Jim Crow of the North - Full-Length Documentary

(ominous music) - This mob of over 100 people marched on an African American home in October 1909 to try to stop this family from moving there. (ominous music) The Minneapolis protagonists, as the newspaper called them, are not the type of people who want to be involved in collective violence. And it's not necessary. Because they have other tools they can use. And there is a tool that they are aware of: it is called a racial pact. And so, just a few months after this confrontation, we see the first racial pact appear on a property in Minneapolis. And this is where you first see this racial language. - Only Caucasians, only Aryans, no blacks, nor members of African or decent blood. - 100% of them were aimed at black people. - In many ways, the racial compacts, this was kind of ground zero for residential segregation.

And the United States and racism have a very, very long history, but this particular deployment of racism is quite new and this idea really came to fruition through instruments like racial pacts. - The law of the streets, the law of the courts working together to discourage blacks from moving into white neighborhoods. - They start out as private property developers, but eventually the federal government encourages these racial pacts, effectively demanding that any investment they make be protected with their brand of racial exclusivity. - When you can covenant entire areas of the city, it becomes off-limits, that's pretty powerful.

This is Jim Crow of the North. (brilliant music) - Hi, I'm Toussaint Morrison and this is Minnesota the Experience. TPT is committed to telling the

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range of our state's past, including its difficult history. The University of Minnesota's Bias Mapping Project has documented the widespread use of race-based restrictions buried in home deeds in Hennepin County. The research offers some answers to why Minnesota has some of the worst racial disparities in the country. Our new

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explores this history in what amounts to what some researchers describe as a hidden system of Northern Jim Crow. (peaceful music) - At the turn of the century, it seemed like Minnesota was one of the most enlightened states regarding race.

There was a state leadership that seemed much more willing to do the right thing or at least verbally support policies that respected the dignity of African Americans. Frank Wheaton came from Maryland. Wheaton came to Minnesota and saw an opportunity here. He already had a law degree when he entered the university's law school. And when he came out, he had aspirations for political advancement. He knew how to establish a relationship with the party apparatus. And as a result of his support, he was able to win an election in south Minneapolis with an electorate made up of white and immigrant voters.

He authored two laws dealing with civil rights and public accommodations. The civil rights bill, the accommodation bill, was just about blacks not being discriminated against in terms of going to restaurants, hotels, riding streetcars or railroads, places like that. He didn't really address other issues like schools, housing and things of that nature. But for all intents and purposes, it is a huge step forward in civil rights. - 1910, Minneapolis is not particularly segregated. African American neighborhoods are emerging around Lake Harriet, around West River Road, certainly on the east side of Minneapolis. - Prospect Park is this beautiful neighborhood, very close to downtown, very close to the University of Minnesota, right on the banks of the Mississippi River.

It was a very desirable neighborhood and I think the neighbors were not surprised when they saw a house that fit this neighborhood on what is now East Franklin Avenue. - Madison Jackson, was a guy who had a law degree but was a doorman from Pullman. She moved with her family to Prospect Park and built a house there. This was the first black family there. - My father had bought land in what is known as Prospect Park, Minneapolis, and laid the first stone to build the house in which I grew up. It wasn't until the house was nearly finished that the all-white community realized that a black family was moving in.

And when we moved, the whole community got very excited about the fact that a black family should move. -Marvel Jackson said when the neighbors across the street saw who she was, she said the lady started screaming when she realized it was an African American family moving across the street. -She was seven years old, so I remember them gathering on our lawn to ask why we couldn't live there. When my father and mother did not relent, they had committees come and meet with them. And I remember sitting on the steps listening to some of the things that were said.

For example, one of the things, "Our children won't play with yours," and my father did, he hadn't thought about the impact on the children. My father built us a playground like no other in the entire area and we became the most popular kids in the place. The neighbors couldn't keep their children away. - Shortly after moving, the father's friend and co-worker also wanted to build a house in the neighborhood. -William and Daisy Simpson, they were also going to build a house and would stay at Jackson's house while her house was under construction. - And I think that was the turning point. - And that's when the resistance of the white owners really increased. - And this is where the Tribune reports a race war in Prospect Park.

