A Curious Tangletown reader recently learned about the City of Minneapolis Just Deeds project and was looking at the Just Deeds map to see if their property has a racial covenant. They noticed that some areas of the city have a large number of racial covenants clustered together, and some, like Tangletown, have fewer. Amy Schutt, Assistant City Attorney for the City of Minneapolis Just Deeds Project, shares some history and insight on how racial covenants and housing discrimination have played out in Minneapolis:
Racial covenants were legal documents recorded against the titles to homes, which prevent the use, occupancy, or ownership of the home by a member of a particular race or national origin. Although there was no standard language for racial covenants, all of the documents we see include Black people as one of the targeted groups.
Racial covenants gained popularity in Minneapolis in the 1910s through the 1940s. In 1948, the US Supreme Court issued an opinion that limited the practice of racial covenants, and in 1953, the State of Minnesota passed a law prohibiting racial covenants.
Although some racial covenants were put in place by homeowners, the overwhelming majority of racial covenants were created by development and financing companies as they developed new neighborhoods and sold homes in those new neighborhoods.
The question of why some neighborhoods have racial covenants and some don’t can usually be answered by one or more of the following:
1. When the neighborhood was created: Developers sometimes put racial covenants in place during the early stages of the creation of a neighborhood, when the neighborhood was first being mapped out (a process formally called “platting”). As a result, we find racial covenants in neighborhoods that were first developed between 1910-1940. This map, courtesy of the John R. Borchert Map Library, shows the boundaries of the City of Minneapolis in 1906, before racial covenants had gained popularity. At that time, the Tangletown Neighborhood was already a part of the City, and most of the neighborhood had been platted in 1886 as the “Washburn Park Addition.”
2. When the homes were first sold: Developers often put racial covenants on a home during the process of selling the home (or the empty lot) to its first buyer. We find many racial covenants on homes that were built between 1910-1940. You can determine when your home was first sold by looking at the documents in your Abstract, if you have one. If not, you’d have to head down to the Hennepin County Recorder’s office to look through their recorded documents.
3. Which company did the development: Not all development companies utilized racial covenants. Here in Minneapolis, there were a few, frequent offenders. If your neighborhood was developed by a different company, they may have chosen not to use racial covenants.
Just because a home didn’t have a racial covenant, doesn’t mean it escaped the legacy of housing discrimination. Many discriminatory practices have occurred throughout Minneapolis’s history, including:
· The federal, state and local governments’ routine exploitation of tribal land. The land on which the City of Minneapolis now stands was taken from the Dakota people in 1805 without their consent and in exchange for only $2,000.
· At the same time racial covenants were being used, the areas to which Black people moved were “redlined” by banks and the federal government, making it harder for residents to obtain mortgages, buy property, or accumulate generational wealth.
· In the mid-20th century, the development of Olson Memorial Highway in north Minneapolis and of Interstate 35W in south Minneapolis cut through integrated and majority-minority neighborhoods. These developments resulted in the demolition of thousands of homes and businesses, displaced hundreds of residents, and disrupted vibrant cultural communities.
To ensure that we don’t repeat the cycle, it’s up to all of us to recognize and challenge discriminatory housing practices in our communities. To learn more about the actions you can take and the policies you can support, please visit: https://mappingprejudice.umn.edu/sites/mappingprejudice.umn.edu/files/2022-08/Awareness_to_Action_Mapping_Prejudice.pdf
Information provided by:
Amy B. Schutt l Assistant City Attorney
City of Minneapolis Just Deeds Project