Since 1968, the Fair Housing Law makes it illegal to discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, disability, familial status or national origin. But before that, discrimination in who could buy or rent property was routine.
Restrictive covenants were common in the Twin Cities. They specifically excluded Blacks (“anyone with African or Negro blood”) and most excluded Jews or other people of color. Some covenants spelled out that homeowners “must be of the Caucasian race.”
“It was startling to me, this formal system of oppression and segregation that was hidden, effectively buried in the language of deeds and abstracts. In Minnesota there weren’t ‘whites only’ signs like in the South. The racism was less overt but no less damaging,” said TPT Executive Producer and filmmaker Daniel Bergin.
In 2019, Bergin and TPT produced “Jim Crow of the North,” a documentary which explored the legacy of the covenants and how it shaped housing patterns in the city of Minneapolis that exist to this day. Bergin, who spoke to WCCO's Sheletta Brundidge, said the intent was obvious.
“The covenants were clear their intent. The language is direct and brutal about who can and can’t occupy or own a home. The covenants created barriers patrolled by police in some places. What begins with racist covenants affects policing, schools, jobs,” Bergin explained. “The racist covenant is the nucleus of the atom.”
Now Bergin and TPT are following up on their Emmy Award-winning long form film. He’s now produced a limited season of Jim Crow of the North digital shorts that show the resistance and resilience of those who stood up to the covenants. The series can be downloaded by viewers. Numerous classrooms, church groups and civic organizations are screening them as fodder for conversation and action.
“This reveals a history that answers some questions about Minnesota’s struggles with racial disparities,” Bergin said. “It looks at a curious paradox. Minnesota is a wealthy progressive state but we have one of the widest racial gaps when it comes to education, home ownership and wealth.”
As a basis for their work, Bergin and TPT followed the research of the University of Minnesota’s Mapping Prejudice Project, led by founder Kirsten Delegard.
Mapping Prejudice uncovered the Minneapolis deeds and created the first-ever comprehensive visualization of racial covenants for an American city. The map became the focus of the TPT storytelling.
Racist covenants in the Twin Cities date back to the early 20th century. As homes and neighborhoods sprung up, developers inserted the covenants and the practice continued through homes sold in the 1930s, 40s and beyond.
“For developers, it was part of their marketing. It wasn’t hidden, it was trumpeted. Developers mentioned the covenants in their advertising, banks invested where there were covenants,” Bergin explained. “The modern civil rights movement called them out and then these efforts went underground, with steering by real estate agents.”
Bergin only gradually became aware of the segregation that exists in his hometown of Minneapolis. He grew up in a “blended, multi-racial family,” raised in Powderhorn in South Minneapolis. He chose a high school on the Northside, riding a city bus from his diverse neighborhood to an area that was almost all Black. He wondered about why there were such invisible but obvious lines that affected who lived where and who owned homes.
“Jim Crow of the North is not about guilt and blame but about understanding privilege and which families accrued wealth. The data is irrefutable and unflinching and it’s clear about who benefited,” he said. “The research isn’t subjective, it’s the real history, brutal and tough. It’s the facts.”
Digitized historic real estate records became the game changer for researchers, giving the ability to see thousands of deeds and recognize patterns that emerged as a result. Researchers created a program to search for different words in the covenant language: “African,” “Caucasian,” “Jewish.”
Then humans confirmed and validated the findings.
In addition to Mapping Prejudice, public projects including Just Deeds and Free the Deeds are continuing the work of uncovering and documenting past housing inequities. They offer both scholars and the merely curious a wealth of online data to explore. Citizens can join the efforts to research and reveal the racist deeds.
“Historians, filmmakers and middle school history students can use online portals to do their own research and check the deeds on their own homes,” Bergin said. “It’s happening in real time. This is crowd-sourced, volunteer-driven research looking at tens of thousands of deeds.”
Bergin anticipates that Jim Crow of the North will continue, documenting the long term fallout of the sanctioned housing discrimination. He insists it’s important for people of all backgrounds to know about this shameful chapter of Minnesota’s story.
“I worry about a backlash against thoughtful history. What happens if students can’t explore history that is rooted in good scholarship and reveals bad things about America?” He said. “This information is crucial.
History helps us understand how we got to now.”
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