Minneapolis Public Schools to discharge racial covenants found at elementary school

The Minneapolis school board voted unanimously Tuesday to discharge racially restrictive covenants found at an elementary school.

Racial covenants were listed in the titles on several parcels at the Lake Harriet Lower School that restricted the occupation or sale of the property by or to nonwhite people.

Racially restrictive covenants were legally enforceable contracts written to keep homes and neighborhoods in the hands of white people.

The covenants were entered by the previous landowners when the Linden Hills neighborhood was being developed nearly 100 years ago. The covenants remained when the district constructed the elementary school in 1924, and read "no person or persons other than of the Caucasian race shall be permitted to occupy said premises or any part thereof," according to the title.

Racial covenants, redlining and the denial of access to loans are among the countless ways structural racism was ingrained into society and created racially segregated neighborhoods and schools, Chair Sharon El-Amin told the board Tuesday.

"Acknowledging them and formally removing them not only allows us to purge these abhorrent provisions from the title, but it provides a learning opportunity both for our students and for our community," she said.

District administrators took the issue to the school board after an inquiry from the Star Tribune noted the covenant on the property.

Lake Harriet Lower School has the most white students of any Minneapolis public school aside from its Upper School.

This is the only racial covenant on a Minneapolis school that Mapping Prejudice, a project at the University of Minnesota is aware of, said Kirsten Delegard, a project co-founder. The project has found more than 30,000 racial covenants in Hennepin and Ramsey counties and parts of Dakota County most commonly on homes, though they have been discovered on parks, churches and other types of city-owned property.

"I think that says a lot about our so-called public institutions in Minneapolis and how racial barriers were built into them in foundational ways," Delegard said.

Someone at the district must have seen the language in the title in the '20s, and it is notable that the covenant was considered acceptable, said Delegard, who attended the elementary school.

"Seeing this data is really helping me understand my own personal experience growing up in the neighborhood and going to the school," she said.

Minneapolis Public Schools students have worked with Mapping Prejudice data and maps since 2016. Delegard hopes the discharge process will provide another learning opportunity for teachers, students and those in the neighborhood who are working to understand the racial history of Minneapolis.

The school board is in the process of reviewing all properties and will act to remove any others if found, El-Amin said.

The school district "apologizes for the use of these tactics and the harm they have caused," she said.