This mob of more than 100 people, which the newspaper described as some of the most powerful people in Minneapolis, marched to Jackson's home in October 1909. They read prepared statements. - It was decided that a large delegation would ask you to emphasize a doubly impressive fact: that the white residents of this district do not want members of their race domiciled among us. We are not here to argue, but to make a perfectly clear statement of our position on the matter, namely: that we do not want it. - And as men of prudence, judgment and determination, we will do everything possible to avoid it.

And then there was another threat. - Rumors have come to our attention that there are groups in this vicinity who are determined that you and your race should not reside in this district, who have declared themselves firmly willing to take all necessary measures to achieve your removal. - And you have to understand that 1909 is a time in which lynchings are common. They were not empty threats. But what is surprising to me is that both families persisted. They stayed in their homes. The Simpsons built a beautiful house that is still there today. Marvel blazed a trail, she was the first African-American girl to go through Pratt Elementary School.

I found out that her mother had actually dated W.E.B. Du Bois before marrying Madison Jackson. That gives me clues as to what that house must have been like. As soon as they became teenagers, all those white friends she basically abandoned her. - At that moment I decided that I was going to leave that type of society and go where my people were. She-she went to the University of Minnesota where she dated Roy Wilkins and was engaged to him briefly. As soon as she finished at the University of Minnesota she left Minneapolis. I think her parents had protected her from a lot of the racism in her childhood, but as an adult you can certainly experience this more and realized that there really was no place for her here.

Well, Minneapolis' loss was the Harlem Renaissance's gain. She-she ended up moving to New York City. She ended up working for W.E.B. DuBois. She ended up becoming one of the country's leading African-American journalists and later became one of the first black journalists to work for an all-white publication. She has an incredible career, incredible talents, gifts and passion, and Minneapolis lost her. Madison Jackson died in 1927. Once he died and the house was sold, both families left Minneapolis. And I wonder what it would have been like if they had been welcomed, if Prospect Park had become an enclave for black intellectuals and black civil rights activists.

What would that have been like? How would the city be different? And that's what I think about a lot when I think about this story. -The problem with the Madison Jackson and William Simpson incident is that people had to show up on their front lawn and threaten them. And this was in 1909. I don't think it's a coincidence that in May 1910 the first racial compact appeared in south Minneapolis. (ominous music) I'm pretty sure I know who wrote that pact, and that was one, Edmund G. Walton. He was a real estate developer. The legacy that he left in Minneapolis, I mean, there's Edmund Boulevard, there's all these additions with his last name, really probably the most important and the worst was this legacy of racial compacts.

So when people buy a house, they traditionally receive an abstract package and it shows up every time their property, the property they just bought, changes hands. And in Minneapolis, properties that were platted after 1910 are very likely to have these racial restrictions built into the property titles. The covenants could be construction covenants, they could be setback requirements, but the racial covenants we are dealing with say who can or cannot live, rent, and even occupy certain spaces. - Racially restrictive covenants, private contracts between individuals that allow them to dictate who they will sell their property to. - However, identifying racial pacts has proven to be a notable challenge.

The only way to find racial covenants is to read the warranty deeds. We're looking at about three million deeds in Hennepin County between 1900 and 1960 and each deed is, on average, about three pages long. So we're in the ballpark of about 10 million pages of text. - Robin, stay in Home Garden, so... - Penny only found 4,000 or 5,000 racial pacts by herself the old fashioned way. She just went to the county recorder's office and started looking over the deeds. And she found several thousand racially restrictive covenants, and that was enough to make us think, well, maybe we can do more than just show that racial covenants were a practice that was used in Minneapolis.

