The University of Minnesota was founded before Minnesota was a state by a Land Grant to the Board of Regents in the 1860’s.

University Ave. connects the state capitol, the Cathedral of St. Paul, and downtown St. Paul to the East, and downtown Minneapolis to the West. Interstate 94, which was built in the 1960’s, runs roughly parallel just a few blocks to the south.

When I was born, my family lived in St. Paul’s Frogtown (German: Froschberg) neighborhood. When the Interstate was built, many houses fit for moving and resale were relocated to empty lots.

My mother sold her house in the Frogtown neighborhood on a contract for deed. She bought a bigger house in the Dayton’s Bluff/Mounds Park area. At the time, that neighborhood was a ghetto between the stockyards, brewery, and downwind from a fertilizer plant…with spectacular views.

These views became highly sought after during the housing bubble.

30 years ago, Governor Jesse Ventura shocked everyone (but me) by winning the Gov’s office. One of his competitors, a former Mayor, had a hole in the ground that wasn’t yet a stadium, and his other competitor had just won a major tobacco settlement that was being squandered by various State Agencies.

Gov. Ventura proposed a train line connecting the downtowns through the University of Minnesota. This eventually became the Green Line.

Rondo, Rondo, Rondo, Rondo

Right after the multi-billion dollar Green Line plan was announced, activists mobilized, ensuring everyone knew that a Black neighborhood had been destroyed 50 years before. An entire cottage industry began, Rondo Days and the Rondo Day Parade, the Rondo Public Library, Rondo Square, Rondo Historic Tours, and even the Rondo Bar and Grill.

Everybody needed to know about redlining and historically Black neighborhoods.

There were lots of neighborhoods the interstate went through.

Since the Civil Rights Act of 1866, it has been illegal to discriminate for employment or housing against individuals based on race.

The Civil Rights Act of 1968 started looking at groups and majority-minority neighborhoods for discrimination. You could be any color and be denied a loan in redlined neighborhoods.

Segregation, Socialism, and Eugenics Along the Watchtower

The Prospect Park Neighborhood is walking distance to the University of MN Dight Institute for Eugenics named for Eugenicist and University of Minnesota Professor Charles Fremont Dight.

This neighborhood has been highly desirable for professors since the original University of Minnesota Land Grant in the 1800’s.

Eugenics was a very popular topic among Progressives and Academics from the late 1800’s until bad publicity caused it to fall out of fashion in the late 1940’s.

In 1909, several prominent Black families wanted to move into this highly desirable neighborhood. The illegal racial covenants had recently been tried legally for the first time.

Twin Cities Public Television’s documentary “Jim Crow of the North”, points us to Minnesotans shameful legacy of segregation.

In 1899, Republican MN State Representative J.R.Wheaton was elected in the Kenwood/Lake of the Isles neighborhood. He introduced legislation so wealthy Black Minnesotans could eat in the same restaurants with wealthy white Minnesotans.

In 1909, Madison Jackson, who was a lawyer, wanted to move into the Prospect Park Neighborhood but after a woman across the street has a hissy fit.

His daughter, Marvel Jackson Cooke recalls in “Communist Party Oral Histories” 1984…

“A lady across the street started screaming,” this resulted in the first time a racial covenant in a land dispute had been instituted.

A committee or “mob” of 100 of Minneapolis’ most powerful people showed up and read a prepared statement including the terms, “We don’t want you here,” “We’re not here to argue but to make a plain statement on the matter.”

Another Black attorney who was working for the railroad, also wanted to buy a home in the neighborhood and was living with the Jacksons at the time.

“Our children will not play with your children.” Like most Minnesotans, he hadn’t considered the possible impacts on the children. Mr. Jackson made a playground and his children became the most popular in the neighborhood.

Mrs. Jackson, who had dated W.E.B. Dubois before marrying Mr. Jackson according to the documentary, was very involved in politics.

Marvel Jackson eventually attended the University of Minnesota, wrote for the N.A.A.C.P.’s, “The Crisis” Newspaper, and became engaged to Roy Wilkins, but broke off her engagement because he was too conservative.

While both families kept their houses, Marvel wanted to go live with “her people” which she saw in New York, not in Rondo.

