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Over the years MPR News Presents has featured several speakers from the Minnesota Historical Society's “History Forum,” providing context on major news items. 

For the 2021 season, Miami University history professor Steve Conn spoke about the rural-urban divide in America. 

He points out that “75 to 80 percent of us live in metropolitan regions of a half million people or more. We’re a nation of urbanites, and yet we are filled with people who don’t like cities very much at all, and certainly not our own cities.”

The Electoral College, Conn says, was established to “privilege rural voters and give them a greater voice in the national system.” In the U.S. Senate, Conn calls this “the tyranny of Wyoming.”

Many of the nation’s founders, especially Thomas Jefferson, were deeply suspicious of cities. And Conn says this is “baked into our constitutional system and baked in as well to our cultural attitudes… This anti-urban attitude runs deep in the culture and the politics through the 19th century.”

The rural-urban divide is one of the nation's oldest political rifts. The result has been an ever-widening debate over who — urban or rural — is a “real American.”

When many waves of immigrants were concentrated in cities, it provoked reactions to “those people” and a questioning of what America really is, Conn said. 

The 2021 season of the History Forum examines the many diverse and divergent currents that have long shaped the United States and challenged its motto "e pluribus unum."

Danielle Dart of the Minnesota Historical Society makes the introduction.

Use the audio player above to listen to the program.

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Steve Conn of Miami University speaks at the Minnesota Historical Society’s “History Forum” about the urban-rural divide in America, throughout history. 

MNHS History Forum: Steve Conn on the rural-urban divide in American history

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