What if we could map them all? The first map Penny made was stunning. I was surprised when I saw this and I was surprised when she started reading me some of the language of these racial pacts. - The wording can be very different. They are working on ideas about race from the early 20th century. Chinese, Japanese, blacks, Moors, Turks, Mongols, Hebrews, sometimes Semitics, people of African or decent blood, neither blacks nor Jews, only Caucasians, except for their domestic servant of another race who could be domiciled with the owner. - Many of them were written during the period when eugenics is front and center in American scientific thought and that language is often what you see in these writings. - Only people of the Aryan race can inhabit this land. - Or the Aryan branch of the Caucasian race. - I think one of the surprising things I found in this research is that 100% of these agreements are aimed at African Americans.

There it is, that's Black. Well, here's the legal description. -Ah. - What we are doing with Mapping Prejudice is that we use digital tools to do much of the heavy lifting to help us identify facts that contain racially restrictive covenants. - There are agreements throughout the country. People say well, why don't you do this for Saint Paul too? I know there are pacts in San Pablo. Your writings are not scanned. - Which is incredibly difficult to handle, right, for traditional research methods where you go to the archive and start reviewing the material. It would take an army of college students and the better part of a century, and even then I'm not convinced you can overcome them all.

That's why we use OCR to translate these digitized warranty deeds into searchable text documents. Once we have them in text document form, I can write a script that loops through them and searches for predefined racial terms. And every time it finds a match, we mark the corresponding writing image. And once we have this in the still very large but manageable scope of around 40,000 marked images, we ask for volunteers to help us transcribe them. - And then it says that it cannot be sold, mortgaged, leased or occupied by any person or persons who are not members of the Caucasian race. - Oh yeah. - Yes, good. - You can go ahead and click Yes. - And then I export those responses and this actually gives me enough data to build the map. (ominous music) - Planning has always been intentional.

They have always been intentionally made to shape and represent values. The question is whose values ​​and for whose benefit. And I maintain that historically low-income people of color in particular and, you know, larger racial ethnic groups in general, have not been at the center of the benefits of urban planning. - Covenants were first established in 1910. But at that time, real estate developers were able to begin purchasing large tracts of adjacent farmlandto the city. -When a developer buys what used to be a farm on the outskirts of the city, he buys it, divides it into six urban lots and sells the individual lots.

At that point, when they start selling the individual lots, is really when their racial covenants are injected into the property record. - So people like Samuel Thorpe, Thorpe Brothers could buy this and just lay it out and design it as they saw fit and make deals. It was a very efficient way to do this. There is this real estate convention. It is there where J.C. Nichols, who manages Country Club properties in Kansas City, stands up and says, "I had a lot of doubts a few years ago, but now I can't sell a property without them." And Sam Thorpe was certainly there.

He was the outgoing president. He returned and in August 1912 purchased the land that would become Thorpe Brother's Nokomis Terrace. And that is the first

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y agreed addition that I know of. He doesn't talk about people of color or other objectionable types. Mary Greer was a woman who inherited many of the Dorman Addition properties near West River Road and, after 1910, she began establishing racial covenants. It will never be sold, transferred, leased or conveyed to anyone who is black, and that applies to people who live with black people or are married to black people. She adopted that from the beginning.

Her first one appears around 1911 or 1912 and this is seen throughout her teens and 20s. And Edmund Walton did the same on West River Road. At one point, I think they said he had bought 437 acres along the river. In 1910 he had gone from surreptitiously placing these agreements to not registering them. Less than a decade later, he was bragging about them in the newspaper. There was an advertisement and he printed the pact, which shows how quickly they were accepted. - So the Supreme Court even held that restrictive covenants were constitutional. This was in a case of Corrigan v.

Buckley and it was in that decision that the court ruled that restrictive covenants are contracts and, as such, are legal. Now forget about the fact that they discriminate and forget about the fact that once we say these contracts exist, we are raising an issue of violating the 14th Amendment. Forget it. The key is that the Supreme Court validated segregation, validated discrimination. - You had the full force of the law, the judicial system determined who could go where. - And what will happen as a result of that is that you will see efforts to ensure that, as a result, the denial of one of the most basic foundations of opportunity for African Americans is codified in the United States. - Not only did he have the support of the courts, but also a kind of license for people to go out into the streets and harass black people who moved into white neighborhoods. (ominous music) The white neighbors, knowing that the Francis couple would move there, offered them money not to move into the house.

