What's next for DEI?

Since taking office, President Donald Trump has signed a series of executive orders to reverse federal policies around diversity, equity and inclusion. The most recent order signed last month prohibits DEI activities in private companies that contract with the federal government. Some states have also passed anti-DEI legislation and many private companies have pulled back on diversity initiatives.

So, where does this leave efforts to create workplaces that are more inclusive and fair?

MPR News host Angela Davis and her guests talk about how DEI is evolving and what it takes to create workplaces that work for everyone.

Guests:

• Stacey Gordon is the founder of Rework Work, a leadership strategy and consulting firm, and author of “UNBIAS: Addressing Unconscious Bias at Work.” They are based in Edinburgh, Scotland.

• Lily Zheng is a consultant based in the San Francisco Bay Area who works with leaders to create inclusive workplaces. They are also the author of several books, including "DEI Deconstructed," "Reconstructing DEI" and "Fixing Fairness."

• Milton Dodd is the executive director of the Forum on Workplace Inclusion, a Minneapolis conference on May 27-28 for organization leaders, human resource managers, Employee Resource Group (ERG) leaders and others working on issues related to diversity, equity and inclusion. Dodd is also president of Infinity Systems, a Minneapolis consulting company specializing in organizational alignment and inclusive workplace cultures.

Subscribe to the MPR News with Angela Davis podcast on: Apple Podcasts, Spotify or RSS.

Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation. 

Historically Black colleges and universities — known as HBCUs — are schools that were created to educate Black students at a time when most colleges would not admit them.

While “HBCU” might not be a household name in Minnesota, students and graduates of these 107 schools represent a thriving culture and network, especially in the southern United States.

And, their impact is significant. A recent report by Forbes magazine reveals that HBCUs have produced about 80 percent of Black judges, 70 percent of Black doctors and dentists, 50 percent of Black engineers, and 40 percent of Black lawyers. And about half of the nation’s Black teachers graduated from an HBCU.

MPR News host Angela Davis talks with several graduates of HBCUs and a leader from an organization that supports these schools. They’ll talk about the history of these institutions and why they still matter today.

Guests:

• Laverne McCartney Knighton is an area development director for the United Negro College Fund. She oversees fundraising and scholarship programs in Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska and the Dakotas.

• James Burroughs is the senior vice president of government and community relations and the chief equity and inclusion officer at Children’s Minnesota — Minnesota’s largest pediatric hospital. He also attended Morehouse College, an HBCU in Atlanta, Ga.

• Zarina Sementelli is a recent law school graduate who grew up in Minnesota. She graduated from Spelman College, an HBCU in Atlanta, Georgia, and California Western School of Law.

Subscribe to the MPR News with Angela Davis podcast on: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or RSS.

Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation. 

Over his long career, civil rights icon the Rev. Jesse Jackson made many visits to Minnesota to champion causes and work to empower people who were underrepresented.

Jackson died early Tuesday at the age of 84.

Back in 1985, Jackson flew to the state to advocate for farmers facing foreclosure. He attended a rally in Glenwood, saying then that America had the means to help struggling farm families.

“We did it for Europe with the Marshall Plan. We did it for Israel — we made flowers bloom in the desert. We did it for Chrysler, we did it for Continental Bank — we can do it for farmers. It’s just a matter of having the collective will to do so,” Jackson said at the time.

In 1996, about a month before that year’s presidential election — Jackson visited with high school students in north Minneapolis. After talking for about 20 minutes, he asked any students 18 or older to raise their hands if they were registered to vote. Any who weren’t, were called down to the front of the room to sign up.

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Speaking with MPR News afterward, Jackson said seeing young people registering to vote was “a joy beyond explanation.”

“Many people feel that their vote does not count, because often they feel they don’t count and that somehow it will be all right,” Jackson said. “Many people who need Medicare, or who need a livable wage, or who need first-class schools as opposed to first-class jails and second-class schools — whose needs are very real and will be determined by public policy — are not registered to vote. And some of them think that these basic necessities will be taken care of — but they will not be, unless we vote for them, unless we fight for them.”

Jackson continued to visit Minnesota in more-recent years — addressing protesters outside the Governor's Residence following the police shooting of Philando Castile in 2016, and traveling to Minneapolis to meet with residents and elected officials following the murder of George Floyd in 2020. He returned the following year to meet with protesters following the police shooting of Daunte Wright, and to visit George Floyd Square.

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Decades before, during that visit on behalf of farmers in western Minnesota in 1985, Jackson highlighted a recurring theme in his life’s work, and in his many visits to the state: The power of bringing people together, of uniting causes, to affect change.

“If the students just go to Washington one day protesting, and the mayors another day, and the farmers another day — they are dismissed as isolated parades. But if, in fact, we find common ground and begin to move together, we can change the alternatives under which all decisions are made,” he said.

The Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, a protege of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and two-time presidential candidate who led the Civil Rights Movement for decades after the revered leader's assassination, died Tuesday. He was 84.

His daughter, Santita Jackson, confirmed that her father died at home, surrounded by family.

As a young organizer in Chicago, Jackson was called to meet with King at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis shortly before King was killed and he publicly positioned himself thereafter as King's successor.

Jackson led a lifetime of crusades in the United States and abroad, advocating for the poor and underrepresented on issues from voting rights and job opportunities to education and health care. He scored diplomatic victories with world leaders, and through his Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, he channeled cries for Black pride and self-determination into corporate boardrooms, pressuring executives to make America a more open and equitable society.

And when he declared, “I am Somebody,” in a poem he often repeated, he sought to reach people of all colors. “I may be poor, but I am Somebody; I may be young; but I am Somebody; I may be on welfare, but I am Somebody,” Jackson intoned.

It was a message he took literally and personally, having risen from obscurity in the segregated South to become America’s best-known civil rights activist since King.

“Our father was a servant leader — not only to our family, but to the oppressed, the voiceless, and the overlooked around the world,” the Jackson family said in a statement posted online. “We shared him with the world, and in return, the world became part of our extended family. His unwavering belief in justice, equality, and love uplifted millions, and we ask you to honor his memory by continuing the fight for the values he lived by.”

Despite profound health challenges in his final years including a rare neurological disorder that affected his ability to move and speak, Jackson continued protesting against racial injustice into the era of Black Lives Matter. In 2024, he appeared at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago and at a City Council meeting to show support for a resolution backing a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war.

“Even if we win,” he told marchers in Minneapolis before the officer whose knee kept George Floyd from breathing was convicted of murder, “it’s relief, not victory. They’re still killing our people. Stop the violence, save the children. Keep hope alive.”

Calls to action, delivered in a memorable voice

Jackson’s voice, infused with the stirring cadences and powerful insistence of the Black church, demanded attention. On the campaign trail and elsewhere, he used rhyming and slogans such as: “Hope not dope” and “If my mind can conceive it and my heart can believe it then I can achieve it,″ to deliver his messages.

Jackson had his share of critics, both within and outside of the Black community. Some considered him a grandstander, too eager to seek out the spotlight. Looking back on his life and legacy, Jackson told The Associated Press in 2011 that he felt blessed to be able to continue the service of other leaders before him and to lay a foundation for those to come.

“A part of our life’s work was to tear down walls and build bridges, and in a half century of work, we’ve basically torn down walls,” Jackson said. “Sometimes when you tear down walls, you’re scarred by falling debris, but your mission is to open up holes so others behind you can run through.”

In his final months, as he received 24-hour care, he lost his ability to speak, communicating with family and visitors by holding their hands and squeezing.

“I get very emotional knowing that these speeches belong to the ages now,” his son, Jesse Jackson Jr., told the AP in October.

A student athlete drawn to the Civil Rights Movement

Jesse Louis Jackson was born on Oct. 8, 1941, in Greenville, South Carolina, the son of high school student Helen Burns and Noah Louis Robinson, a married man who lived next door. Jackson was later adopted by Charles Henry Jackson, who married his mother.

Jackson was a star quarterback on the football team at Sterling High School in Greenville, and accepted a football scholarship from the University of Illinois. But after he reportedly was told Black people couldn’t play quarterback, he transferred to North Carolina A&T in Greensboro, where he became the first-string quarterback, an honor student in sociology and economics, and student body president.

Arriving on the historically Black campus in 1960 just months after students there launched sit-ins at a whites-only diner, Jackson immersed himself in the blossoming Civil Rights Movement.

By 1965, he joined the voting rights march King led from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. King dispatched him to Chicago to launch Operation Breadbasket, a Southern Christian Leadership Conference effort to pressure companies to hire Black workers.

Jackson called his time with King “a phenomenal four years of work.”

Jackson was with King on April 4, 1968, when the civil rights leader was slain at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. Jackson’s account of the assassination was that King died in his arms.

With his flair for the dramatic, Jackson wore a turtleneck he said was soaked with King’s blood for two days, including at a King memorial service held by the Chicago City Council, where he said: “I come here with a heavy heart because on my chest is the stain of blood from Dr. King’s head.”

However, several King aides, including speechwriter Alfred Duckett, questioned whether Jackson could have gotten King’s blood on his clothing. There are no images of Jackson in pictures taken shortly after the assassination.

In 1971, Jackson broke with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to form Operation PUSH, originally named People United to Save Humanity. The organization based on Chicago’s South Side declared a sweeping mission, from diversifying workforces to registering voters in communities of color nationwide. Using lawsuits and threats of boycotts, Jackson pressured top corporations to spend millions and publicly commit to diversifying their workforces.

The constant campaigns often left his wife, Jacqueline Lavinia Brown, the college sweetheart he married in 1963, taking the lead in raising their five children: Santita Jackson, Yusef DuBois Jackson, Jacqueline Lavinia Jackson Jr., and two future members of Congress, U.S. Rep. Jonathan Luther Jackson and Jesse L. Jackson Jr., who resigned in 2012 but is seeking reelection in the 2026 midterms.

The elder Jackson, who was ordained as a Baptist minister in 1968 and earned his Master of Divinity in 2000, also acknowledged fathering a child, Ashley Jackson, with one of his employees at Rainbow/PUSH, Karen L. Stanford. He said he understood what it means to be born out of wedlock and supported her emotionally and financially.

Presidential aspirations fall short but help ‘keep hope alive’

Despite once telling a Black audience he would not run for president “because white people are incapable of appreciating me,” Jackson ran twice and did better than any Black politician had before President Barack Obama, winning 13 primaries and caucuses for the Democratic nomination in 1988, four years after his first failed attempt.

His successes left supporters chanting another Jackson slogan, “Keep Hope Alive.”

“I was able to run for the presidency twice and redefine what was possible; it raised the lid for women and other people of color,” he told the AP. “Part of my job was to sow seeds of the possibilities.”

U.S. Rep. John Lewis said during a 1988 C-SPAN interview that Jackson’s two runs for the Democratic nomination “opened some doors that some minority person will be able to walk through and become president.”

Jackson also pushed for cultural change, joining calls by NAACP members and other movement leaders in the late 1980s to identify Black people in the United States as African Americans.

“To be called African Americans has cultural integrity — it puts us in our proper historical context,” Jackson said at the time. “Every ethnic group in this country has a reference to some base, some historical cultural base. African Americans have hit that level of cultural maturity.”

Jackson’s words sometimes got him in trouble.

In 1984, he apologized for what he thought were private comments to a reporter, calling New York City “Hymietown,” a derogatory reference to its large Jewish population. And in 2008, he made headlines when he complained that Obama was “talking down to Black people” in comments captured by a microphone he didn’t know was on during a break in a television taping.

Still, when Jackson joined the jubilant crowd in Chicago’s Grant Park to greet Obama that election night, he had tears streaming down his face.

“I wish for a moment that Dr. King or (slain civil rights leader) Medgar Evers ... could’ve just been there for 30 seconds to see the fruits of their labor,” he told the AP years later. “I became overwhelmed. It was the joy and the journey.”

Exerting influence on events at home and abroad

Jackson also had influence abroad, meeting world leaders and scoring diplomatic victories, including the release of Navy Lt. Robert Goodman from Syria in 1984, as well as the 1990 release of more than 700 foreign women and children held after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. In 1999, he won the freedom of three Americans imprisoned by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.

In 2000, President Bill Clinton awarded Jackson the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country’s highest civilian honor.

“Citizens have the right to do something or do nothing,” Jackson said, before heading to Syria. “We choose to do something.”

In 2021, Jackson joined the parents of Ahmaud Arbery inside the Georgia courtroom where three white men were convicted of killing the young Black jogger. In 2022, he hand-delivered a letter to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Chicago, calling for federal charges against former Chicago Police Officer Jason Van Dyke in the 2014 killing of Black teenager Laquan McDonald.

Jackson, who stepped down as president of Rainbow/PUSH in July 2023, disclosed in 2017 that he had sought treatment for Parkinson’s, but he continued to make public appearances even as the disease made it more difficult for listeners to understand him. Earlier this year doctors confirmed a diagnosis of progressive supranuclear palsy, a life-threatening neurological disorder. He was admitted to a hospital in November.

During the coronavirus pandemic, he and his wife survived being hospitalized with COVID-19. Jackson was vaccinated early, urging Black people in particular to get protected, given their higher risks for bad outcomes.

“It’s America’s unfinished business — we’re free, but not equal,” Jackson told the AP. “There’s a reality check that has been brought by the coronavirus, that exposes the weakness and the opportunity.”

Is it possible to build relational bridges, even in contentious times?

Scholar and activist john a. powell says yes. He’s dedicated his life to teaching others how to belong and bridge. As the director of the Othering and Belonging Institute at the University of California, Berkeley and the founder of the Institute on Race and Poverty at the University of Minnesota, powell — who spells his name in lowercase, to signify that “we are part of the universe, not over it” — studies equity and connection.

His new book, “The Power of Bridging,” is his thesis that connecting with others and honoring their humanity is the only way to create a world where we all belong.

john a. powell on 'The Power of Bridging'

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powell came back to Minnesota on a cold night in early December, at the invitation of The Bush Foundation and MPR, to talk with MPR News reporter and host Catharine Richert about how to do the work of bridging, even at this divisive moment in history. He shared stories from his own life, talked about how to bridge (or not) with folks who don’t want to bridge and discussed how the work of bridging and belonging is as much internal as external.

Subscribe to the MPR News with Angela Davis podcast on: Apple Podcasts, Spotify or RSS. 

