a 2026 Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis study.
Israel also worries about agents discouraging buyers from pursuing certain financing programs or directing them toward particular neighborhoods without considering the long-term consequences.
Her courses emphasize the importance of understanding those barriers and earning buyers' trust, particularly when they're navigating a process nobody in their family has experienced before.
During 13 years working primarily with first-time buyers, many of them Black single women, she encountered clients who were hesitant to sign agreements or trust the professionals guiding them.
"A lot of times they are the first, and so if you're the first person who's ever done it, yeah, that's pretty scary," she says.
The seeds planted for generations to come
Israel grew up with a very different understanding of homeownership.
"My grandparents always had a house. My parents always had a house," she says.
In fact, she remembers envying classmates who lived in apartment complexes, where they could play together after school.
Her own children inherited that familiarity. Israel recalls her young son accompanying his grandmother to look at a rental apartment and repeatedly asking, "When's the closing?"
He couldn't understand why someone would pay to live in a home they didn't own.
It wasn't until Israel began working in real estate that she recognized how her family's experience differed from that of many neighbors and fellow churchgoers who rented their homes.
That early exposure can have lasting consequences. Children who grew up entirely in homeowner households were 18.4 percentage points more likely to become homeowners themselves by age 35 than those raised entirely in renter households, according to Realtor.com research.
Housing-related financial advantages can also persist across generations independently of what children earn themselves. Less than half of the persistence in housing capital across generations is explained by children's earnings, according to a 2025 U.S. Census Bureau study examining more than 3.4 million families.
Those advantages have been distributed unequally. Median white family wealth stood at approximately $332,100 in 2025, compared with just $36,800 for Black families, according to a Tax Policy Center analysis of Federal Reserve data.
Israel's own family never had substantial financial resources growing up, despite their history of homeownership.
"We never had a lot of money, but we always had a lot of sense," she recalls.
And when her granddaughter was born, Israel began reconsidering how far the opportunity her grandfather secured had carried the family.
"He didn't leave us any money, but he left us, like, a legacy," she says.
It was that realization that prompted Israel to begin incorporating Whitley's experience into her educational work.
"It's really not about quartz countertops or, you know, the cute fence," she says of the work real estate agents do. "It really is that we're planting seeds for families."
Her own grandfather had planted one more than eight decades earlier. And now, another generation of his descendants is benefiting from the opportunities that followed.
"This little baby is a trust fund baby, and she'll never know that it was because her great-great-grandfather had an opportunity that other people didn't have that set the path of this legacy for her," Israel says.