William Francis and his wife, Nellie, who was one of my heroes, rejected that and moved there and faced all kinds of harassment as a result. The Francis family did not live there for long because shortly after moving, William T. Francis was appointed consultant to Liberia, ambassador in fact, and so they moved to Africa. It is an example of how even the most prominent African Americans in Minnesota at the time, who had established contacts with some of the most powerful people in American politics, Nellie herself, had personal audiences with Andrew Carnegie and three US presidents, who Despite her successes and influence she could still be exposed to racial animus.

This shows the intensity of a property's values, the perception of property values ​​in the breed. (ominous music) - So what the racial pacts did was they hardened the boundaries, they hardened these invisible racial boundaries. - It's interesting because even in neighborhoods where there may not be any covenants, just being around the covenants is really powerful in keeping that neighborhood white. (sad music) - For some of us, houses are often something we take for granted. Cases like the one the Lee family faced make us realize that a home is a fragile thing. It is a fairly modest one and a half story bungalow.

You wouldn't particularly notice it. But when you know something about his history and the history of the Lee family, it becomes quite powerful. - Arthur Lee was a veteran of World War I. He worked at the post office. -He had a good and stable salary at a time when 30% of the city is out of work. He then finds this house that someone is willing to sell him on 46th and Columbus. - It was not agreed. - They had the temerity to violate what is, at that time, this limit in the urban landscape. Then Arthur Lee moves into the house.

You know, first the neighborhood association meets and tries to buy it. And they contact the bank, they contact different lawyers, they try legal means. In July 1931, according to newspaper reports, five or 6,000 white people at any given time are circling his house trying to drive him out. -They threw black paint on his house. -His dog is poisoned. - Vandalism. Intimidation. - The family has to sleep in the basement. They had the feeling that they had set those limits and that no one should violate them. This is just another tool, so to speak, this citizen terrorism. -And in this particular case, Arthur, who was a veteran of World War I, right, returns home believing that his service to our country gave him the same access as his white counterparts, but he learned very quickly that that was not the case. (ominous music) - It was very important for families like the Lee family to have advocates to help them fight.

Being able to have attorneys like Lena Olive Smith and being able to have the NAACP on their side was really powerful in making sure their voices were heard. The NAACP was definitely fighting against these racial compacts and these cases of racial discrimination in housing. There are also smaller clubs and organizations that were really focused on fighting this. Unfortunately, even with all of these legal protections and organizations fighting for them, many people don't end up getting the end result they want. - Edith and Arthur Lee and their daughter Mary, stayed two years. They didn't last more than two years.

I think the pressure was too great for them. - I can only imagine myself as a parent, as someone who wants to make sure I'm living my values, like what it would mean to put my family at risk, what it would mean to always feel like I'm watching over my shoulder just to protect my right. -There is this escalation of this sense of threat thanks to racial pacts. So it's that intensification, that normalization of these racist ideas that leads to the Lee house. - The marker on the corner of the property has a representation, an image of Arthur Lee.

For those who just walk by, I think it catches them, makes them think about it. (suspense music) - Property is the foundation of a happy and satisfied family life. And now, through the use of a national housing law, the insured mortgage is made available to all citizens through one monthly payment... - In the midst of the new agreement, when the FDR administration is looking for ways to try to stabilize housing market, the Fair Housing Act was passed in 1934. And as part of that, the Home Owners Loan Corporation was also established in the hopes that if long-term mortgages with fixed interest rates could be established they would could create pathways to homeownership for most Americans. - This time they will be able to buy this house with lower monthly payments than what they now spend on rent. - When the FHA starts underwriting mortgages in the 1930s, this really changes the game in many ways.