People of various faiths, ethnicities and racial backgrounds are gathering in Rochester Sunday in a show of solidarity with the Somali American community there.

It’s the latest of several events in cities across Minnesota in a show of support for the Somali community after President Donald Trump’s racist and divisive comments about them this past week.

The Muslim Coalition of ISAIAH will host a community gathering and potluck in northwest Rochester on Sunday, Dec. 7 from 3 to 4 p.m., celebrating and honoring Somali culture and contributions.

Zeinab Hasan, 39, of Rochester, is an organizer from the Muslim Coalition of ISAIAH. She says Somali community members, especially children, are feeling scared and threatened by Trump’s hateful diatribe. Hasan says she was a young girl when she immigrated from Somalia with her family 30 years ago and hers was one of the first Somali families that settled in Rochester and planted roots here.

Hasan said that the bigoted and xenophobic rhetoric reminds many in the community members of similar anti-Muslim sentiment that arose in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. She said Trump’s rant makes it more difficult for many Somalis to feel as though they are a part of the broader community.

“We do belong here, like we want to be here,” Hasan said. “Some of us have bought homes, (we) do business, we’ve established so much here. I think the majority of us put more into living here in Rochester than our actual country. It’s (created) a lot of divided feelings.”

Earlier this week, a rally was held in St. Cloud to counter the xenophobic and racist remarks made by Trump that targeted the state’s Somali communities. Though the vast majority of Somalis in Minnesota are U.S. citizens, the Trump administration also has threatened to revoke temporary protected status for hundreds of Somali immigrants living in the state.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions in the Twin Cities and elsewhere have resulted in escalating confrontations between federal law enforcement officers and some neighborhood watchers and protesters. The ICE actions have also heightened fear in Somali American communities that have been well established across Minnesota for decades.

State, city and faith leaders have publicly condemned the disparaging remarks. Even some Republicans who had been allies of Trump are now calling out the rhetoric.

Hasan says she hopes that the gathering In Rochester on Sunday will be “a starting point” for communities to come together and remind others that they do belong.

“I just had my second kid here a month ago,” she said, as she ponders her family’s future in Minnesota. “So I'm growing a family here myself. So what is the future of Rochester for my family? What is the future of Rochester for not just my kids, for all youth?”

Correction (Dec. 9, 2025): An earlier version of this story misspelled Zeinab Hasan’s last name.

Saturday marks 10 years since the fatal shooting of Jamar Clark by Minneapolis police.

Sixty-one seconds after two police officers first encountered the 24-year-old Clark outside of a house party on the North Side, an officer shot Clark in the head. He died the next day.

Clark was unarmed, and the officers were never charged.

In the aftermath of the shooting, there were questions of whether Clark was handcuffed at the time of the shooting, and whether Clark had reached for an officer’s gun. And in the absence of conclusive video, there were concerns over whose accounts investigators and prosecutors considered when deciding not to file charges — the police officers, or other witnesses to the shooting.

The shooting prompted protests, including an occupation outside the city’s 4th Precinct that lasted 18 days.

Even though it’s been 10 years since the shooting, Clark’s mother feels as though no time has passed at all.

“It still feels like yesterday,” Irma Burns said. “It don’t never click in that this thing is real and so you have to be jerked, in a sense, back to reality that is real.”

Burns has since focused on honoring Clark’s life and legacy by starting a foundation in his name. It’s called Project Jamar Saving Me.

“He always wanted to help people,” Burns said. “So, Project Saving Me is a project designed to help the community, to try to reach our youth.”

On Saturday, Nov. 15, Clark’s family will unveil a new memorial bench at the exact spot where Clark was shot. They hope the bench ”honors his life, his spirit and his role in galvanizing a generation of community members fighting for transparency, justice and meaningful police accountability.”

Burns said an existing bench for Clark in Plymouth had already led to a powerful encounter for one young man. Burns met him while the foundation was holding a community event there.

“He sat on that bench because he was getting ready to go do something really bad and he say something stopped him,” Burns said. “He even turned the gun that he had in.”

Beyond the work she’s doing in the community, Burns is holding onto the memories of her son — including Clark bringing home a very heavy table for her.

“He was determined to give me a table, which was a glass table,” Burns said. “But he didn't have no way of getting it to my house. So, he carried it on his back.”

It was a 10-block journey in scorching heat. The table still stands in her living room today.

“I dare anyone to come close to it, to touch it the wrong way. You’re gonna hear from me,” she said.

Burns said in these last 10 years, she’s seen the larger impact her son has had.

“I feel like Jamar was a big piece of even starting that journey to bring awareness,” she said. “I know that it’s a big sacrifice, but I feel if these things come together in his name, I'm gonna continue to say I don't think this would be in vain.”

Misty Copeland hangs up her pointe shoes Wednesday, putting a final exclamation point on a trailblazing career in which she became an ambassador for diversity in the very white world of ballet — and a crossover star far beyond.

Copeland will be feted in grand style as American Ballet Theatre devotes a gala evening to her retirement after 25 years with the company. Copeland joined ABT as a teenager and became, a decade ago, the first Black female principal dancer in its 75-year history.

In a way, the gala will be both a return and a departure for Copeland. She'll be dancing with the company for the first time in five years. During that time, Copeland has been raising a young son with her husband.

She's also been continuing her career as an author — the second volume of her “Bunheads” series appeared in September — and working to increase diversity in the dance world with her namesake foundation, including “Be Bold,” an afterschool program designed for young children of color.

But Copeland decided to dust off the pointe shoes so she could have one last spin on the ABT stage — including a duet as Juliet, one of the most passionate roles in ballet. Though she has not closed the door on dancing altogether, it’s clear an era is ending.

“It’s been 25 years at ABT, and I think it’s time,” Copeland, 43, told The Associated Press in an interview in June, when she announced her retirement. “It’s time for me to move to the next stage.”

She added: “You know, I’ve become the person that I am today, and have all the opportunities I have today, because of ballet, (and) because of American Ballet Theatre. I feel like this is me saying ‘thank you’ to the company. So it’s a farewell. (But) it won’t be the end of me dancing. … Never say never.”

The evening at Lincoln Center’s David H. Koch Theater will be streamed live to nearby Alice Tully Hall across the plaza, with attendance free to the public — another sign of Copeland's unique brand of fame in the dance world.

Copeland was born in Kansas City, Missouri, and raised in San Pedro, California, where she lived in near poverty and through periods of homelessness as her single mother struggled to support her and five siblings.

For a future professional dancer, she came to ballet relatively late — at 13 — but soon excelled and went on to study at the San Francisco Ballet School and American Ballet Theatre on scholarship opportunities. After a stint in the junior company, Copeland joined ABT as a member of the corps de ballet in April 2001, becoming a soloist six years later.

In June 2015, Copeland was promoted to principal dancer. Unlike other promotions, which are announced quietly, Copeland's was announced at a news conference — a testament to her celebrity. Only days before, she’d made a triumphant New York debut in “Swan Lake” in the starring role of Odette/Odile, drawing a diverse and enthusiastic crowd to the Metropolitan Opera House.

In the AP interview, Copeland acknowledged that it’s striking that when she leaves ABT, there will no longer be a Black female principal dancer at the company (on the male side, acclaimed dancer Calvin Royal III was promoted to principal in 2020).

“It’s definitely concerning,” Copeland said. “I think I’ve just gotten to a place in my career where there’s only so much I can do on a stage. There’s only so much that visual representation … can do. I feel like it’s the perfect timing for me to be stepping into a new role, and hopefully still shaping and shifting the ballet world and culture.”

She also noted this is an especially trying moment for anyone working in the area of diversity, equity and inclusion.

“It’s a difficult time,” she said. “And I think all we can really do is keep our heads down and keep doing the work. There’s no way to stop the people that feel passionate about this work. We will continue doing it.”

An iconic mural of George Floyd was vandalized this week in Minneapolis, according to stewards of his memorial. 

Marcia Howard, a teacher and activist, posted a video to social media Friday morning about the vandalism. It showed a tray of cream paint below the mural, with a portrait of George Floyd painted over.  

“We have been attempting to keep this place secure and sustainable and sanitary and sacred, so if you wanna help my comrades and us out in that effort… you know the drill,” said Howard, rallying supporters. 

The mural adorns the outside of the grocery store renamed Unity Foods, at the intersection of 38th Street and Chicago Avenue where Floyd took his last breaths.  

Jeanelle Austin, a caretaker of the memorial there and executive director of George Floyd Global Memorial, told MPR News the vandalism might have taken place Tuesday night. Caretakers noticed it on Wednesday morning and immediately got to work on restoring the mural. 

Austin said art conservators assessed the damage and started cleaning on Thursday. One of the mural’s artists, Cadex Herrera, will refresh the mural with new paint.  

It's been more than 60 years since the construction of Interstate 94 destroyed much of the historically Black St. Paul neighborhood known as Rondo. Minneapolis writer Debra J. Stone remembers visiting her grandparents as a child in Rondo every Sunday without fail. She even remembers playing in an enormous dirt pit from I-94 construction growing near their house. It was only when her grandparents' house was demolished that she realized the effect the interstate would have.

Debra wrote a novel about a little girl, not unlike herself at the time, grappling with the destruction of the Rondo neighborhood in 1963. The book is called “The House on Rondo,” and it is out Tuesday.

She spoke to MPR News host Nina Moini about her experience growing up visiting Rondo and her new book.

Debra will read from her new book at Black Garnet Books in St. Paul for a book launch event on Oct. 11.

Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.

Subscribe to the Minnesota Now podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

We attempt to make transcripts for Minnesota Now available the next business day after a broadcast. When ready they will appear here.

Recently released polling data found Minnesotans think it’s harder for Black, Hispanic or Indigenous people to succeed here compared to people who are white or of Asian descent.

The survey found about 2 in 5 Minnesotans think being Black or Hispanic makes it more difficult to be successful in Minnesota, while only about 1 in 5 say the same about being Asian. 

The results around Asian Minnesotans were intriguing. It felt like a small but important difference in perception that was worth exploring. I talked to some local researchers about it and it led to some discussions about how Minnesotans view race and opportunity.

I asked Richard Lee, who teaches psychology and Asian American studies at the University of Minnesota, to take a look at the data.

‘You don’t see the full story’

A little background first: About 3,400 adults in Minnesota were polled from July to November last year as part of an effort by the local nonprofit Center for Economic Inclusion to track progress on closing racial gaps in employment, income and wealth.

Lee and I spent a lot of time talking about the model minority myth that started in the ‘60s that led white people to see Asian people as harder workers than other communities of color.

Lee noted this stereotype doesn’t just negatively affect other minority groups. It can also be harmful to how Asian Minnesotans may see themselves.

“So these perceptions, like these stereotypes, which really capture the model minority stereotype, really have serious, negative mental health implications, which, when you look at this data here, right? You don’t see that full story,” he said. “It just looks like, oh, Asian Americans see that it’s a little easier for them to be successful. But at what cost?”

Interestingly, the survey showed people of Asian descent also felt being Asian made it easier to succeed.

Since success wasn’t defined, Lee said it’s possible the responses from Asian respondents reflect how aware they are of stereotypes associated with their race. 

‘Two contrasting stereotypes’

The survey did not measure discrimination, though in recent years Asian Americans have been experiencing exponentially more hate crimes due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“So in people’s heads, they’re holding two contrasting stereotypes of Asian Americans,” said Lee. “They’re not American, and therefore they’re dangerous. And yet, look at how successful they are, and we can’t let them be treated unfairly in college admissions. What a crazy paradox to have to navigate as an Asian American.”

Another point from Lee: In this survey, Asian Minnesotans saw other groups as having a harder time than them at higher rates. Lee says that indicates a high sense of cross-racial empathy and solidarity.

I also spoke with Lee Pao Xiong, director of Hmong Studies at Concordia University St. Paul, about why the Hmong experience in Minnesota differed from other racial or ethnic groups.

“I think it was the infrastructure that was in place to help Hmong, I mean, to help Hmong people integrate into American society, right? And so you got the church supporting the Hmong community. Really helping Hmong to thrive. You got the community coming together and forming associations, right.”

The Hmong community still has its struggles, but Xiong notes that Hmong people have seen high-profile successes in state politics, education and in the local business community in the 50 years since Hmong people first came as refugees.

There is some really interesting research happening at the U of M and Concordia St. Paul about the impact of the model minority myth and its effects in the state.

The survey connects to that: If we better understand how we perceive race and ethnicity, we can get to the point where we can separate myth and reality.

A couple dozen blue-uniformed officers gathered at Phelps Park near George Floyd Square in the spring warmth, flipping burgers and mingling with community members as children played. 

It was a sight that would have been impossible five years earlier, when witness video of police killing George Floyd ignited global protests.

At first glance, there’s no indication of that past. But on the edge of the park, an indignant voice sounded, breaking the image of a new day. 

“Say his name!”

The voice belonged to Marcia Howard, a Minneapolis school teacher who has been tending to the protest space at George Floyd Square since 2020.

She has continued to open meetings at the memorial each morning at 8 a.m., discussing neighborhood mutual aid plans with other volunteers and advocating for the remaining demands that community members drafted after Floyd’s murder, including ending qualified immunity for police officers. 

She yells again: “Say his name!”

It’s not long before two officers — Drea Mays and Xander Krohnfeldt — peel off from the crowd to greet her. They say hello. It seems they’ve met before.

“I am doing excellent,” Howard sarcastically said in response to an officer’s greeting. “Because this is cute. It’s been five years …. I think about all the little children who were not alive when George Floyd was murdered.”

As they speak, eventually launching into a debate over police reforms, a mural of George Floyd on the side of a church seems to watch over them.

“The fact that y’all gotta do what you gotta do in order to make this innocuous in their minds, right?” Howard continued. “Oh, we’re just friendly neighborhood police.”

While the police department works to make court-mandated changes and replenish its ranks with new hires, neighbors await transformation of the police while others continue to demand a transformation of systems writ large. Once at the epicenter of calls to defund the police, the police budget in Minneapolis has only grown, though the sworn force shrunk after officers left the department.

Those officers are working to build trust and faith in their profession. That task is a steeper climb in the 3rd Precinct, where George Floyd was murdered, turning the neighborhood into an epicenter of unrest. The fabric of the community remains visibly changed — from the signs at George Floyd Square to the shell of the 3rd Precinct police station and the still-empty lots.

