Photos courtesy of Twin Cities PBS
In the mid-1920s, crosses were burned in the front yard of a Black family in St. Paul. The burning cross, a totem of terror used by the Ku Klux Klan, was seen in greater Minnesota more times that you might want to know in the early 20th century. The idea of a flaming cross lighting up a home in the Mac-Groveland neighborhood might be harder to imagine. But it happened. In this case, it was during a tense standoff between white residents and their new neighbors, the extraordinary St. Paulites William and Nellie Francis.
Almost 100 years later, you can see a different symbol in many front lawns in the Twin Cities. Not as intense as a KKK calling card but maybe more powerful.
That symbol is a lawn sign that calls out the racist real estate clause, or “restrictive covenant,” that was burned into the deeds of thousands of homes between 1910 and 1950.
Diver Van Avery, a creative, change-making artist/educator, sent me an email in the winter of 2021: “I am working with incredible folks on a long-standing dream of a project that uses art/front yard lawn signs to make the history of racial covenants on deeds visible and palpable across Minneapolis.”
It sounded both mirthful and monumental. Could the display space used for pink flamingos, gnomes, and high school pride signs be the spot for a provocative racial-justice tool? This project became the impetus for the follow-up stories to our groundbreaking film “Jim Crow of the North.”
In 2019, “Jim Crow of the North” moved through Minnesota, moving audiences with its combination of the Mapping Prejudice project’s irrefutable evidence of housing segregation plus the story of Black resistance over the century. Following the murder of George Floyd, the film became a widely watched touchstone for understanding of Minnesota’s—and America’s—deeply rooted systemic and interpersonal racism. The film also helped move Minnesotans to act on equity.
Van Avery and the Free the Deeds team created a multi-pronged effort to create awareness and spark action through community engagement. Their project includes artist-designed lawn signs that call out the presence of a home’s restrictive covenant. Purchasing a sign (or donating, if your home doesn’t have a covenant) contributes to a homeownership fund based in a community land trust. The project also included the creation of portraits and oral histories of Black homeowners that personify the power of homeownership.
One of the outcomes of the restrictive-covenant data research of Mapping Prejudice, and the millions of views of “Jim Crow of the North,” was momentum for bipartisan legislation that allows Minnesota homeowners to “discharge” racist covenants. This complex and expensive process produced a call to action that became a focus our new series: the Just Deeds project that emerged out of Golden Valley.
City attorney Maria Cisneros, other municipal staff, and community partners decided to help Golden Valley and other Hennepin County homeowners rid their homes of racial covenants. “Our city council is very supportive even though doing this work requires us to examine some things about our own system that are not fun to talk about,” says Cisneros. “But our leadership has been supportive. Our community has been very interested in learning about this and taking these steps together.”
“Jim Crow of the North Stories” was released widely on Martin Luther King Jr. Day (January 16, 2023). This was good timing. The stories acknowledge the pain and inequity rooted in our past but feature responses that use nonviolent, direct action to repair what is flawed and unfair. This ethos and tactic of nonviolence is what its practitioners like Gandhi, Dr. King, and James Lawson called “Soulforce.”
I hope our series of short films brings together the relevance of public history, the power of story, and maybe a little bit of Soulforce. You can watch “Jim Crow of the North Stories” and learn more at tpt.org/jim-crow-north.
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