It takes a lot of risk off the banks, puts it on the federal government, and now working class and middle class families can buy a home. - Unfortunately, as part of that, what HOLC does is establish designations for neighborhoods based on the occupants of those neighborhoods. - And this is where the term redlining comes into play. The FHA made color-coded maps of all the largest cities in the United States and divided them into four different areas. Red is considered dangerous, that's the worst; yellow is considered definitely declining, blue is still considered desirable, and green is considered the best. - And what is powerful about this type of investment measurement scale is the value for people. - The fact of the matter is that there was no evidence that the people living in those communities, predominantly black and brown and foreign-born, had defaulted on their loans. - There are no firm realities behind the proximity to darkness and falling property values.

That is simply not true. - The FHA is being very direct and very explicit in how they link spatial desirability to racial occupancy. It's this idea of ​​the space of racialization. So areas that were predominantly African American or majority minority or, actually, in many cases, even if there are some non-white people there, that's often enough to be flagged. So when they built these maps, they also explained why each area got the ranking it did. - The area around Fourth Avenue South, which is called Old South Side, was a nice area, it had nice houses, it's the historic African-American neighborhood on the south side of Minneapolis. - This part of south Minneapolis was specifically marked due to, and I quote, a gradual infiltration of blacks and Asians.

The FHA refused to grant an area a green line designation; again, this is the best designation they will offer unless, and I quote again, restrictive covenants are already in place. That line is from the FHA underwriting manual. Racial pacts are not just about discriminating against people of color. It's about enriching white people and I think that's the part that often gets lost in this narrative. And I think it speaks to the ways that white supremacy has taken hold and really built structures and built environments. I mean, if your grandparents bought a house on Minnehaha Creek, that house is worth half a million.

If your grandparents rented in an area that was redlined and then destroyed by a highway project, you inherit nothing. - In many ways, the practice of redlining, which didn't begin until the 1930s, institutionalized and spread racial covenants across the country because suddenly the developers received a penalty, they received instructions from the federal government saying that these were the best practices if you want to get a really high rating from us if you want to get the most favorable conditions for any loan. -By breaking up Minneapolis, which in many ways is what the racial compacts are doing, this set the stage and allowed all subsequent systems of inequality to really take hold. - This very persistent myth that

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ern cities never had formal segregation.

The South had Jim Crow and look at those signs. Well, racial compacts did the work of Jim Crow in the North, throughout the North. - Many, many whites were simply not aware that segregation existed. Many people in Minneapolis would be outraged if they thought their friend was being discriminated against. They knew something was happening but it wasn't happening to your friend. That was the mixed situation we had in Minneapolis. I mean, if you can imagine these people, their parents sent me cookies and cakes throughout the war and I was welcomed into their home. There was no doubt about it.

And then there are other people who were absolutely Klansmen. That's what Minneapolis was about. But that was my generation in Minneapolis. We were locked in that ghetto, and that was our life, that was ours, that was our world. - The 1935 land use planning map used to define which places get mortgages and others surrounded these areas, called them slums, places where, quote, unquote, black people lived. These were places to avoid, right, so they would give you substandard housing and contain you. Access to affordable housing was a challenge. When you think about the reasons behind the creation of public housing, many people were forced to work in the low-wage sector, and you think about the jobs or opportunities that low-income people of color had access to at that time. .

I would say it was the creation of public housing in 1938 when Sumner Field Homes began this really interesting iteration of redesigning the space. 400 public housing units that were segregated at the time were created. Then, in 1953, the Minneapolis City Council refused to distribute another thousand units of public housing outside the Sumner Field Homes area. And where did these pressures come from? There were both internal conservative politicians and outlying suburban communities who came and said no in my neighborhood and the city council crumbled under the pressure and then took what was 400 units of public housing to over a thousand units in less than a decade.

They have strategically manufactured urban poverty. (slow music) - This story is very personal to me. I am a third generation Minnesotan. Both of my grandparents were immigrants from Sweden who came to this country withoutnothing, they worked incredibly hard, but both of my grandparents in 1942 were able to buy houses in south Minneapolis. These houses were not part of the city covered by racial pacts. Because of these racial pacts, my parents grew up in entirely white neighborhoods and in many ways describe them as a paradise for children. They had wonderful parks, really strong schools that sent them to college.