An empty, battered precinct station

A 10-minute drive away from where Floyd was killed, the scorched 3rd Precinct police station stands empty. Exterior cleanup has picked up in recent weeks, but for several years it was surrounded by razor wire.

Enduring images of the station being set ablaze during the unrest and the hulk that’s left turned it into a symbol — one that carries vastly different meanings depending on who you ask.

The Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis, the union that represents MPD cops, sells a challenge coin on their website with an image of officers in riot gear lined up in front of that building. It reads “Never Forget 2020.”

But for many neighbors in the area, the structure represented something else. Mabel Houle, 70, said she remembers the police standing on top of the 3rd Precinct, aiming less-lethal weapons loaded with rubber bullets at protestors “who were just wanting our voices heard.”

“After George Floyd, we just had a bad feeling about that,” Houle said. “That place, that experience, that building, the response that we felt even in the neighborhood after the protests,” she said. “It just wasn’t a healing experience. It was more brutality.”

For years, even before tensions boiled over there, 3rd Precinct officers didn’t have a clean reputation around the neighborhood. 

While the Department of Justice probe found discriminatory policing across the department, investigators learned that the 3rd Precinct was where the “cowboys” wanted to work. Derek Chauvin was one of the top cops there, tasked with training others. For years, he used excessive force on residents without consequence, prosecutors said.  

Barbara Scotford lives a few minutes walk from the old police station and said she long had a sense that it was a “troubled” precinct. 

“The building itself was such a citadel,” she said. “It was really hard to go in. I remember going in once to invite anybody in a uniform to come to my garage sale and they would get 50 percent off. Well, you'd think I was some sort of terrorist or something trying to entrap them into something. That was a very strange us against them feel to it." 

Scotford said five years later, the inner workings of the 3rd Precinct remain a mystery to her. Without having much personal interaction with officers, she can’t say what her sense of change is, except that she says she no longer sees officers speeding through intersections as often. 

For some, the sense that police have abandoned the area, persists. Kara Carrier also lives in the blocks near the 3rd Precinct. She moved back to Minneapolis with her family in 2023, after more than a decade in Los Angeles. She said she has two dogs “ready to launch if necessary.”

“If I see police cars around here, it's very rare, and it makes me wonder, is this ever going to come back?”

Data from the city indicated that officers were responding. In the 3rd Precinct, 911 response times for the most urgent calls are on average seeing a quicker response time than in 2019. However, police take about 14 minutes longer to respond in situations where there’s no immediate threat.

A fraction of the officers from 2020 remain

Five years later, the makeup of that precinct has changed, too. Seventy-three 3rd Precinct officers are no longer with the department, among the hundreds who left the MPD after June 2020. Many filed worker’s compensation claims for post-traumatic stress disorder before leaving. 

About 1 in 5 assigned to the 3rd Precinct patrol unit is an officer who served there in 2020, according to an April 2025 MPD roster.

There are currently 86 officers assigned to that unit, down from the 120 five years ago. 

The officer leading that cohort is 3rd Precinct Inspector Jose Gomez. He’s been with MPD since 1994. In 2020, he was assigned to special crimes investigations, working in a unit focused on juvenile outreach and diversion. Now, he’s been the face of rebuilding trust in the city’s largest police precinct, which covers much of south Minneapolis east of Interstate 35W.

He’s developed a reputation for being the kind of cop people want to see on the streets. Since President Donald Trump came into office, Gomez has been on Latino radio shows and at local businesses, pushing to get the word out that Minneapolis police aren’t allowed to ask residents about their legal status.

“I understand the fear, I mean it’s real,” he said at a recent community meeting in the Seward neighborhood. “I was born here, lived in Mexico for a while, came back with my parents, and we would always hide. I didn't get it at the time, but we would just hide when the mailman came, because he had a uniform, and they didn't know any better.”

Gomez has been developing a relationship with a mosque near the new station for 3rd Precinct officers, set to open in 2026. He has an office in the American Indian Center in a part of the city with a large Native American population where trust in police runs low for many.

Jolene Jones is a leader of the Indigenous Protector Movement in Little Earth — an unarmed neighborhood patrol that formed during the unrest and has continued since then. Gomez has gone “above and beyond” making inroads with the community there, she said.

But she also says it’s going to take more than one supervisor to change the reputation of a department that has a history of police brutality and racism toward the Native community, according to an investigation by the Department of Justice released in 2023.

“Just because I feel I have a good relationship with Gomez does not mean I trust the MPD. Does not mean I trust the officers under him. Does not mean when I get pulled over, that I don’t get nervous,” she said.

For one thing, she said, she wants to see officers respond to calls for help by treating victims like victims, not perpetrators. She said many people are still resistant to call the police — which protector Jordin Perez, 31, agreed with. “If you try to go call them, it wouldn't be a help, because they'd be trying to find problems within the problem,” he said.

MPR News requested to interview Gomez, but was directed to Chief Brian O’Hara instead, who attended the cookout at Phelps Park.

It was kicked off by an event hosted by the Unity Community Mediation Team, a group consisting of Black pastors and community leaders who have been working to mend relations with police for more than two decades. They said change has happened and will continue to happen.

“I thank God for today as a starting point where we're actually here and we can be here together, because there's no way forward through this unless we're going forward together," O’Hara said.

Emmett Dysart stood nearby. The 57-year-old grew up in the neighborhood and said he’s been racially profiled too many times to trust the police. If he gets burglarized, Dysart — who is Black — said he’s not calling the police. He’s just getting a bigger dog.

Dysart said he’s “cool” with the cops. He doesn’t see them as “the boogeyman,” but he’s doubtful they’ll have the same friendly faces at 11 p.m. on Lake Street and Chicago Avenue.

He added that he doesn’t get the sense enough officers take the time to get to know the people they serve.

“We used to have beat cops that walked up and down,” he said. “They would know the community.”

Walking the beat in the 3rd precinct

In the entire city of Minneapolis, there are just two officers who walk a daytime foot patrol and they’re in the 3rd Precinct. Together, Drea Mays and Xander Krohnfeldt cover the beat that includes 38th and Chicago, also known as George Floyd Square.

They also walk parts of Franklin Avenue and Lake Street, engaging with businesses and residents, in addition to making arrests. The duo can respond to 911 calls, though they are usually not the first pulled in.

Mays said there used to be beat cops in every precinct and priority spots — like downtown — where she used to walk the beat. But that's no longer the case. The department says with a smaller force than five years ago, MPD prioritizes sworn personnel responding to 911 calls or on investigations.

While they are the only officers assigned to walk the beat, all other officers on patrol have to log at least 15 minutes a day of “high visibility” work, which includes getting out of their squads and walking the streets.

“Building relationship means being a part of the community, right? And so if something happens and they know who I am and I know who they are, it just makes that relationship or interaction that much easier,” Mays said. “And that's how you build trust, because without relationship there is no trust.”

Mutual aid’s deeper roots

Where that trust has been broken, other models of community safety long present in Minneapolis found new life.

On Minnehaha Avenue, just three buildings down from the old police station, a group of business owners and a local pastor gather at a table inside Arbeiter Brewing, in the hour before opening. They’re part of Longfellow Rising, a group formed to push for racial equity and vitality in the community.

“What happened five years ago was a very important movement, and I think for us to continue the work of what happened is part of our DNA now as organizations on this block,” said Kate Winkel, one of the co-owners of Arbeiter.

Winkel said she tries not to engage with the police. If a problem arises, she’ll work with other business owners to find a solution that doesn’t involve dialing 911.

“And that’s what you want out of communities at the end of the day,” added Ingrid Rasmussen, a pastor at nearby Holy Trinity Lutheran Church. “People who care enough about one another to not simply pick up the phone and report some sort of unwanted behavior prematurely.”

Many at the table were heavily involved with mutual aid during the unrest. That includes Rasmussen, who said the church became a site for medical care and food and plywood distribution at the time.

She said that care has continued in the corridor, whether through free meals or helping uplift Native people and people of color who want to start businesses as the area continues to stabilize. 

Policing alternatives and a new police station

For neighbors in the 3rd Precinct, as in all parts of the city, more alternatives to calling police exist in 2025 than in 2020.

The Behavioral Crisis Response team — a group of unarmed mental health responders trained in de-escalation — has taken on a greater number of calls that had previously gone to police. Calls diverted to BCR have nearly doubled since 2022, the first full year the option was available to residents in Minneapolis.

For the past year, a couple social workers with Hennepin County have been walking along Lake Street five days a week, working to get people connected to housing and treatment. Each police precinct also has an embedded social worker from Hennepin County. In 2024, MPD referred 455 people across the city to social workers, according to a Hennepin County spokesperson.

As for the old 3rd Precinct station, it’s less blighted than it had been for the past five years. In late April, crews began taking down barricades around part of the 3rd Precinct. After more than a year of messages promising cleanup underway, a sign reads: “future home of the Minneapolis Democracy Center.” The plan is to eventually turn the rehabbed building into a Voter Services Center, with room to host community space.

Officers with the 3rd Precinct are temporarily working out of a space in downtown Minneapolis. Their new HQ will be known as the South Minneapolis Community Safety Center. It’s a symbol in its own right, a representation of where city leaders say they want the new direction to be — only part police station.

The Rochester Police Department says it completed an investigation into a video posted on social media that showed a woman calling a child a racial slur at a local park last week.

The investigation has been submitted to the Rochester City Attorney's office, which will decide whether or not to charge the woman.

MPR News has a policy to not name suspects until they are charged.

The situation has drawn national attention and outrage. As the video circulated on social media, the woman launched a crowdfunding campaign, saying she needed to move. She has raised more than $600,000 as of Monday morning.

In response, the Rochester chapter of the NAACP organized its own fundraiser for the family of the child, which raised more than $300,000 before it was closed on Saturday.

“There are hateful groups out there supporting her. That sends a really dangerous message to society,” said Rochester NAACP president Walé Elegbede about the woman’s fundraising efforts.

In a statement shared with MPR News, Rochester Mayor Kim Norton said she was “shocked and sickened” by the video and the fundraising by the woman.

“That a pre-school child was accosted publicly has caused palpable pain throughout our community. As mayor and as a city, we will continue to work tirelessly to ensure we have a community where everyone feels safe, welcome and respected,” Norton said in the statement.

This is the third incident of racial slurs making news in Rochester in the last year or so. Last April, a racial slur was displayed on a pedestrian bridge. And in August, DFL Representative Kim Hicks found racist graffiti spray painted on her home.

“This is not an isolated incident. It's really an increasing trend,” Elegbede told MPR News host Nina Moini. “We are hoping for just accountability and justice.”

Rochester NAACP will hold a town hall called “Our Children are Sacred: Accountability and Justice” in collaboration with Barbershop Talk Services at the Rochester Civic Theatre on Wednesday.

The Rochester City Attorney said in a statement the office will work with “an appropriate sense of urgency” to come to a charging decision but that it is premature to say when a final decision will be made.

Use the audio player above to listen to the conversation between MPR News host Nina Moini and Rochester NAACP president Walé Elegbede.

M Health Fairview says it’s found a way to help eliminate racial and ethnic bias in pregnancy and delivery care by removing race as a factor for various screenings and tests related to pregnancy.

By July, all pregnant patients at M Health Fairview will be universally screened for various maternal and fetal conditions. That includes diseases that are usually prominent in a certain racial group, like sickle cell disease or spina bifida.

The goal is to make sure no patient gets missed for diseases that may normally only be screened for people of certain backgrounds.

Melissa Hassler, the director of nurse midwives at M Health Fairview, joined Minnesota Now to talk about the changes.

Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.

Subscribe to the Minnesota Now podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

We attempt to make transcripts for Minnesota Now available the next business day after a broadcast. When ready they will appear here.

University of Minnesota officials are facing accusations they mishandled claims of plagiarism against a prominent professor who delivered millions of dollars in grant money to the university.

Rachel Hardeman, known nationally for studying the effects of structural racism on mothers and children of color, had been accused internally of copying a protégé’s work and passing it off as her own.

In documents and interviews, MPR News found the university chose not to discipline Hardeman despite reports from three colleagues that she copied the work of researcher Brigette Davis and used it in a federal grant application.

Epidemiology professor Rachel Widome said she filed a complaint about Hardeman in April 2024, only to find the university had marked it resolved less than two weeks later without talking to her. She eventually filed two more complaints related to the matter, then met with university officials responsible for policing faculty misconduct.

“I want you to understand what this is doing to the reputation of the University of Minnesota,” she recalled telling them, adding that the alleged plagiarism was “known among the whisper networks” in public health circles nationwide. “I want you to know that this makes it look like the University of Minnesota doesn't really care about plagiarism or research integrity issues.”

On April 10, nearly a year after Widome filed her initial complaint, Davis went public with her accusations against Hardeman. She did so shortly after Jé Judson, who had also worked under Hardeman, shared a slideshow online highlighting the similarities between the documents.

Four days later, School of Public Health Dean Melinda Pettigrew emailed faculty to say Hardeman had resigned. Neither the U nor Pettigrew explained the departure. A spokesperson for Hardeman said that it had been planned for a year and was unconnected to the allegations.

Hardeman, who last year was named one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people, is set to leave the university May 14. She declined an interview request; Pettigrew did not respond to one.

Davis said she confronted Hardeman, and in a February 2023 email, Hardeman apologized, telling Davis she “f---ed up.” Hardeman explained that she had intended to edit the material and consult with Davis before submitting the application, but ran out of time and then forgot about it. “I want to be clear it was not me acting in evil but being sloppy and thoughtless.”

Davis said that Pettigrew, the public health dean, later “nudged” her to keep quiet about Hardeman.

The university declined to answer questions about how the allegations against Hardeman were handled, citing the confidentiality of personnel matters.

‘That’s weird’

Hardeman’s star started to rise in 2021 when the U put her in charge of the Center for Antiracism Research for Health Equity, a new multimillion-dollar initiative focused on understanding racial disparities in health.

The center was flush with cash. Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota had donated $5 million to get it started. The National Institutes of Health pitched in nearly $2.3 million more to support its research.

Hardeman hired Davis, who’d recently earned her Ph.D., to work on it. “It felt like a good fit for where I wanted to go,” Davis said in an interview. “It just felt like this is the opportunity that I need.”