Marvel later worked as the first Black woman in a major New York Newspaper, after two of the papers she worked for were closed after being accused of being Communist Propaganda.

In 1924, another Republican Black Attorney, William T. Francis, challenged a racial covenant in St. Paul’s prestigious Macalester College neighborhood, where Alex Haley would one day spend his summer writing Roots.

This time, rather than a prepared statement, the neighbors offered cash. He and his wife, suffragette, Nellie Francis, did not live there very long, as he was appointed to be the Consul General to investigate state sponsored slavery in Liberia.

In 1931, WWI veteran Arthur Lee had a job with the Post Office when 30% of the city was unemployed. They endured years of harassment in the 12th Ward, where University of Minnesota Eugenicist, Professor Charles Fremont Dight, had been a Minneapolis Socialist Party Alderman.

The couple and their children were protected by the police, and World War I veterans. They were represented by Lena O. Smith, born in 1885, who was Minnesota’s first Black woman lawyer.

This time neighbors tried to buy him out, contacted the bank, and contacted lawyers then committed to “citizen terrorism” according to the Kirsten Delegard of the “Mapping Prejudice Project at the University of Minnesota,” as many as ‘5,000 people surrounded the house.’

There are currently 2,438 people that live in the Field Neighborhood according to the 2020 Census.

In 1934, the Lees moved out of that house. That same year, in an effort to level out the housing crisis his policies created, President Franklin D. Roosevelt approved the National Housing Act, creating the Federal Housing Association.

This gave loans out to Americans who weren’t buying houses in poor and Black neighborhoods. This was known as redlining.

Redlining, Redlining, Redlining, Redlining

Every high school activist in Minnesota can tell you about the negative impacts on Redlining and the inability for Black families to create generational wealth. None of them can tell you how many people never get any kind of inheritance, from any source.

They also can’t tell you about the $100’s of millions of dollars in court settlements, or the untold number of government schemes to remedy them. With certainty, any one of those that you bring up ends up hurting Black communities.

This is a complex set of problems with a lot of complex parts, to which Progressives fill with “Systemic Racism” and more government programs. Anyone against these programs that often do more harm than good to Black families is “Upholding Systems of White Supremacy.”

That could be. My mom solved the Redlining problem by selling her house on a contract for deed and buying in a neighborhood the FHA was lending in.

Academic Activism

Penny Petersen, scoured through 10’s of 1000’s of pages of deeds to find racial covenants that were not valid, and there is no record of ever having been enforced.

Historian Penny Petersen says that Minneapolis’ loss was the Harlem Renaissance’s Gain. Petersen says, “what would have happened if Prospect Park had become an enclave for Black intellectuals and Black civil rights leaders activists?”

It’s hard to say, a lot of decisions go into trying to figure out a plan for an interstate through a city.

Systemic Racism seems to satisfy those who want an easy answer and are willing to overlook poverty as a variable. I’m glad justice prevailed, and the Minnesota Progressives who tried racial covenants to segregate against Blacks the way they’re now trying to segregate against the unvaccinated, failed.

I don’t have any answer as to why J.R. Wheaton, Madison Jackson, Marvel Jackson, William T francis, Arthur Lee or Lena O. Smith would rather live with racists than in Rondo, but perhaps they saw something coming.

When the George Floyd Riots came, University Ave burned from Downtown to Downtown. The University of Minnesota, Prospect Park, Macalester neighborhoods and the State Capital were miraculously spared.

From Left to Right:

Mysterious Cedar-Riverside Explosion Coverup
U of M – West Bank
University of MN – East Bank
Marvel Jackson Cooke – Journalist
Alex Haley – Author of Roots (Macalester College)
Prospect Park Tower – Rumored to be the inspiration for Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower”
Rondo Neighborhood
Frogtown Neighborhood
Central High School – Jawed Karim (Youtube Cofounder) High School
Roy Wilkins – N.A.A.C.P. – Author of the Emmett Till Press Release
Minnesota State Capitol
Cathedral of St. Paul, not to be confused with St. Paul’s Cathedral
Childhood home of Marxist Feminist Kate Millett
1st National Bank – St. Paul Landmark
Metro State University – St. Paul Landmark
River Center – The hole in the ground that got Jesse Ventura elected Governor