But no one in his neighborhood ever talked about the fact that this neighborhood was only for white people. And I want everyone who has this map to imagine themselves in this landscape of privilege and disenfranchisement. (soft music) - The Department of Justice held that restrictive covenants between private citizens prohibited blacks and other minority groups from residential areas and were not enforceable by courts. Their joint brief described the pacts as an artificial quarantine of minority groups. - Covenants were one of the great issues that the NAACP addressed in the first half of the 20th century. - Thurgood Marshall was leader of the litigation side of the NAACP.

When Thurgood was asked about his retirement what the most important case was, everyone assumed he would say Brown v. Board of Education. He said no, it was Shelley versus Kramer. - Shelley very. Kramer in the late 1940s was one of the most consequential civil rights cases to ever reach the Supreme Court. It didn't explicitly end racial pacts as a practice, but it was a pretty big blow. - Restrictive covenants could not be enforced. So a restrictive covenant could still be drafted, but a person who signed it could breach the contract and sell it to a black person and they would not be held liable. - It was not as effective as many people expected.

What people started doing is that instead of suing for breach of contract, they would sue for damages. So, if someone sells a covenanted home to an African American, the neighbors can sue that person because the value of his property is now lower. - Well, is there a problem? - There will never be violence in this part of the city. We are peaceful people. Do you have any friends here. I am your friend. We just want to know what you think you're doing to us. -If I have a house agreed upon and I sell it to someone who is not white and they sue me, I lose the house, any equity I have built up, the property reverts to the share that was initially granted to me, so whoever first made that agreement in the earth.

If that person is dead, it would revert to the heirs or assigns of the portion of the initial agreement. So the risk of going against these things is simply astronomical. (sad music) - Restrictive covenants have already laid the groundwork for a continued denial of equality for African Americans under these private covenants, which the Supreme Court would determine in 1948 were judicially unenforceable but still legal. In fact, it is developed in a very powerful way in Lorraine Hansberry's play A Raisin in the Sun. - Do you remember the money we received in the mail this morning? -Yes.-Well, what do you think your grandmother did, she was her and she did it? - I don't know, grandmother. -She went and she bought you a house. (broken glass) - While that play was being produced, there are situations all over the country, including one in Delaware where a mob forces a family in Collins Park to leave their home and eventually the home is bombed.

But what Lorraine Hansberry captures there in that wonderful passage where Walter Younger establishes what the foundations of freedom and equality will be for his family, and home ownership. One day, son, we will sit down and achieve all the great schools in America, but the path to that is home ownership. And Lorraine Hansberry hit on something very powerful in A Raisin on Sunday because it's about this family seeking homeownership as a path to true freedom and true equality. -And there is no factor more representative or more conducive to the economic well-being of the American citizen than the home in which he lives. (great music) - The expansion of the compacts in the first half of the 20th century is more or less the same story as the expansion of the Twin Cities during the first half of the 20th century.

The frontline suburbs, Edina, St. Louis Park, Richfield and Bloomington, are all covered in racial compacts. They probably have a higher density of restrictions than Minneapolis simply because there was more development in Bloomington around 1950 than in Minneapolis. And the effects of that are very surprising, right, like that ring is very white and this pushes African Americans to a kind of downtown Minneapolis. - It denies them access to those mortgages. It denies them the opportunity to sell their homes and, in that sense, it closes them the opportunity to escape those communities, but, more importantly, it denies them the same path to acquiring wealth, home ownership and then , of course, the sale of those houses. properties and bequeath them to their children. (soft music) - My dad had Tilsen have open houses, I think it was house number 41 and the Fourth was the model house.

It was something to behold because as a child you didn't really understand what desegregation meant or what segregation and exclusion really meant. You really didn't know. But you saw people come in who knew what that meant. - And in fact, I think spokespeople announced Tilsenbilt Homes as possibly the first open housing event in the nation, so it was one of the first times that African Americans were able to buy new homes on the quote-unquote open market. It's a big part of housing history for the construction of the Tilsenbilt Houses that your father demanded that there be African American men working those jobs. -He knew what that economic power could be, what labor power could be, and he insisted that his contractors bring people of color to the job, and that was extremely, extremely important to him.