As part of Davis’ new job, she had access to the application Hardeman had submitted to the federal government to get the money. She recalled that parts of it were eerily familiar.

“The first thing that I see are my equations,” she said. They looked just like the formulas Davis had used in her dissertation proposal, which she had shared with Hardeman years earlier. Even the typeface was the same: Garamond.

“That's weird,” she thought.

A few weeks later, Davis started looking at other parts of the grant application. She found passages from her dissertation proposal were included nearly word-for-word.

“This feeling was like finding out that my boyfriend had cheated on me,” Davis recalled.

Hardeman is known for hiring and mentoring young researchers of color, said public health professor Katy Kozhimannil, who has worked with Hardeman for years. Kozhimannil sympathizes with both her and Davis. She said Hardeman told her she had struggled with the pressures of launching an ambitious new research center.

“She expressed that she was overwhelmed with a lot of the very fast growth of the responsibilities related to her leadership, and that part of that was the situation that came up with Brigette,” Kozhimannil said.

‘No way that any part of this is an innocent mistake’

Widome’s first complaint was actually the third one university officials received about the alleged plagiarism. The first one came in the fall of 2023, filed anonymously using an online form on the university’s Ethical Advocate website. Kimberly Kirkpatrick, an associate vice president in the U’s Office of Academic Clinical Affairs, led the investigation.

In a Zoom call, Davis said she showed Kirkpatrick all the work Hardeman had used from her dissertation proposal.

A few days later, Kirkpatrick advised Hardeman to personally notify the National Institutes of Health in case the “complainant decides to contact NIH to escalate the case.”

Over several days in late October and early November of 2023, Hardeman, Kirkpatrick and a university lawyer workshopped language to send to the federal agency, according to emails reviewed by MPR News.

The resulting message said Hardeman had been “made aware of a critical oversight in which I adapted a design and analysis method … from a collaborator without appropriate attribution and citation.”

It did not mention that the correction originated from a plagiarism investigation — or that blocks of text had been copied verbatim. Federal regulations require the university to tell the NIH if there's even suspected plagiarism involving one of the government’s grant-funded projects.

Kirkpatrick didn’t return a call seeking comment, but in emails to Davis and Hardeman she described the copied language as an “honest error.”

But many of Hardeman’s colleagues found that conclusion hard to understand. They say that the volume of material Hardeman had taken from Davis was reason enough for more action.

“There's no way that any part of this is an innocent mistake,” said Claire Kamp Dush, a professor in the sociology department at the U.

Early last year, Kamp Dush was about to take an interim position in Hardeman's center while Hardeman was on sabbatical. Kamp Dush sat down for a routine phone meeting with Davis, who she said told her everything and showed her the documentation.

“I was in a complete state of shock,” Kamp Dush recalled. “I immediately got off the phone and emailed Rachel and said, ‘I just talked with Brigette. I cannot do this job.’”

Kamp Dush also filed a complaint with the university. A few weeks later, she did the same with the National Institutes of Health.

After hearing nothing from the university, Kamp Dush said she eventually filed a formal data request with the U to learn if Hardeman had been disciplined. “The answer was ‘We can't tell you anything,’ which told me everything,” she said.

A professor at the University of Pittsburgh spoke up as well. Sirry Alang had been working on Hardeman's grant but gave up in protest over the plagiarism allegations. She also filed a complaint with the National Institutes of Health.

Alang declined an interview. But in a lengthy account posted online, she accused the university of a cover-up — something she said was common in academia, “when any offending faculty brings grants to the university.”

‘We don’t want to feed the sharks’

The situation underscores a double standard for students and faculty, said Jonathan Bailey, a plagiarism expert who has written about the Hardeman case on his website Plagiarism Today.

He points out that earlier this year, a Ph.D. student was expelled from the U after faculty accused him of using artificial intelligence on an exam.

“It is pretty much ubiquitous at all schools,” Bailey said. “We've seen students getting held up for relatively minor things that their professors probably will get away with. … I believe you should be seeking outside people to investigate this — another professor, another school.”

Davis left the U in 2024. During her exit interview, she said Pettigrew, the public health school dean, encouraged her not to tell people what Hardeman had done. She said Pettigrew told her white supremacists could use the story to attack the field of studying racial health disparities.

“I just remember her saying, ‘We just don't want them to be giddy,’” Davis recalled. “‘We don't want to feed the sharks.’”

Davis is now a staff scientist at Washington University Medical School in St. Louis. Last year, she filed her own complaint about Hardeman with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. She's told it's still being evaluated.

“NIH takes research misconduct very seriously,” the agency’s Office of Extramural Research wrote in a statement emailed to MPR News. But the agency declined to discuss “whether or not research misconduct may have occurred” in any specific case.

Hardeman also sent a written statement. “I worked to make amends and did my best to support any parties involved,” she wrote. “That is not downplaying. That is accountability.”

Correction (April 28, 2025): An image caption incorrectly stated the year Rachel Hardeman submitted a grant application. It was submitted in 2020 and awarded in 2021. The story has been updated.

Target's chief executive officer met Thursday with the Rev. Al Sharpton, whose civil rights organization has encouraged consumers to avoid U.S. retailers that scaled backed their diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

Sharpton called the meeting with Target CEO Brian Cornell “very constructive and candid,” according to an update from his National Action Network. Two other NAN representatives, National Board Chair Dr. W. Franklyn Richardson and Senior Advisor Carra Wallace, also attended the meeting at the organization's New York headquarters.

“I am going to inform our allies, including Rev. Dr. Jamal Bryant, of our discussion, what my feelings are, and we will go from there,” Sharpton said in a statement.

Bryant, an Atlanta area pastor, organized a website called targetfast.org to recruit Christians for a 40-day Target boycott. Other faith leaders endorsed the protest, which started with the beginning of Lent on March 5.

A National Action Network spokesperson confirmed earlier Thursday that Sharpton, the group's founder and president, planned to meet Cornell in New York this week. The news was first reported by CNBC.

A Target spokesperson couldn't immediately be reached for comment.

Target is among a slew of companies, including Walmart, Amazon and PepsiCo, that have eliminated policies and programs aimed at bolstering diversity among their employees and reducing discrimination against members of minority groups, women and LGBTQ+ people.

After returning to the White House in January, President Donald Trump moved to end DEI programswithin the federal government. He has warned schools to do the same or risk losing federal money.

The National Action Network said Sharpton met on Tuesday with PepsiCo CEO Ramon Laguarta and Steven Williams, the CEO of PepsiCo North America, to “get clarity on its stance on DEI, whether they were shutting down their commitments due to pressure from Trump and right-wing activists, and the path moving forward.”

Earlier this month, Sharpton gave PepsiCo three weeks to meet with him — or suffer a boycott — to discuss reversing the company’s recent move to do away with its DEI initiatives.

The National Action Network said Thursday that Sharpton planned to consult the organization's board members over the Easter holiday “to determine any next steps with Target, PepsiCo, and other companies that have scaled back their DEI programs or pledges.”

Target announced on Jan. 24 that it would conclude the DEI goals it had set to increase Black employees’ representation and advancement, improve Black shoppers’ experiences and promote Black-owned businesses. The company also said it planned to stop submitting reports for external diversity surveys.

It is also “further evaluating our corporate partnerships to ensure they are directly connected to our roadmap for growth,” according to a memo posted on its website.

A number of other boycotts were launched of retailers that have pulled back on DEI.

About 40 percent of Minnesotans believe that being Black, Indigenous or Hispanic makes it harder to succeed, a much higher proportion than say that being either Asian or white impedes success, newly released polling shows.

Forty-five percent of those responding to the “Minds of Minnesota” survey said being white makes it easier to be successful compared to less than 10 percent who said the same about being Black, Indigenous or Hispanic; 12 percent said that being Asian offers an advantage to success.

Minnesotans also perceive a distinct advantage for men as opposed to women, with 2 in 5 indicating that being a woman makes it harder to be successful, and only about 1 in 10 saying women have it easier.

That finding was reversed when Minnesotans were asked about men: Only 7 percent think being a man makes it more difficult to attain success and about half say being a man offers advantages to attaining success.

The survey of 3,399 adults between July and November was paid for by the Center for Economic Inclusion as a part of its effort to track progress on closing racial gaps in employment, income and wealth.

It did not ask Minnesotans to define “success,” nor did it ask people to explain the answers that they gave. But it does provide a window into how different groups of Minnesotans think about the opportunities ascribed to people along lines of race and gender.

In-group versus out-group views

The survey showed Minnesotans perceive more hardship for their groups.

For example, 35 percent of Black Minnesotans say that being Black makes it “a lot harder” to be successful. In comparison, only 16 percent of all non-Black Minnesotans say that being Black makes it “a lot harder” to be successful.

That same comparison is even more stark among Indigenous and non-Indigenous people living in the state. And it is also notable among Hispanic and non-Hispanic Minnesotans as well as Asian and non-Asian Minnesotans.

A similarly small proportion of both white and nonwhite Minnesotans see hardships for whites in attaining success. However, a smaller percentage of whites — 21 percent versus 36 percent — think success is “a lot easier” for whites.

A higher proportion of women than others (men plus a small proportion of respondents identifying as nonbinary or other) indicate that it is harder for women to attain success, and a smaller proportion of males than all others think that men have an easier path to success.

Perceptions fall along party lines

Compared to Minnesota Republicans, much higher proportion of Minnesotans who are Democrats believe that Black, Indigenous, Hispanic and Asian Americans face difficulties due to their race or ethnicity.

For example, 28 percent of Democrats indicate that Asians face hardships in attaining success while only nine percent of Republicans say that is the case. Similarly, the proportion of Democrats reporting hardships for Black, Indigenous and Hispanic Americans is about three times higher than the proportion of Republicans who indicate hardships for these groups.

Female Minnesotans appear to have more empathy for the hardships faced by other groups than do male Minnesotans. For example, 43 percent of women and 32 percent of men indicate that Hispanics face hardships in attaining success.

The same pattern exists when asked about the ease of opportunities for women. Twenty-two percent of Minnesota Republicans indicate that women face hardships, as do 60 percent of Minnesota Democrats.

Republicans are somewhat more likely than Democrats to report hardships for whites (10 percent versus 2 percent) and men (11 percent versus 3 percent).

Editor’s note: Detailed poll results and complete methodology are available in a report prepared by APM Research Lab, MPR News’ sister organization.

Women and girls make up more than half of the U.S. population. But philanthropy has long underfunded organizations that serve them. 

According to the Women & Girls Index from the Women’s Philanthropy Institute, donations to organizations that serve women and girls make up less than two percent of all philanthropic giving in the U.S.   

MPR News host Angela Davis talks with a Twin Cities leader who is trying to change that.

Gloria Perez, the president and CEO of the Women’s Foundation of Minnesota, says investing in women and girls is critical to growing gender and racial equity.

 Guest:

• Gloria Perez is the president and CEO of the Women’s Foundation of Minnesota. She is a former president and CEO for the Jeremiah Program, a nonprofit that aims to end poverty for single mothers and children. And she was the executive director of Casa de Esperanza — now Esperanza United — where she mobilized Latinas to end domestic violence. 

Subscribe to the MPR News with Angela Davis podcast on: Apple Podcasts, Spotify or RSS.

Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.     

Five years ago, the state of Minnesota and the rest of the world was experiencing the first weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic. Since then, we’ve learned people of color experienced a disproportionate burden of COVID-19 cases and deaths. In Minnesota, deaths from COVID-19 were concentrated in socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhoods.

Elizabeth Wrigley-Field is the associate director of the Minnesota Population Center and a sociology professor at the University of Minnesota. She is part of a team that published a study looking at the racial disparities in mortality rates from COVID-19 across neighborhoods in Minnesota.

Wrigley-Field joined Dr. Kevin Gilliam, the medical director of NorthPoint Health and Wellness Center in north Minneapolis, to talk about their perspectives on disparities in health care.

Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.

Subscribe to the Minnesota Now podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

We attempt to make transcripts for Minnesota Now available the next business day after a broadcast. When ready they will appear here.

When historian Martha Jones began excavating the history of her own family, she found a remarkable story of what she calls the trouble with color.

But that might not mean what you think.

“In this book, the term trouble has two meanings,” Jones tells Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas. ”I open the book with the lyrics of a spiritual, ‘Wade in the Water.’ You know, ‘God’s gonna trouble the water.’ And that comes from the book of John. In the book of John, we learn that when God troubles the water and we step into it, we are healed. This is the way forward for us. I think in some ways, trouble is precisely what we need.”

Her new book, “The Trouble of Color” tells the honest story of her own family — filled with pain but also joy and resilience. Because, as Jones says, she believes we all have the capacity to sit with hard stories and be healed.

Guest:

• Martha S. Jones is a historian and writer with numerous titles to her name. Her latest book is “The Trouble of Color: An American Family Memoir.”

Subscribe to Big Books and Bold Ideas with Kerri Miller podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, RSS or anywhere you get your podcasts.

Subscribe to the Thread newsletter for the latest book and author news and must-read recommendations.

A bipartisan effort to ban hair discrimination has been reintroduced in Congress as President Donald Trump’s administration targets diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

The latest bill, known as the "Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair Act of 2025" or the "CROWN Act of 2025," was introduced in the House last month. If enacted, it would ban discrimination against individuals based on their hairstyle or hair texture due to their race. This includes styles in which hair is "tightly coiled or tightly curled, locs, cornrows, twists, braids, Bantu knots, and Afros."

The bill also seeks to protect individuals from hair discrimination while participating in federally assisted programs, housing programs, public accommodations and schools.

New Jersey Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, a Democrat who is leading the measure in the House, said in an interview with NPR prior to a press conference on Tuesday about the bill that it was important to reup the initiative. She emphasized that many Black and Brown Americans, especially students, face obstacles related to their hair.

"It is an extension of racism. It's just in a different form," Watson Coleman said on Tuesday. "And so we need to remind people that the diversity of people is what makes this country so beautiful. And that how I wear my hair or do not wear my hair is no expression of my ability to think or to do or to accomplish or to be a part of a team or a good employee."

Senators Susan Collins of Maine, a Republican, and Cory Booker of New Jersey, a Democrat, also introduced a companion bill to the version in the Senate last month.

