Tuesday Read: 'Whiteness in Plain View,' by Chad Montrie

Lincoln Steffens was a famous muckraking journalist whose exposés on corruption in the nation's major metropolitan areas, including Minneapolis, in the early years of the 20th century were compiled in a historic work, "The Shame of the Cities."

A new book by Chad Montrie, a history professor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, might well have been titled "The Shame of Minnesota." It is a detailed description of how Black Americans, over nearly two centuries, were either barred from living in communities across Minnesota, or driven out of communities, or forced to live in the most dilapidated sections of Minneapolis and St. Paul so as to preserve the white-only character of more attractive neighborhoods in the cities and surrounding suburbs.

"Whiteness in Plain View: A History of Racial Exclusion in Minnesota" tells how Josiah Snelling, who was commander of what became known as Fort Snelling, purchased two enslaved people, a mother and daughter, in St. Louis and brought them to the fort, setting a precedent for slaveholding among soldiers there.

White settlers swarmed into the territory, culminating in the 1862 Dakota war, in which Native Americans rose up, sparked by starvation when the U.S. government failed to provide annuity payments that were guaranteed when they were forced off their lands. Six hundred whites were killed, leading to the hanging of 38 Indians in Mankato, the largest mass hanging in American history, followed by the forced removal of many Indians from Minnesota.

Despite the abolition of slavery, Minnesota retained a racial caste system. "White residents demanded ritualized deference from Blacks, limited them to marginal positions in the economy, barred them from participation in civic government, and excluded them from intellectual social roles," Montrie writes.

The racist impetus was often accompanied by violence or threat of violence. There were the arsonists who burned down the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Hastings in 1907, the lynching of three innocent Black men in Duluth in 1920, the racist mobs of packinghouse workers who drove Blacks out of Austin in the 1920s, the rise of the Ku Klux Klan that rallied thousands of racists across the state, also in the 1920s.

There were the insidious racial covenants in deeds that came into vogue in the early 20th century that prohibited homeowners from selling their properties to Blacks, the federal mortgage lending practices which assured that white neighborhoods would stay white, the realty companies that blocked Blacks from purchasing homes in white areas.

Montrie describes the struggles to desegregate Edina, Bloomington and St. Louis Park, where racists sometimes threatened Blacks who tried to move in. He reports on the callous disregard by authorities to the public outcry of Black residents who were unsuccessful in preventing the destruction of the Rondo neighborhood in St. Paul to make way for construction of Interstate Hwy. 94.

Sprinkled through the book are examples of courage and commitment, such as Josie Johnson's efforts to get fair housing legislation passed in the 1960s, and the impassioned efforts of St. Paul NAACP president Leonard Carter on behalf of Rondo residents.

When it came to the state's growth and development, it would seem that people of color were nearly always expendable. Given the current state of affairs — the vast disparities in employment, home ownership and income between whites and minorities — not to mention the gigantic issues of policing in our state, a just society appears to be a long way off. Montrie's groundbreaking book is extremely useful in helping us understand how we got to this point.

Randy Furst is a Star Tribune reporter.

Whiteness in Plain View
By: Chad Montrie.
Publisher: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 263 pages, $19.95.