And I think the fact that it started here, again, is something unique to Minnesota. - At the same time, the disparities we have now do not justify continuing. - No, it was not carried out in the entire community, that's for sure, nor in the city, yes. It wasn't citywide, so there is a significant divide that still remains. (soft music) - We moved to Minnesota, so that was 1956. I felt like we were very fortunate to meet the people we met, a wonderful community of black activists and others. Then I got involved in the League of Women Voters NAACP.

We were very involved in issues related to employment opportunities, our children's education, and housing discrimination. -If you're wondering what the Fair Housing March is about, we're trying to get a fair housing bill passed in the state of Minnesota right now. I was wondering if you would contribute something to the March for Fair Housing. - Of course, I'll do it. - Thank you so much. -There was a sense that what we needed to do was really create a lobbying effort in the legislature in the '61 session to get fair housing introduced and passed in that session. So they encouraged me to be the main lobbyist for it.

And I invited my friend Matthew Little, Zetta Feder and my friend Katie McWatt. We would feel that denying some parts of the housing market, the effect of the law is, in effect, fraudulent. - Those of us who own assets have the right to sell them and the right to rent them to whoever we want. And white people, the white race, better wake up and see the writing on the wall before it's too late. - Seeing America, that part of America, Sao Paulo, become more truly what we call the American Dream, is going to be difficult. It's going to cost money.

You have made this mistake, your ancestors have made this mistake and it cannot be remedied without a lot of pain, suffering and the expenditure of cash. - I felt like we were losing the vote and went to Governor Elmer Andersen. He was a very open, fair and liberal Republican, whom he knew and whom he greatly respected. So I went to the governor and said, "Governor, the housing bill is going to be defeated in the judiciary committee, and I'm very concerned." And he went to his desk and wrote a note to each member of the judiciary committee urging them to allow the bill to come out of the committee, which was fair in his judgment, and to allow it to then be dealt with in its entirety. senate.

And the bill passed by one vote, so it then made its way to the full Senate, where it passed again, but again narrowly. That was in '62. But Minnesota was one of the first states to pass fair housing. - Whereas the Minnesota Fair Housing Law takes effect and the implementation of the law must come from the willingness of all our citizens to cooperate for their common protection, as well as the belief that discrimination practiced against any individual is a threat to all, therefore, I, Elmer L. Anderson, Governor of the State of Minnesota, hereby proclaim Saturday, December 29, and Sunday, December 30, as Fair Housing Saturday in Minnesota. - So, between '62 and '67, you know, I was very worried because there was still a lot of discrimination in housing. - This week's show is about the proposed fair housing law to prohibit discrimination in the sale or rental of housing.

Senator Mondale is the lead author of the bill in the Senate. - This is not an anti-riot bill, but at the same time I think we have to be wise and mature enough to realize that these riots tell us something about the deep and abiding frustrations and sense of rage that exists in our ghettos Americans. . There are pressing issues of injustice and inequality in employment, housing, education and many other areas that we should have addressed long ago. (soft music) - The Fair Housing Act makes it illegal to discriminate based on race, age, then they add sex and disability, etc. to ensure that everyone has equal access to housing wherever they want.

And I think that has opened doors for many families. What happened to the black middle class, for example? Many people were able to break into neighborhoods they didn't have access to before. And we should have those options. But when you don't have the economic mobility to make those decisions, fair housing doesn't seem very fair. - 35W and I-94, expanding Hiawatha, expanding Olsen Memorial, all of this was explicitly and very intentionally traversed through these black communities that emerged as a result of this kind of cordon of covenants that had taken place around the city. - 35W going south, it was a dividing line between the people on the other side of the highway and the people on our side of the highway.