"It is wrong that Americans – particularly those within the Black community – continue to face discrimination based on how they choose to style their natural hair," Collins said in a statement. "This is an issue of basic fairness and equality, and I urge my colleagues to support this bill and stand against discrimination in all of its forms."

This latest effort follows previous attempts to pass similar legislation, which have stalled in Congress.

The bill passed in the House in 2022 but failed to gain enough Republican support in the Senate to override a filibuster by Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, a Republican. At the time, Paul argued that discrimination based on one's hair was already illegal and that the bill could potentially create unsafe conditions for workers as it might prevent them from wearing required safety equipment, such as construction helmets.

It is unlikely the new bill will pass in this Congress, as Republicans hold slim majorities in both the House and Senate. And if it does pass, there's no guarantee of support from President Trump.

NPR reached out to the White House and House Speaker Mike Johnson for comment but has not received a response.

Despite this uncertainty, Watson Coleman says she hopes she and the other co-sponsors of the bill can garner enough support among Republicans for the bill to ultimately pass.

"We only need three that recognize that there is no harm in this bill. This is an extension of respect," she says. "There is no unnecessary danger or anything in this bill. It simply is an affirmation that people have a right to wear their hair the way they want to wear their hair."

While there is currently no federal legislation prohibiting hair discrimination, some states have already implemented measures on their own.

The CROWN Act across the country

As of July 1, 2024, 25 states have enacted legislation banning hair discrimination, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Legislation to ban hair discrimination based on race has also been introduced in Pennsylvania.

Adjoa B. Asamoah, a co-founder of the CROWN coalition has been leading efforts to enact the CROWN Act legislation since 2018. She said during the press conference outside the Capitol Tuesday that "purported race neutral grooming policies that reinforce Eurocentric standards of beauty and myopic notions of what constitutes professional hair remain problematic."

"Today I am wearing my hair differently than I did at the last press conference … and next month, I will proudly rock my braids. I share this not because my personal hair is the focus, but because protecting and preserving our right to embrace the beauty and sometimes the versatility of it, is. Especially when worn in ways aligned with our racial identity," Asamoah said.

There have also been legal challenges regarding hair discrimination. A civil rights commission in Akron, Ohio, in February sided with a man who said he was discriminated against because of his dreadlocks hairstyle. Some Black students have also faced disciplinary action regarding their natural hairstyles, including Darryl George, a Texas teen, who was placed in in-school suspension for the length of his locs. In February 2024, a Texas judge ruled that the state's CROWN Act did not apply to hairstyle length, a decision that Watson Coleman says is "flawed."

There is also concern that actions rolling back diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives could undermine progress made in prohibiting hair discrimination.

Wisconsin Rep. Gwen Moore, a Democrat, said Tuesday she is concerned there could be a shakeup in hairstyle policies in the U.S. military, which in the past has enforced strict grooming policies against certain hairstyles. In 2018, the U.S. Navy revamped its policy to allow women to wear their hair down and incorporate different hairstyles, including locs. The Army in 2021 also expanded its guidelines to allow female soldiers to wear ponytails while in uniform.

Watson Coleman says she and her congressional colleagues will continue to advocate for the passage of the CROWN Act.

"We know what environment we are currently functioning in. We know the absurdity of some of the things that have been advanced or have been delayed to continue to delay this particular bill is one of those absurdities," she says. "I can't tell you what's going to happen, but I can tell you that we'll stand behind this bill and the reason for it until we get it passed."

Copyright 2025, NPR

Washington, D.C.'s iconic "Black Lives Matter" street mural, which has served as a powerful symbol of activism and a gathering place for joy and resistance, will soon be gone.

The decision to remove the enormous mural near the White House comes after a U.S. Rep. Andrew Clyde, R-Ga., introduced legislation earlier this week that gave D.C. an ultimatum: either paint over the slogan or risk losing federal funding. The bill also called for the area in downtown D.C. to be re-named from Black Lives Matter Plaza to Liberty Plaza.

The next day, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser released a statement suggesting that the mural will have to go. "The mural inspired millions of people and helped our city through a very painful period, but now we can't afford to be distracted by meaningless congressional interference," she wrote. The DDOT confirmed on Saturday that plans to remove the mural will begin Monday.

The mayor's response marked a reversal: She initially declared that the artwork would be permanent.

The mural was painted in 2020 after federal officers attacked D.C. protesters with tear gas

In June 2020, amid a nationwide outcry over the death George Floyd, who was killed by a police officer in Minneapolis, the mural was created overnight.

It was in direct response to reports of federal officers using tear gas against peaceful protesters in D.C.'s Lafayette Square. The demonstrators had been cleared shortly before President Trump walked through the park to St. John's Church, where he posed for a controversial photo-op holding a Bible.

A few days later, the D.C. mayor commissioned a striking 48-foot-wide "Black Lives Matter" mural near the site of the altercation. The street painting spanned two blocks of 16th Street, just north of the White House. The mayor also renamed the area Black Lives Matter Plaza and designated it a pedestrian-only zone. In all, the project cost over $4 million.

"The symbolism is huge. We are saying it loud. We are here. Maybe you didn't hear us before. Maybe you got confused. But the message is clear. Black lives matter, period," Keyonna Jones, one of artists who helped paint the mural, told member station WAMU in 2020.

The mural's unveiling fell on the birthday of Breonna Taylor, a Black medical worker who was killed in March 2020 during a botched raid by police officers in Louisville, Ky. "Breonna Taylor, on your birthday, let us stand with determination. Determination to make America the land it ought to be," Bowser wrote on Twitter on June 5, 2020.

That same evening, Trump took to Twitter and called Bowser "grossly incompetent, and in no way qualified to be running an important city like Washington, D.C." Later that night, Bowser posted a video of the mural and wrote, "We turned on the night light for him so he dreams about #BlackLivesMatter Plaza," seemingly referring to Trump.

A place for protest, joy, mourning and where congressman John Lewis spent one of his final days

The plaza quickly became a popular meeting spot for demonstrations. People gathered or marched through, for an array of reasons including advocating for racial justice, promoting environmental justice, raising awareness of international issues and celebrating Juneteenth.

Many also came together to mourn the loss of civil rights leader and congressman John Lewis, who died in 2020. A year later, Bowser said that one of her proudest memories of the Black Lives Matter Plaza was when Lewis was able to see the street painting himself before his death.

"He recognized Black Lives Matter Plaza as good trouble, and we know it will remain a gathering place for reflection, planning and action, as we work toward a more perfect union," Bowser said in 2021.

The installation has received some pushback over the years. After its inception, the D.C. chapter of Black Lives Matter called the mural "a performative distraction" by the mayor, accusing her of dismissing the chapter's calls to defund the police and invest in the community.

On Friday, the group re-posted its initial complaints about the artwork and the mayor, adding, "We told you so."

But, nationally, the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation condemned the decision to remove the artwork.

"First, they attacked critical race theory. Then, they banned books. Then DEI, Now they're erasing Black Lives Matter Plaza. Big mistake. You can't erase truth. Republicans hate that they have to walk past it. Hate that it reminds them of our power," the foundation wrote in a statement.

Jones, who helped paint the mural five years ago, told WUSA9 that she understood the mayor's decision and was proud of the impact that the mural made in its short run.

"It speaks for itself. People traveled the world to see this," Jones said earlier this week.

Copyright 2025, NPR

Minnesota is among the top four states in the country where the Black population has grown the fastest since 2010.

According to analysis by the Pew Research Center, Minnesota’s Black population grew by 60 percent — about 197,000 people.

The Pew Research Center compared microdata from the Census Bureau’s 2010 and 2023 American Community Survey, provided through IPUMS from the University of Minnesota, that showed the Black population in the United States reached a new high of 48.3 million people nationwide in 2023.

“Black population” is defined as all people who self-identify as Black or African American, including Black people who are multi-racial and Hispanic.

Utah had the fastest growth in Black population at 89 percent, with Arizona and Nevada's population increasing 60 percent like Minnesota.

States with large existing Black populations like Texas, Florida and Georgia had the largest numeric increases in Black residents overall.

In Minnesota, much of the increase in Black population was due to births and immigration, according to Susan Brower, the Minnesota state demographer. Her office helps produce population estimates and analyze the impact of demographic trends.

State researchers estimate about 103,000 Black babies were born between 2010 to 2023. Brower said Census data shows Minnesota gained another 79,000 Black residents born outside of the U.S. in that period.

“What’s unique about Minnesota’s trend with respect to Black or African American residents is that it’s really been fueled by international immigration in a way that many states haven’t seen, particularly in the South where the majority are U.S.-born African Americans who are descendants of slavery,” said Brower.

Immigration has driven growth in Minnesota’s Black population since the 1990s, according to Brower. She shared data suggesting young adults and young families have migrated to Minnesota at higher rates than other age groups since 2000. Census data shows many immigrants report coming from Ethiopia, Somalia, Nigeria and Liberia.

Brower said researchers don’t have the level of detail needed to know if Black people moved to Minnesota from other states, and where from, but Minnesota did generally see gains from other states between 2010 and 2023. She said Minnesota’s biggest “trading partners for people” of any race are neighboring states and the country’s largest states like California, Texas and Florida.

She said this has been an important source of growth with the white, non-Hispanic population in Minnesota aging and having fewer kids.

“All of the growth that the state experienced in the last decade is attributable to populations of color. And even, kind of more specifically, the Black or African American population in Minnesota has grown the fastest,” said Brower.

“Population growth and economic growth are really closely tied,” added Brower. “When you have a slow-growing population or a slow-growing workforce, it's really very, very hard to keep the economy going. And so economies that have robust population growth really tend to do much better and to have higher levels of growth.”

She said knowing detailed demographic information helps policymakers find solutions for diverse groups of people. Governments, nonprofits, philanthropic groups and private businesses all rely on similar Census data.

However, despite their population growth in Minnesota, Black people are far from overtaking the state.

While 14.4 percent of the country self-identify as Black, Black people make up just 9.3 percent of Minnesota.

“We just started at a point where we were so very white in the 1960s and while we’ve become more diverse over time as a state, and we’re on kind of the same trajectory as the U.S., we really started at a much lower point in terms of overall diversity and we're still there today,” said Brower.

On a recent snowy afternoon, Gale Livingstone, a first generation farmer, is working in the propagation greenhouse at Deep Roots Farm, which she owns and operates. Four volunteers are putting collard greens, bok choy, kale and scallion seeds in seed starting trays — just a few of the vegetables Livingstone is growing this spring.

“It’s a pretty tedious, lengthy process,” she says.

Trained as an accountant, Livingstone turned to farming about 15 years ago to grow her own food. She started with five-gallon buckets, pierced holes at the bottom and filled them with soil and seeds.

She leased land until 2020, when she was able to buy it with the help of government funding.

Livingstone is one of about a million American farmers who benefits from financial assistance provided by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) each year. But she says she isn’t sure what the future holds.

One week after President Trump was inaugurated, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued a memo freezing spending on federal loans and grants. Funding for a number of programs that support small farmers like Livingstone was halted. Although that memo was rescinded shortly after it was issued and attorneys general from across the nation filed suit against the federal government, farmers are still feeling the squeeze. 

The Trump administration has also effectively dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development, a move that is having a ripple effect on farmers who export their products for food aid. Millions of dollars in grain have been sitting unused in Kansas, where farmers export sorghum, wheat, rice and lentils.

Dãnia Davy, an attorney and founder of Land and Liberation, a consultancy firm that specializes in Black farming and land justice issues, says the nation’s Black farmers, who historically have earned less and owned smaller plots of land, feel these financial strains most acutely.

For years, Livingstone considered herself a success story in Black farming. She credits USDA grants with her ability to own her land, rather than rent it as she used to, and make farming her primary livelihood.

Black farmers have historically had less access to loans and other resources in the U.S. The USDA in a 2021 memo vowed to end discrimination against Black farmers.

Livingstone, a Maryland native, says the system is far from perfect.

“The USDA loan process is inefficient,” she says, noting that she submitted her loan application to purchase her land within two weeks.

“In addition to being a woman farmer, a minority, socially disadvantaged, they had all these special categories that qualified me to borrow, but it took about nine months to complete the acquisition,” she says.

The loan included funds to build a home, but farming involves a lot of unexpected expenses and losses, she says.

“I don’t have a home. I am currently living in an RV on the property,” she says.

In the next month she’s adding goats on the farm. She hopes to bring in pigs and sheep next. Livingstone has applied for more USDA grants from the Climate-Smart Commodities Project, which allocates $3 billion for projects across the U.S., including crop rotation and less water-intensive irrigation techniques. She hopes to use the funds for fencing, among other things, she says, but those grants are currently frozen.

A federal judge’s order issued on Feb. 10 noted that the Trump administration had continued its funding freeze despite a temporary restraining order issued late last month.

In a statement to NPR, A USDA spokesperson said the agency is reviewing programs that have been on hold and that Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins expects to make determinations as quickly as possible. Rollins “understands that farmers, ranchers and loggers have made decisions based on these funding opportunities, and that some have been waiting on payments during this government-wide review,” the spokesperson said, adding the agency expects to share more information this week.

For now, Livingstone is taking a cautious approach.

“I’m not starting anything,” she says, “I can still operate my business without any of those projects.”

“Just as I was feeling good about how things are going,” she says, “this freeze is chilling.”

Davy says part of the challenge with government grant awards is that they often require the farmer to pay for work out of pocket and file for federal reimbursement later.

“I’m usually like the Suzy Sunshine,” says Davy, “But I cannot gloss over the reality that we are in a very dark moment in America's history.”

Uncertainty isn’t anything new for Black farmers

“I’ve been fighting the government since 1983,” says John Boyd Jr., a fourth-generation Black farmer.

He and his wife, Kara, are two of four plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit in federal court filed on behalf of Black farmers and other farmers of color in 2022. It alleges that the government broke its promise to provide billions of dollars in debt relief to Black farmers.

Earlier this month, the Boyds arrived at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, D.C., where a group of about 25 fellow farmers from North Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi and other states had gathered in the lobby. A three-panel judge was set to hear an oral argument on an appeal.

“I feel anxious today,” says Boyd, who is president of the National Black Farmers Association. He’s tall, dressed mostly in black, including a cowboy hat and brown boots.

“A broken promise”

President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) signed in 2021, set aside $5 billion in debt relief and other efforts to help socially disadvantaged farmers, like Boyd. It was part of an effort to help USDA makeup for a history of discrimination.

