University of Minnesota-Twin Cities

Search
Search
News
Multimedia
Sports
Classifieds
Opinion
Subscribe
Entertainment
Send a Tip
Podcasts
Donate
In-Depth

Subscribeto our newsletter

Minnesota Daily Logo

Wednesday, February 20, 2019 Print Edition

Donate

  •       
  • News
  • Sports
  • Opinion
  • Entertainment
  • In-Depth
  • Multimedia
  • Podcasts
  • Classifieds
  • Special Issues
  • Send a Tip
  • News
  • Sports
  • Opinion
  • Entertainment
  • In-Depth
  • Multimedia
  • Podcasts
  • Classifieds
  • Special Issues
  • Send a Tip
Search

Subscribe

The independent news source for the University of Minnesota campus, now only a click away. Subscribe to the Minnesota Daily's e-newsletter for full sports coverage, updates from the newsroom, and a pick of the week's top features.

Minnesota Daily Newsletter

Fill out my online form.

Donate to the Minnesota Daily!

The Minnesota Daily has been training student journalists and serving the University of Minnesota community since 1900. With your help, we will continue to produce award-winning journalism and provide excellent training for students in all areas of news production. We collect donations through GiveMN; please click below and donate today!

MINNESOTA DAILY | GiveMN


3/29/2017, 1:15pm

New research explores history of housing discrimination in Minneapolis

A team of researchers seeks to understand racial disparities in Minneapolis by examining the city’s housing deeds history.

By Cindy Simba
New research explores history of housing discrimination in Minneapolis
Courtesy of Hennepin County Library

Protesters hold signs criticizing racially restrictive housing codes in Minneapolis in 1946.

Share

  • Share
  • Tweet
  • Mail
  • Print

When historian Kirsten Delegard returned to Minneapolis after 20 years, she discovered that little had been done to understand the history of race in the city.

Now, a project by the Augsburg College scholar, Mapping Prejudice, explores how housing discrimination has led to current racial disparities in Minneapolis.

Minneapolis is one of the most segregated cities in the United States. White residents are far wealthier and educated than people of color, and to explore these disparities, Delegard wanted to find answers from the city’s history.

“You can’t understand anything about contemporary life without understanding the past,” Delegard said.

She enlisted the help of historian Penny Petersen who examined 20,000 19th century restrictive housing covenants, of which 5,000 were discovered to have discriminatory language.

“Most people have no idea that there were legal restrictions for people of color in buying properties,” Delegard said about housing covenants — documents that made it possible for landowners to discriminate against people of color from purchasing a particular property.

A deed, which is tied to the land, would list certain ethnicities that were not allowed to own the property.

“They were very specific,” said Ryan Mattke, a historian at the University of Minnesota.

These housing deeds were obstacles for people of color to own property and helped keep neighborhoods white, he said.

The housing deeds were not laws, however. The law enforced them under the guise of private property contracts.

Delegard called the practice “a system of apartheid” where people couldn’t defy the contracts without facing consequences and losing land equity. The ownership of the land would be reverted back to its original owners despite the various individuals that had owned it after them.

These housing deeds have existed since the early 19th century. In 1948 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the court would not enforce them, but the practice still continued.

It wasn’t until the Fair Housing Act of 1968 that these deeds were declared illegal.

“Even though there weren’t separate schools, there were still underlining segregation tools,” Mattke said.

Kevin Ehrman-Solberg a University geographic information science graduate student created a map to show where these restrictive housing covenants were active based on Petersen’s findings.

Before, it would have taken years to examine all the 1.4 million housing deeds in Hennepin County spanning several decades, but digital mapping tools have made it possible Ehrman-Solber said.

“We hope to be done mapping all the covenants in Minneapolis within the next year,” Ehrman-Solberg said.

Once complete, Minneapolis will be the first city in the U.S. to have this, Delegard said, adding that the project needs volunteers to transcribe deeds.

Share



Related Stories

Passersby walk next to Coffman Union on Monday, Oct. 29, 2018. 

Report recommends renaming four buildings

By Jake Steinberg

Nael Banat leads University Human Resources employees in a pre-shift stretch on Friday, Feb. 15. The program was started by Banat and fellow graduate student Andrea Santi as part of their Kinesiology studies.

Early-morning stretch program aids UMN staff

By Norah Kleven

The University of Minnesota Law School is seen on Tuesday, June 5.

Rising enrollment, applications a good sign for Law School

By Austen Macalus


The Minnesota Daily welcomes thoughtful discussion on all of our stories, but please keep comments civil and on-topic. Read our full guidelines here.


Editor's Picks


Last Updated 11 hours ago

Early-morning stretch program aids UMN staff

By Norah Kleven

The program aims to help University faculty with physically demanding jobs stretch to prevent injury.


Last Updated 11 hours ago

Rising enrollment, applications a good sign for Law School


Last Updated 11 hours ago

UMN researchers use stalagmites to gauge climate change


2/18/2019, 10:57pm

Community gathers to honor West Bank music icon


Podcasts


2/13/2019, 11:20pm

Episode 19: Connecting with youth in Cedar-Riverside


2/7/2019, 12:17am

Episode 18: The bittersweet life of UMN sugar babies


1/31/2019, 9:12am

In the Know: Episode 17


Minnesota Daily Logo To Homepage
  • About
  • Jobs
  • Contact
  • Archives
  • Advertise
  • Distribution

All Rights Reserved

© Copyright 2019 Minnesota Daily

Powered by Solutions by The State News.