It's interesting because it brought people together in a sense and we were able to create our own community around 38th Street and Fourth Avenue. -My dad and his family are originally from the Central neighborhood and he went to Central High School. And they told me these stories about what they called a kind of Black Mecca in the Central neighborhood. When we talk about the problem from a deficit-based language, I also want to make sure that we are talking about an asset-based language. We need to be aware of this kind of attack on the character of these places and intentionally reclaim that narrative. - We will not be able to get everyone out of these discriminated areas because many of them are in the center of our cities and many of these people want to live there and they want this opportunity to own a home.

And the only way to do that is through a partnership between private industry, the credit business and our government. - Our community was marked in red. Simple as that. Now, as a community, we made the best of it and also generated a lot of influencers. And a lot of that was due to developing a pretty powerful community. - And then they agreed. - Amen! -When they closed Central High School, it took the heart and soul out of this community and I remember them talking about Fourth Avenue and how it's now known as Crack Avenue, which speaks to the decline of the economy in this neighborhood. .

But up and down Fourth Avenue throughout the neighborhood there were tough times. - So although the pacts are now illegal, this huge chasm of wealth inequality that arose as a result of the pacts is still present today. (slow music) 75% of white families in Minneapolis own the homes they occupy, but 25% of black families in Minneapolis own the homes they occupy. In reality, it is the largest gap, in percentage terms, in the country. And this has huge implications for the racial wealth gap. -If we look at where our high-income communities live, where there is now an investment in home ownership for certain communities versus others, where Black people may have participated during the emergence and proliferation of racial compacts, we may see a different notion . of black wealth.

First we have to recognize that history and understand how we are involved in it and then come to repair the solution. - You have a pact, but it's... - Mapping Prejudice Project is doing something different than anything seen in the entire country, which I think is surprising. So they are mapping the history of housing discrimination. They are naming something that has beenallowed to exist in the shadows of neighborhood planning and policy. - The goal of this map is to get people to read these racial covenants, to get people to read these racially restrictive acts. From the beginning I wanted to invite as many people as possible to that process. - I think it's fascinating to see.

There is a genuine curiosity about something that remained hidden and buried for so long. - And I think doing so is kind of a way to get in touch with history and better understand how things are now and see the direct connection in the systemic racist language that is a big part of our history and is a very important part of our current reality. - With the Owning Up, Racism in Housing exhibit in Minneapolis, we hope to illustrate the history of discrimination and racism in housing and the impact it had on real families. We really want to confront visitors with these stories so that they really take action, take responsibility and try to help create change in some way. - And at that moment you were done with that particular act.

It turns out that many college professors are incorporating this into their curriculum. And you have another. - Ah OK. - Well. Once you see that in a scripture, you think okay, this is one, but there are thousands out there. - I think it has been an incredible experience for everyone involved. I mean, it's been amazing for me to see the goodwill and energy that people have given us, which has been a great gift. But I also talked to people and actually collected some data on what people say their experience has been. They are mostly white people and have reported that the experience of reading these writings has been transformative for them. - This one is on Lake Minnetonka. - This one is on Lake Nokomis. - Your work is a graphic example of this practice of discrimination that would otherwise be invisible. - Ideally, what we're seeing is changing the grand narrative, away from personal pathology and cultures of poverty, as the saying goes, to say, you know, that the system was rigged from the beginning.

It happened like that. - Then, at the last minute, city planners decided to reroute the freeway several blocks east, through a black neighborhood. The racial pacts show us how... - We're showing how incredibly central the racial pacts were in terms of laying the foundation.the foundation for those later manifestations of racism. We are inviting people not only to know this but also to act. and what we're trying to do is build the first comprehensive spatial database or map, if you will, of the racial compacts of any city in the country; I mean, this just gives you a level of data accuracy that no one has had access to before. .

And when used in conjunction with redlining, I think it can make very powerful arguments about which areas of the city should be systematically reinvested in. - So it's very important to talk about the history of the community and find out what made it click yesterday. and implement some of those same approaches tomorrow. And I see pieces of that type of community development starting to emerge. - We are talking about space and urban planning, we are talking about more than just bricks and mortar and windows. We are talking about people's lives, their values ​​and their humanity. (thoughtful music) (soft music) This program is made possible by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund (Brilliant Music)