But after white farmers filed lawsuits, the program was repealed and lawmakers passed a second race-neutral program through the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. Billions of dollars in relief would now go to any farmer identified as “economically distressed,” including some white farmers.

“It’s a broken promise,” Boyd says, referring to the Biden administration’s earlier plans to provide debt relief to Black farmers.

He owns and runs Boyd Farms, about 2,000 acres in Bakersville, Va., where he grows soybeans, corn and wheat, and raises cattle.

“Total debt forgiveness would give me the opportunity to plan the next steps on what to do with my land,” Boyd says. “Securing loans is a full-time job.”

The father of four says the land is his legacy. He wants it to stay in the family, “but my children have watched my struggles,” he says, “and they have prepared to make a different living.”

“Every day I think about what’s going to happen with my land and part of me hurts and I have an emptiness inside,” says 59-year old Boyd. “There is a part of me that’s deeply saddened that I haven’t identified what’s next for my land.”

“It’s not over today”

Back in Washington, D.C., plaintiffs and their supporters in the class-action suit gather in a hallway after oral arguments conclude.

“I’m cautiously optimistic,” Ben Crump, a high-profile civil rights attorney, tells farmers. He says the three-judge panel seemed receptive.

“They were listening, asking questions, and we are going to continue to fight to overcome this 21st century version of 40 acres and a mule,” he says, referring to the promise the federal government made to give land to freed slaves after the Civil War.

“We have a good chance here. It’s not over today,” John Boyd says.

Boyd leads the group in prayer.

“Father God, we come to the court, we come in faith, we come in your name. Amen.”

A ruling is expected in a few weeks. For now, these farmers remain hopeful.

Copyright 2025, NPR

By Alex Schroeder | Marketplace

Minnesota developers popularized racist practices in the real estate industry that later spread across the country, according to historical records from the early 20th century. 

With so-called “racial covenants,” real estate agents inserted legal clauses into deeds that barred owners from selling their property to Black people, along with other races, ethnicities and religions. The federal government later banned the practice.

Minnesota was not the first state with a racial covenant, but land developers in Minneapolis helped turn an uncommon and unsavory practice into a standard policy in the burgeoning real estate industry, according to historian Penny Petersen, who shared her findings on the Marketplace series “Unlocking the Gates.”

The first-known racial covenant in Minnesota came in 1910, when Edmund G. Walton, an English immigrant, and Henry Scott, a wealthy Iowan, inserted the language into a deed on a Minneapolis property in the Longfellow neighborhood.

That’s about 10 years before the practice became widespread, according to a report by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.

Walton and Scott’s Seven Oaks Corporation later expanded the practice with deeds across Hennepin County.

At the start, the two worked to keep the racial covenants hidden, according to Petersen, who co-founded Mapping Prejudice, a Minnesota-based organization that has uncovered thousands of racial covenants. She said Walton likely questioned the legality of the covenants, since the 14th amendment guaranteed equal protection under the law for all Americans. 

Petersen also said Walton may have put the deeds in the name of Scott, his out-of-state partner, to protect his standing in the community. Many of the early deeds with covenants were not recorded with the county until years after the transactions occurred, Petersen said. Because deeds without covenants were typically formalized with the county immediately, Petersen said she believes the delay was an attempt to keep the covenants under wraps. 

But over the next few years, they became increasingly public and widespread. 

That’s in part because of the largest developer in Minneapolis at the time, Samuel Thorpe. Beginning in 1911, Thorpe spent a year as president of the organization that today is the National Association of Realtors.

As president, Thorpe likely interacted with one of the foremost evangelists of restrictive covenants, J.C. Nichols, who gave an address to the organization’s national convention in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1912. 

In the address, which was published by the American Civic Association in Washington, D.C., later that year, Nichols told his colleagues he had previously been afraid to include racial covenants in deals. But now, he said, “I cannot sell a lot without them.” 

Thorpe was paying attention, according to Petersen. In late 1912, Thorpe’s company created what Petersen called the “first fully covenanted addition” — or subdivision — in Minneapolis. Developers were now establishing entire neighborhoods that were off limits to people who weren’t white. 

Even high-ranking state officials engaged in the practice. Shortly before becoming lieutenant governor, state legislator Thomas Frankson developed a subdivision in the Como Park neighborhood of St. Paul, which he advertised in newspapers.

By 1924, the code of ethics for what is now the National Association of Realtors essentially banned realtors from selling property in white neighborhoods to people of color.

Three years later, the organization worked with the U.S. Department of Commerce to write a template for racial covenants that was later adopted for use in deeds across the country.

Nearly 40 years after Walton made the first-known racial covenant in Minneapolis, the federal government finally neutered the practice.  

In 1948, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that racial covenants were unenforceable. In 1953, the Minnesota legislature made them illegal at the state level, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968 did the same at the national level.

But the decades of structural discrimination did lasting damage.  

The enforcement of racial covenants in the past led to increased home values in present day Hennepin County, according to an analysis by University of Toronto economist Aradhya Sood.

Racial home ownership disparities persist, too. About 77 percent of white families in Minnesota own homes compared to about 32 percent of Black families, according to an analysis by the APM Research Lab. 

In 2020, the National Association of Realtors apologized for its racist practices of the past.

Two years later, the Minneapolis Area Realtors group issued its own apology and announced what it described as “corrective policy changes” it planned to implement.

“That's an incredible spread in the housing disparity gap that we have,” Jackie Berry, who’s on the board of directors at Minneapolis Area Realtors, said in an interview. “If we're talking about Minnesota, in comparison to other states, we are one of the worst with that housing disparity gap.” 

One change Berry would like to see is a way to obscure buyers’ names during the homebuying process, to prevent bias from influencing sales. 

Top officials in Minnesota government are also pushing for change. Peggy Flanagan holds the same position, lieutenant governor, that developer Thomas Frankson held more than 100 years ago. Flanagan is the highest-ranking Native American female politician in the country. She appears to be the first government official to call for an apology for the state of Minnesota’s role in perpetuating housing discrimination.

“I think that an apology is powerful,” she said. “But in the same way that I think things like land acknowledgements are powerful, if you don't have policies and investments to back them up, then they're simply words.” 

Flanagan said she believes a recently passed law will help close the racial home ownership gap by providing millions of dollars in down payment assistance to first-time homebuyers.  

She said investment “is one of the ways that we correct those wrongs.”

Listen to the Marketplace series Unlocking The Gates.

In celebration of Black History Month in February, MPR News is highlighting Black history throughout the state. From a fur trader believed to be one of the first African descendants in territory that is now Minnesota, to streets and parks renamed in 2024 after Black community leaders, these sites span the state and the centuries.

Southern Minnesota

Gibbs Elementary School, Rochester

Gibbs Elementary School in Rochester is named after George W. Gibbs Jr., the first known Black person to set foot in Antarctica.

Gibbs was serving in the U.S. Navy when he sailed to the continent as a member of Rear Admiral Richard E. Byrd’s third expedition.

In January 1940, after almost 40 days at sea on the U.S.S. Bear, he was the first person to step off the ship.

Gibbs moved to Rochester and became a civil rights activist and small business owner. 

He spent almost 20 years working at IBM, co-founded the Rochester Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, or NAACP, and founded an employment agency he operated until 1999.

— Alex Haddon, radio reporter intern

Underground Railroad

Although not much is known about Minnesota’s role in the Underground Railroad due to its secrecy, the Rushford Area Historical Society believes the city was part of the network to help enslaved people to freedom. The area was home to abolitionists at the time and is about 16 miles from the Mississippi River, an escape route north to Canada.

Secret rooms have been discovered in at least three homes in Rushford, which are all currently private residences. One home was built in 1859 for abolitionists George and Harriet Stevens and is thought to be a safe house in the 1860s.

In a different house, a secret room was found downstairs after the flood of 2007. It’s an 18-room, two-story house built in 1861 for Roswell and George Valentine. It is on the National Register of Historic Places.

A third home was built in 1867 for Miles Carpenter, an early Rushford banker, and is also thought to be a safe house.

The Rushford Area Historical Society also believes limestone caves were used to hide people escaping to freedom.

— Lisa Ryan, editor

Central Minnesota

Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder, Minneapolis

As the oldest Black-owned newspaper and one of the longest standing family-owned newspapers in the country, the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder is a point of pride in the Twin Cities.

The paper was started in August 1934 by civil rights activist Cecil E. Newman with a split publication: the Minneapolis Spokesman and the St. Paul Recorder. In its first issue, Newman made a prediction and promise to readers, writing, “We feel sure St. Paul and Minneapolis will have real champions of the Race.”

Today, Newman’s granddaughter Tracey Williams-Dillard serves as the CEO and publisher for MSR and continues the paper that has been a trusted news source in the Black community for almost a century.

As a weekly paper, MSR has tackled topics like local Ku Klux Klan activities, Brown v. Board of Education, the Civil Rights Movement, Minneapolis’ first Black woman mayor, and George Floyd’s murder. 

In 2015, its building at 3744 4th Ave. in Minneapolis became a state historic landmark.

— Kyra Miles, early education reporter

Penumbra Theatre, St. Paul

Founded in 1976, Penumbra Theatre was created by Lou Bellamy. Over the years, Penumbra has had the distinction of being the only Black professional theater in Minnesota. The name Penumbra means “half-light” or “partial eclipse.” It was founded using a Comprehensive Employment Training Act grant from the federal government. 

Its first production, Steve Carter’s “Eden,” explored diversity of ethnicities within the African American community. In a 1977 interview with MPR News, Bellamy described the theater as being inadvertently political, with its focus on giving Black actors opportunities to perform at the professional level.  

“The roles that you generally see — and it’s because of the people who choose the shows — are waiters, butlers, things that if not debilitating, at least are not allowing them to show the extent of their capability,” Bellamy said.

Penumbra has had a number of company members that are recognizable, both locally and nationally. Perhaps its most famous alumnus is playwright August Wilson, who developed some of his earliest plays at Penumbra. In a 2023 interview, Bellamy noted that the character Levee in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” was influenced by his brother Terry’s portrayal in early readings. 

In 2021, under the direction of Lou’s daughter Sarah Bellamy, the theater received a $5 million grant to build on its work in racial equality. 

— Jacob Aloi, arts reporter and newscaster

Arthur and Edith Lee House, Minneapolis

In June 1931, Arthur and Edith Lee, a Black couple, purchased the modest craftsman-style home in Minneapolis’ Field neighborhood and moved into the predominantly white neighborhood with their young daughter, Mary.

Several years earlier, property owners in the area signed a contract with the neighborhood association to not sell or rent their homes to anyone who wasn’t white.

When the Lees moved in, community members tried to force them out.

Their home became the site of an urban riot in July 1931, when an angry mob of 4,000 white people gathered in their yard and spilled out onto the street, demanding the family leave the neighborhood.

A U.S. postal worker, World War I veteran and NAACP member, Arthur Lee said he had a “right to establish a home” in the neighborhood of his choosing.

Many individuals and organizations came to the family’s defense, including local and national chapters of the NAACP and the prominent civil rights attorney, Lena Olive Smith. (see Lena O. Smith House below)

The Lees stayed in their home until the fall of 1933. According to the National Register of Historic Places Registration Form, the family slept in the basement because of safety concerns, and their daughter Mary was escorted to kindergarten by the police.

The Arthur and Edith Lee House became a designated historic property in Minneapolis in 2014.

The Lee protests remain some of the largest and most widely publicized race-related demonstrations in Minnesota’s history. The city of Minneapolis’ local historic landmark designation similarly finds the Arthur and Edith Lee House to be associated “with broad patterns of social history, particularly in regard to African American history in Minneapolis, race relations and historical trends of housing discrimination.”

— Erica Zurek, senior health reporter

George Floyd Square, Minneapolis

On May 25, 2020, former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd outside of a convenience store at the intersection of 38th Street and Chicago Avenue on the south side of Minneapolis. 

The community transformed the intersection into a memorial and protest site. It’s also become a point of contention over how to remember Floyd’s murder and the protest movement that started here. 

Local protesters maintain that the site should be community-led, until the city meets a list of demands for justice. For a year after Floyd’s murder, protesters kept the streets closed to traffic; city workers took down the barricades in 2021. 

Now, the city is locked in an ongoing debate over the square's future. City officials say the streets are overdue for reconstruction. They're pushing for a plan to rebuild the intersection, supported by some local residents and businesses on the block. But local activists, who still maintain the ongoing protest, say it's too soon for the city to take a role in the street design. Instead, they say they want the city to invest in neighborhood services, like housing and substance abuse programs.

— Estelle Timar-Wilcox, general assignment reporter

Hiawatha Golf Course, Minneapolis

At a time when African American golfers were barred from participating in white-only tournaments and golf courses, the Hiawatha Golf Course became a popular gathering spot for Black golfers.

The course opened in 1934 in south Minneapolis, and was the spot, a few years later, where African American golfer James “Jimmie” Slemmons created what’s now the Upper Midwest Bronze Amateur Memorial — a tournament that welcomed Black golfers.

Despite being a popular course for African Americans, the Hiawatha Golf Course clubhouse barred non-white golfers from entering. That is until 1952, when that rule ended, largely because of the efforts of golf legend and trailblazer Solomon Hughes Sr.

“Hughes was an excellent golfer, recognized nationwide, yet still could not golf at white golf courses, which is why Hiawatha golf course is so important to us,” said Greg McMoore, a long-time south Minneapolis resident and historian.

Although once only allowed to play with the United Golfer’s Association, a league formed by Black golfers, Hughes was among the first Black golfers to tee off in a PGA event at the 1952 St. Paul Open.

In 2022, the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board officially named the clubhouse the Solomon Hughes Clubhouse. The golf course was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2023.

— Cari Spencer, reporter

Lena O. Smith House, Minneapolis

Civil rights leader and trailblazing attorney Lena O. Smith lived in this Minneapolis home on 3905 Fifth Ave. S. While working in real estate, Smith witnessed up close the discriminatory practices that excluded Black families from certain neighborhoods of the city. She took that experience to law school and in 1921 became the first Black woman to practice law in the state of Minnesota.

As an attorney, Smith took on several high-profile cases fighting segregation and defending the rights of Black residents of Minneapolis. She worked to desegregate spaces in the city including the Pantages Theatre and protected a Black family from a campaign to oust them from their home in a mostly white neighborhood of south Minneapolis. (see Arthur and Edith Lee House, above)

Smith founded the Minneapolis Urban League and led the local chapter of the NAACP as its first woman president. She worked inside and outside of the courtroom to advance civil rights until her death in 1966. Her home was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1991. 

— Alanna Elder, producer

‘Spiral for Justice’ memorial, St. Paul

On the south lawn of the State Capitol grounds is the ‘Spiral for Justice’ memorial for Roy Wilkins.

Wilkins, who grew up in St. Paul’s Rondo neighborhood, was a civil rights leader. He worked in various roles at the NAACP from 1931 to1977, leading the organization for 22 years.

The memorial has 46 elements that are positioned in a spiral, getting higher and higher as they extend out from the middle and out beyond two walls that surround the main parts of the sculpture.

Each element represents a year of his work at the NAACP, and the elements breaking through the wall represent progress breaking through barriers of racial inequality. The memorial, designed by sculptor Curtis Patterson, was dedicated in 1995.

— Peter Cox, reporter

Clarence Wigington, St. Paul

The Highland Park Water Tower was designed by Clarence “Cap” Wigington, the first African American municipal architect in the United States.

Wigington designed or supervised the creation of over 130 buildings throughout his decades-long career, with most located in St. Paul and designed during his tenure at the city architect’s office between 1915 and 1949.

He designed a number of city projects including fire stations and park buildings, as well as ice palaces for the St. Paul Winter Carnival. (He also designed my old stomping grounds, Chelsea Heights Elementary School, and an addition to my alma mater Murray Middle School.)

Some of his other landmark structures include the Harriet Island Pavilion (since renamed after him), Roy Wilkins auditorium and the Holman Field Administration building at the St. Paul Downtown Airport.

The Highland Park Water Tower, built in 1928, is one of three Wigington structures listed in the National Register of Historic Places. The others are the Harriet Island Pavilion and the Holman Field Administration building.

— Feven Gerezgiher, reporter and producer

Northern Minnesota

Statue of Tuskegee Airman Joe Gomer, Duluth

A statue in the Duluth International Airport terminal honors a Minnesotan who was a member of the famed Tuskegee Airmen during World War II.

Joe Gomer was among the country’s first Black fighter pilots, flying 68 combat missions in Europe. He and his fellow Tuskegee Airmen were tasked with protecting bombers from German fighters. The unit’s success helped the push to end segregation in the U.S. military.

Gomer stayed in the military after the war and later worked for the U.S. Forest Service in Minnesota. He lived in Duluth for 50 years and stayed active into his 90s. The Duluth News Tribune reported that Gomer shared the history of the Tuskegee Airmen and talked about the importance of education with school groups.

Veterans’ groups in Duluth worked to raise money for the statue to honor Gomer’s service to his country; it was dedicated at the airport in 2012, on Gomer’s 92nd birthday. Gomer died the following year at age 93; he was Minnesota’s last living Tuskegee Airman.

— Andrew Krueger, editor

Hattie Mosley, Hibbing

In 1905, 23-year-old Hattie Mosley moved from Decatur, Ill., to the up-and-coming mining town of Hibbing, Minn. Twelve years prior, the town was established by a German miner. 

At the time, 50 percent of Hibbing residents were born in a foreign country. Yet Mosley, a Black woman, remained a minority, as it was still uncommon for Black people to live in northern Minnesota as long-term residents. This is according to history expert Aaron Brown, who was featured in an Almanac interview with Twin Cities Public Television about the resident. 

Mosley came to Hibbing as a widow, and did not have any children. She spent the next 30 years as a single woman caring for the mining town as its residents faced the Spanish Flu, the effects of World War I and other daily ailments. She often volunteered in poor immigrant communities and checked in on the sick, using her homemade cough syrup and homemade remedies to nurse most of the town back to health.

She was known to help with the worst cases other medical professionals wouldn’t dare to touch, including the most severe quarantined cases of the Spanish Flu. Because of this, she is described as a heroine and often called the Florence Nightingale of Hibbing, according to Brown.

She died in 1938 and is buried in Maple Hill Cemetery. The beloved nurse and midwife’s obituary said her greatest joy in life was helping those who could not afford care. 

“Her acts of charity, so freely given, numbered a legion and among the poor her death will be keenly felt,” read her obituary in the Hibbing Daily Tribune.

Mosley was elected to the Hibbing Historical Society’s Hall of Service and Achievement a decade ago.

— Sam Stroozas, digital producer

St. Mark AME, Duluth

St. Mark African Methodist Episcopal Church is in the Central Hillside area of Duluth. The church was built in 1900 and was added to the National Register in 1991.

W. E. B. DuBois spoke at St. Mark in 1921 before a gathering of the Duluth chapter of the NAACP, which had recently been founded after the lynching of three Black men in downtown Duluth. DuBois founded the national organization in 1909.

— Regina Medina, reporter

Fort Pembina, near present-day Pembina, N.D.

Pierre Bonga and his family are well known in Minnesota’s early Black history, before it was even a state. His son George Bonga was one of the first Black people born in what later became the state of Minnesota, according to MNopedia.

George was born in the Northwest Territory around 1802, near present-day Duluth. His mother was Ojibwe, as were the two women he married in his lifetime. George was a guide and translator for negotiations with the Ojibwe for Territorial Governor Lewis Cass.

While the Bonga family has connections to many locations in present-day Minnesota and the Great Lakes region, they spent time in Fort Pembina, according to the University of North Dakota. Pierre Bonga was also a trapper and interpreter. He primarily worked near the Red River, as well as near Lake Superior. He died in 1831, in what is now Minnesota.

— Lisa Ryan, editor

Wednesday on this program, we aired an audio documentary about a group of Minneapolis police officers and community members, who recently took a trip to Montgomery, Alabama to tour museums and historical sites.

MPR News host Angela Davis was invited to go along with them and record their discussions about what they saw and learned.

This hour, Angela and her guests continue the conversation about the Minneapolis Police Department and an ambitious effort led by the Police and Black Men Project.

Guests:

• Bill Doherty is a professor emeritus in the Department of Family Social Science at the University of Minnesota and expert on marriage and family therapy. Bill is a co-founder of the Police and Black Men Project.

• Guy Bowling is a fatherhood leader and speaker, the former director of the FATHER Project in the Twin Cities and a 2020 Bush Fellow. He is also a co-founder of the Police and Black Men Project.

• Charles Adams is an inspector for the Minneapolis Police Department’s Fourth Precinct. He’s been with MPD since 1987 and is a member of the Police and Black Men Project.

Subscribe to the MPR News with Angela Davis podcast on: Apple Podcasts, Spotify or RSS.    

Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.    

The Minneapolis Police Department has spent a lot of time in the national spotlight for all the wrong reasons.

It’s operating under a court-ordered agreement with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights after investigators in 2022 found a pattern of racism in Minneapolis policing that violated the Minnesota Human Rights Act.

In late December, MPD and the U.S. Justice Department reached an agreement on a federal consent decree that would mandate additional changes. It still needs the approval of a federal judge, who has not set a timeline for considering it.

Going forward, how can Minneapolis build trust between police and community members?

MPR News host Angela Davis presents an audio documentary about her experiences traveling to Montgomery, Ala., with a group of Minneapolis police officers and Black community members working to bridge the divide.

They’re part of an ambitious effort called the Police and Black Men Project. Eight years ago, following the police killing of Philando Castile in a Twin Cities suburb, the group started meeting regularly to talk about repairing and building relationships between police and the people they serve.

On the Alabama trip, they toured museums and historical sites telling the story of slavery, racial segregation and mass incarceration in America. Then they sat down in small groups and talked about what they’d seen and heard.

The goal was to connect the past to the present, create a better understanding of the distrust that exists today and learn how to talk about it. They invited Angela and producer Stephen Smith to tag along, observe and record their intimate discussions.

Listen to Angela’s Alabama scrapbook and check out her reporter’s notebook story online that’s filled with insights and photos from the trip.

Subscribe to the MPR News with Angela Davis podcast on: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or RSS.

Use the audio player above to listen to the full audio documentary.     

Editor’s note: This story includes a racial slur.

I’m often asked about my favorite stories I’ve covered as a reporter. That’s a hard question to answer after spending 35 years working in journalism, most of them as a local television reporter.

Rarely does anyone ask about my hardest moments. That question brings to mind a very vivid memory. 

In December 2015, I stood in the middle of Plymouth Avenue in north Minneapolis facing the Minneapolis Police Department’s 4th Precinct building, watching angry officers and defiant community members clash.

Days earlier, police had shot and killed Jamar Clark, a 24-year-old Black man, during a confrontation. Community members wanted answers. Protesters blockaded the entrance to the 4th Precinct and the street outside.

In front of me stood armed officers in riot helmets telling the crowd to disperse, and protesters screaming back and holding their ground. I saw the handcuffs come out and arrests happen. Police pulled down a “Black Lives Matter” banner from the building as they cleared out a spreading encampment. I could feel the distrust and rage between the mostly Black residents and mostly white officers.

The shooting and its aftermath pushed Minnesota to the center of a painful national debate over police, people of color and deadly force. 

Months later, the Twin Cities would be torn again by another police shooting of a Black man, Philando Castile. In 2020 came George Floyd, killed by a Minneapolis police officer as he lay handcuffed and face down in the street, pleading that he couldn’t breathe.

‘You want me to go where? With who?’

Nine years after witnessing the battle for the 4th Precinct, I got a message from a manager at MPR News, where I host a morning talk show. The bosses wanted me to travel to Montgomery, Ala., a city at the center of the slave trade and the Civil Rights Movement, with a contingent that included 4th Precinct officers. 

Reading the message, remembering what I witnessed in 2015 and the department’s history of dysfunction and accusations of violence, I thought, “You want me to go where? With who? Why?” 

Turns out there was a good reason for the ask. 

Emerging from the killings of Clark and Castile, a small group, the Police and Black Men Project, had formed to talk about the roots of their distrust. They included Minneapolis police officers, Black and white, along with Black community members, leaders of nonprofits, government agencies and private businesses. Some were once incarcerated. All have strong opinions about law enforcement. Group members have met regularly the past eight years.

They went to Montgomery in 2023 to tour museums and historical sites. They wanted to do something bigger in 2024, to go back to Alabama with a larger group and wider audience. They called MPR News.

Nine years after Jamar Clark’s killing, I was called again to witness police and Black men but in a very different way.

We were invited to go along in December and record the group’s private discussions as they processed what they had seen and heard at each of the tour stops. Our team included editor and producer Stephen Smith and freelance photographer Desmon Williams, who goes by “Dolo.”

In their conversations, this group explored a significant part of American history, one many people still struggle to discuss and understand or even acknowledge.

400 years of racial terror: Inside The Legacy Museum

We arrived in Montgomery on a Tuesday afternoon after flying from Minneapolis to Atlanta and then renting SUVs for the two-hour drive. The weather was terrible. Torrential rain and dangerous driving conditions. I wondered if it was some sort of sign of what’s to come. 

We gathered with the group — all men — for dinner, the first of many meals these men would share. I discovered some of them have known each other for years and others are still getting to know each other.  

The next morning, the officers and community members filed out of a hotel in downtown Montgomery, all dressed the same — hooded sweatshirts with artwork on the back and the words “Black Men and Police Project” and “Peace” and “Alabama 2024.” On the back, there’s an image of a handshake between a black and a white hand with the downtown Minneapolis skyline in the background.

The design was created by teenagers in a life-skills mentoring program run by group member Jamil Jackson. It’s called Change Equals Opportunity. Jackson is also head basketball coach at Minneapolis Camden High School and one of the founders of Freedom Fighters, which focuses on public safety.

Throughout the next few days these sweatshirts would turn heads. Passersby would ask them questions about the Police and Black Men Project as the group walked down the street and waited in lines at restaurants and museums.

On this day, our first stop is The Legacy Museum. This is a place to learn about 400 years of American history involving slavery, racial terrorism, legalized segregation and mass incarceration in a way that pulls you into the past. 

The museum sits on the site of a cotton warehouse where enslaved Black people were forced to work when the cotton economy drove American slavery. I can’t bring my microphone in for what seems to me an excellent reason — to respect the solemnity of a museum dedicated to the memory of a national atrocity.

Organized evil

Moments after stepping into the first area of the exhibit space, you find yourself in darkness, standing in what looks, feels and sounds like the bottom of the ocean. You’re introduced to the terrifying expanse of the Atlantic Ocean that more than 13 million Africans were forced to cross in slave ships. Nearly 2 million of them died in this Middle Passage.

You’re surrounded by underwater sculptures of human bodies, looking at what appears to be the heads, shoulders and arms of enslaved Africans who died after being chained together and then forced onto ships during the transatlantic slave trade. Many of them died from illnesses on the ships due to the horrific conditions. Their bodies were thrown in the ocean. 

The facial expressions portray horror and despair. As you look at them or try not to, you’re hearing the sounds of waves.

Later in the day in small group discussions, I listened to the officers and community members discuss what it was like to walk through this display. Several described the experience of feeling shook to the core as they took in this particular scene at the start of the tour. 

Bill Doherty, a co-founder of the Police and Black Men Project, said later he was shocked by the organized evil of lynching.

“My image was always this mob stormed the police station or something, the officers are overwhelmed or whatever, looked away. But there was a headline that said there's a lynching scheduled for tomorrow at 5 o’clock. This is cold calculated. This is, it’s booked, it's scheduled, and the governor said he couldn’t do anything about it. The governor!” said Doherty.

“We’re not talking about the local police guy down there with two, two deputies who’s overwhelmed. So, the kind of organizational part of it, you know, that’s just really struck me.”

As we continue to walk through the exhibit spaces, we move into a section about mass incarceration. You can sit down on a stool and pick up a phone and watch a video that depicts a prisoner welcoming your visit.

Each person tells you about the conditions inside the prison and declares their innocence in a crime that landed them behind bars. These are stories told by real incarcerated people.

It was after sitting through these video testimonials that I needed a break and went and sat in the women’s restroom for a few minutes.

‘Not a glimmer of hope’

Later in the museum cafeteria filled with students, we met for lunch over delicious soul food to talk about what we’ve seen. Moving into small groups in a private room, I heard the men share their thoughts about what they’d seen.

Doherty was struck by the banal efficiency of enslaving and terrorizing people. A retired University of Minnesota professor, his family foundation helped pay for the trip in 2024.

“One of the things I got this time is that it takes organization and big systems to do this kind of evil. It's not just in the hearts of individuals,” he said. 

“I never knew how much the banking system was involved in, in slavery and the slave trade, but slaves were collateral for loans. So the banks were supporting the system by saying, ‘Yeah, you got 12 slaves. I'll lend you this money.’ Oh my goodness,” he said.

Sherman Patterson, vice president of a Minneapolis nonprofit called Lights On!, noted a quote on the wall about the loss of hope: “I was taught that there was hope after the grave. I lost all hope after I was sold to the South.”

“Just think about that, what that’s saying,” said Patterson. “That’s just, not a glimmer of hope. That’s just pure hell. And then the woman who was raped several times and had the kid by her master and she defended herself and killed him and then the justice system said you have no right to defend yourself,” said Patterson, one of the elders in this group.

“I grew up in Savannah, Georgia,” he added. “I grew up in true segregation as a kid up until 1975 and saw those things. My grandmother was born in 1919 and sitting on a porch watching her be calling the nigger and all of this here. We could not go downtown in certain places because we were taught you can’t, you better not, and this is what you do. So there is anger, but being with this group, this is why we’re here. There’s hope. There is hope and we’re moving forward.”

We stop next at the Freedom Monument Sculpture Park. It’s a 17-acre site overlooking the Alabama River and the city of Montgomery. On this river, tens of thousands of enslaved people were transported in chains to the slave market. Many, many thousands toiled in fields and factories up and down the Alabama River. And Montgomery was one of the largest slave-trading centers in the United States.

‘One heart, and it bleeds the same color’

On Day 2, we went to First Baptist Church on the edge of downtown Montgomery. It’s a handsome red brick building with a bell tower and a large, round stained glass window. First Baptist was founded in 1867. 

It is one of the first Black churches in the Montgomery area and became one of the largest Black churches in the South. It played a huge role in the Civil Rights Movement. The Rev. Ralph Abernathy, a close friend and associate of Martin Luther King Jr., was pastor.

In the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955 and 1956, First Baptist was a community organizing center. During the Freedom Rides of 1961, this church was besieged for a time by a huge white mob threatening to burn it down.

I’d been looking forward to this visit. I grew up in Black Baptist churches in rural communities in southern Virginia. My grandparents raised me, and my grandfather was the pastor of several churches when I was a child. We were greeted in the parking lot by an older Black man, Deacon Emeritus Howard Davis, who reminded me of my grandfather. 

Davis, 81, was baptized at the church and spent his entire life there as an active member and leader. He greeted each of the men in the group with a smile and a handshake. He shared a bit of the history of the church and the role the building and the people who sat inside it played during the Civil Rights Movement.

He described how his family taught him to stay away from white people, particularly white women and girls, and how to this day white women make him nervous. He understands the flip side of that and how white children were told to stay away from Black people and fear them, and how that affects how many of them view Black people today.

He also spoke of the modern day challenges that Black people face. He took questions from men in the group and didn’t hesitate to shake his head at times and admit he didn’t have the answer. At one point one of the group members asked him to pray for them, and he did.

Our next stop was Montgomery’s former Greyhound Bus Station, now the Freedom Rides Museum. In 1961, teams of volunteers from the North and South challenged the Jim Crow practice of racially-segregated travel on buses and trains in the South. 

The Freedom Riders were mostly young people, Black and white. They were arrested for violating state and local segregation laws by riding together and ignoring the segregated seating. Local police in many southern towns let the Ku Klux Klan and other mobs attack them.

Here, I recorded audio of an interview with community member Brantley Johnson. He reflected on what he saw and how he felt about going on this trip. 

Johnson said he ran with a gang in Minneapolis and ended up in prison. “When I got out, I promised my kids that I would never leave them again.” He’s been part of regular meetings around the 4th Precinct and has been trying to work on ways to build trust between police officers and residents.

“We have to meet them at their hardest moments, just like they have to meet us at our hardest moments,” he said of the police. “Because at the end of the day, we all have one heart, and it bleeds the same color, no matter what.”

Later, we head to the Rosa Parks Museum on the campus of Troy University. Parks played a pivotal role in the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott. She refused to give up her seat in the so-called “colored section” so that a white woman could have it. Parks was arrested for violating the local bus segregation law. 

In response, Montgomery’s Black community boycotted the bus system for more than a year. The protest brought King, then a local pastor, to national prominence and led eventually to the U.S. Supreme Court declaring bus segregation unconstitutional.

Our last two stops on this trip are a walking tour of downtown Montgomery and then the National Memorial for Peace and Justice. It’s a profoundly moving 6-acre site in downtown Montgomery. Out of respect for the solemnity of this space, we’ve been asked not to record audio during the visit. 

The group splits into smaller groups and scatters in different directions. I follow a group up a hill to what’s known as the lynching memorial. 

I’ve been there before. A year ago while attending a conference in Birmingham, my husband and I drove to Montgomery to visit The Legacy Museum and the memorial.  

I found a monument with the name of a city very close to where I grew up, Danville, Va. The first name on the monument was of a man whose last name was Davis and I took a picture of it. Edward Davis, 11.03.1883. That’s when he was lynched. I wonder if we’re related.

Courage to say ‘No’

We return to Minneapolis, where the temperature is in single digits, a little colder than the 50s in Alabama.

Not only is the weather different, the men appear different than they were when we gathered at the gate to board our flight days earlier.  

That morning they were relaxed, even joking around with one another. Now the mood is more somber and the facial expressions appear to be more reflective. I sense a new confidence in them. To me they look like they are ready to approach future interactions with more knowledge and understanding, more empathy.

At different points of the trip, many of the men said they were surprised by how much of the history of this country is not taught in schools. Some seemed troubled by how much they didn’t know.

The group disperses at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. I can tell everyone’s eager to go home. I know I am. I want to be alone with my thoughts and there’s a lot to think about.

Like, how does one person change things? How does a small group bring change to a whole police department? How does a small group of community members bring change to a whole city?

When I get home, I immediately start to unpack. Most of my souvenirs are clothes, including the navy blue T-shirt I bought at the Rosa Parks Museum. It has a small drawing of her face on the right sleeve and on the front there’s one word followed by a period.

It simply says “No.”

Rosa Parks became famous for the moment in time when she’d had enough of racial segregation, injustice and violence. She said no. When I saw that shirt hanging on a wall in the museum gift shop I screamed “Yes!” I searched for my size and bought it.

Back at home in St. Paul, I’m wondering why that shirt speaks to my heart in such a profound way? 

I think it’s because it represents a response from a Black woman living at a time when America was at a breaking point. Much like I feel we are today. And the answer to the problem on that day on the bus for Rosa Parks, was a bold refusal to continue on the same path.

It takes courage to say no when it’s easier and safer to say yes.

What I saw in each of the men I spent four days with in Montgomery was a bold refusal to continue on the same path. 

Angela Davis' behind-the-scenes photos from Alabama

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Each brought curiosity to every site we visited. Each brought an understanding they have a lot to learn. Each sought a way to take something they learned in Montgomery back to Minneapolis and put it to work, taking law enforcement and community relations in a different direction.

History has shown us where racial segregation and abuse of power lead. My question is this: What will you say when presented with circumstances that don’t feel fair and equitable? 

What will you do when you are encouraged to go along to get along, even if those actions reinforce racism and division? Will you say “No”?

Angela Davis hosts MPR News with Angela Davis, a weekday talk show that airs at 9 a.m. She’s been a journalist for more than 30 years in the Twin Cities and across the country.

Correction (Feb. 10, 2025): An earlier version of this story misattributed a quote from Bill Doherty.

The Sunday after Donald Trump won a second term, Pastor Ben Boswell took to the pulpit at Myers Park Baptist, a liberal church in Charlotte, and delivered the sort of blunt, provocative sermon for which he is well known.

Boswell likened the moment to what he called the "gathering dark of Hitler's rule." He added that Trump's election would lead to the "crucifixion" of immigrant families as well as transgender and nonbinary people.

"But our faith also teaches us … that every crucifixion needs a witness," Boswell said. "The fight is not over, it's just beginning."

The congregation, including the board of deacons, the church's governing body, gave Boswell a standing ovation.

Several weeks later, the board met on Zoom. They voted 17-3 to ask Boswell to step down. NPR obtained the audio.

It provides a rare window into the debate within an organization when the tone of its social or political messaging clashes with its business model.

Conversations we rarely hear

Marcy McClanahan, then head of the board, said the first reason Boswell needed to go was plunging attendance. Myers Park had gone from average weekly attendance of about 350 when Boswell arrived in 2016 to about 150 last year.

"Ben has been given every chance to change his words and actions to appeal to a broader audience," McClanahan said, "but has not been successful in doing so."

Fellow Deacon Robert Dulin was more direct.

"We have got to put more butts in the seats, butts in the seats," he said.

In a statement later, Dulin said he personally loved what he called Boswell's "powerful prophetic preaching."

The problem, he said at the meeting, is that too many other parishioners didn't. Dulin said many people who had left the church in recent years had complained about the 44-year-old pastor's heavy focus on social and racial justice.

‘Indicted because I'm white’

Dulin paraphrased what he said he had heard over and over from those who had quit the parish: "I am tired of being indicted because I am white. I am tired of being banged over the head every week about immigrants and LGBTQ, and I just want to come to church and be encouraged."

Carol Pearsall, who is 73 and a longtime church member, said she heard the same thing from outgoing parishioners and knew what they meant. "I was ready for less guilt-trip and more love," said Pearsall, who added that she remains a fan of Boswell's and never considered leaving.

Asked if the pastor's removal was an attempt to save Myers Park, she responded: "Absolutely."

Boswell says the conflict at Myers Park is part of a much bigger national trend to roll back diversity, equity and inclusion programs. He thinks the country is in a pivotal moment, when “that work is coming with a cost, and people are getting tired and backing off.”

Nicholas Rhyne, who grew up in the church and is a Boswell supporter, says the divisions in Myers Park reflect those in the Democratic Party writ large. He's 30 and says people in his generation came of age during the global financial crisis, climate anxiety and the polarized politics of the past decade, and were excited and inspired by Boswell to make change. Meanwhile, he says, some older members of the congregation prefer to take a slower, more measured approach.

"There's a group of us who are younger and more passionate and maybe a tad more progressive who are fed up with just being told to wait, don't worry," said Rhyne. "There's definitely a generational divide."

‘Sacred cows make the best hamburgers’

McClanahan, the former head of the board of deacons, told NPR that Boswell was not pushed out over politics or his preaching. Instead, she said, the church needed to focus more on other areas of its strategic plan, including faith development, the church community and sustainability.

"Ben's an excellent preacher," she told NPR, "but there's more to leading a church than preaching."

For instance, some say Boswell focused too much on social justice and not enough on tending the flock.

Bob Thomason, a former chairman of the board of deacons, said most or all of the congregation supports social justice. "But for some people, being able to focus on social justice … would be a welcome luxury because they have alcoholic spouses," he said. "They have children that are addicted. They have cancer. They have these personal needs."

Thomason, who said he was speaking as a longtime church member, said Boswell wasn't great at the pastoral part of the job.

"We were basically taking care of ourselves as best we could," he said.

Boswell disagrees and says he supervised a staffer who was devoted to pastoral care full time.

During his nine years at Myers Park, Boswell says he pushed the church to confront what he called its whiteness. Several years ago at an anti-racism seminar, he said Myers Park needed to change its wedding policy, which had been described as "WASPy," and decolonize its interior space as part of what he called a "whiteness audit."

Boswell says he ran into resistance from congregants who, for instance, told him to take down Black Lives Matter signs at the church. Boswell persisted.

"I like to joke [that] churches have sacred cows," Boswell said during the anti-racism seminar. "Sacred cows make the best hamburgers."

Declining attendance and giving

But as people left Myers Park, their contributions left with them. Since 2020, the church budget has shrunk by nearly a quarter, according to McClanahan.

Declining giving and church attendance are a national phenomenon, but some on the board of deacons saw it as an existential threat.

"Ben needs to leave in order for our church to take a different direction and grow because we are dying on the vine," Dulin told his fellow deacons during the board meeting.

Myers Park is an overwhelmingly white church in a neighborhood where mansions can sell for up to $4 million. It has a proud civil rights history and wears its inclusivity on its red brick walls. One giant sign on the front of the church reads: "80 years of inclusivity, community, spirituality and justice." Another reads: "Open to all, now and forevermore."

In the board meeting, then-Deacon Allen Davis warned that getting rid of Boswell would make it difficult to sell that message.

"What will come out is that we've snatched the keys from the … minister who had been pushing us to confront whiteness to challenge racial justice in our community," said Davis, one of three deacons who resigned in protest after the vote.

McClanahan insisted to NPR that the church will continue to advance racial and social justice. "One person's leaving does not change that path at all," she said.

‘The church betrayed me’

Some congregants are skeptical. Bruce Griffin is a warehouse worker in Charlotte who joined the church more than five years ago. He says Boswell created a wonderful, welcoming community. Now, he's bitter.

"I feel the church betrayed me," said Griffin, standing outside the church during a meeting called to address the turmoil over Boswell's departure. He said the meeting was all business.

"There was no hugging," he said. "There was no fellowship."

When asked about the fact that some white congregants said they felt beaten down by Boswell's continued emphasis on social and racial justice, Griffin responded that as a Black man he felt beaten down every day.

Griffin said he planned to leave Myers Park.

Elizabeth Peterson, on the other hand, said she was attending for the first time in years. She said Boswell divided the church, which she said seemed more focused on people of color and LGBTQ+ folks than on white women in their 60s like her.

"I wished that he could have brought his energy for diversity and for change of the culture of the church and included us to come with him," said Peterson, who said she might return to Myers Park.

Boswell has heard this criticism before. He says when someone has been part of the dominant culture for so long, the focus and attention on anyone who's been marginalized feels like a slight.

He knows some people think he made a mistake by focusing so much on racial and social justice, but he said he'd do it again.

"My feeling is that as a progressive congregation, as a progressive pastor, our job right now is not to back away," Boswell said, "but to double down."

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