Historian traces police brutality in Minneapolis back to 1800s
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The murder of George Floyd wasn’t an anomaly. That’s the contention of a University of St. Thomas professor who has studied the history of policing in Minneapolis.
“A lot of people labor under the assumption that what happened to George Floyd was an anomaly. But for the Black community in particular, this is the echo of decades — generations — of Black people complaining about this type of disproportionate treatment,” said St. Thomas history professor Yohuru Williams on Tuesday’s Morning Edition.
Long before Floyd, there was Ophelia Rice, a Black woman violently assaulted by a white police officer named Thomas Britt in Minneapolis in 1899.
“The case of Mrs. Ophelia Rice will be watched with interest by the colored citizens of this city,” stated an October 1899 article from the Afro-American Advance.
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The fallout from the assault led to a court case against Britt that was ultimately won by Rice. But the case is a reminder of the deep history of police brutality in the city, Williams said.
Williams is the founding director of the Racial Justice Initiative at University of St. Thomas in St. Paul. His work has appeared nationally and been published in the “Journal of Civil and Human Rights.”
He said policing as an institution is rooted in racial injustice.
“We sometimes forget that the Minneapolis police force was formed in 1868 in the aftermath of the Civil War,” Williams said. “Policing, by its very nature, was all about dealing with and policing the color line.”
He said that public safety for all is possible, but not without a unified effort.
“I think part of our challenge as Americans has been this desire for a tragedy with a happy ending,” he said. “We want that chapter to end with some piece of legislation, some election, some elevation of some person who’s supposed to do the work and to lead us into the Promised Land when, in fact, as a community, we have to be committed — in ways that are that are substantive and tangible — to staying involved in the process of ensuring that public safety is a responsibility that we all have.” he said.
Williams discussed the history of Minneapolis policing with Morning Edition host Cathy Wurzer.
To hear the conversation, click the player above. The transcript below has been lightly edited for clarity.
You say history doesn’t repeat, it echoes. What echoes did you see when you saw Darnella Frazier’s video of George Floyd’s murder?
The echo for me was this long history of non-accountability, a lack of accountability in terms of policing in communities of color, in the Twin Cities and beyond. A lot of people labor under the assumption that what happened to George Floyd was an anomaly. But for the Black community in particular, this is the echo of decades — generations — of Black people complaining about this type of disproportionate treatment.
With George Floyd, you couldn’t turn away from it because you had this nine-plus minutes of footage of Derek Chauvin engaged in this behavior, which, up until that point, a lot of times, was simply dismissed.
For me, in that moment, it was the echoes, the indictment, the memory of not only Jamar Clark, but Tycel Nelson in 1990s or Weiss and Smalley in 1989; going back to the case of a woman named Ophelia Rice in 1900s.
There was a long shadow of inequality and disproportionate treatment of Black people that resonates in a way that touches that wound.
Why has there been such an inability to deal with this continuing problem in city hall?
I think part of the inability to deal with the issue comes from the notion of reform itself. And this is deeper than just systemic problems within the police department.
We sometimes forget that the Minneapolis police force was formed in 1868 in the aftermath of the Civil War. Policing, by its very nature, was all about dealing with and policing the color line. So in that sense, when we talk about reform, you’d have to talk about reimagining public safety.
One that would begin with the kind of baked-in, clear-eyed perspective that you can’t bring the legacy of that racialized policing into this re-imagination of public safety.
How healing is it to try to recover some of the history?
Sometimes when people think about the history, they think that we're simply going back in search of the wound.
There are also these bright spots where there is the chance, the possibility for real change, and those moments are often thwarted. We saw that, for example, under Hubert Humphrey, when he was mayor of Minneapolis, instituting a really ambitious program to not only depoliticize the police, but deal with race relations within the Minneapolis Police Department and to really address some of the concerns of the Black community.
Often in moments like this, what we see are backlash against that work, and that work kind of disappear, dissipating under either political pressure or a lack of will. And the other thing that we can glean from the history that’s really important is that this is the work of community, not the work of individuals.
I think part of our challenge as Americans has been this desire for a tragedy with a happy ending. We want to write the final chapter. We want that chapter to end with some piece of legislation, some election, some elevation of some person who’s supposed to do the work and to lead us into the Promised Land when, in fact, as a community, we have to be committed — in ways that are that are substantive and tangible — to staying involved in the process of ensuring that public safety is a responsibility that we all have.
Has disillusionment been creeping in since Floyd’s death?
I think there’s been disillusionment, disappointment and backlash that have worked in concert to really diminish the work in ways that are troubling to me. While I’m encouraged, for example, by what I see happening in the department, and encouraged by the work of the Minnesota Department of Human Rights and other organizations, I think there’s also been people who want to go back to this idea that we need tougher policing.
So the argument goes: rising crime rates higher, carjackings, the murder rate creeping up, that people want the law-and-order response, which historically has led to swagger/thumper mentality that Minneapolis became known for in the 1980s.
Which, of course, George Floyd’s murder kind of reawakened for the nation as a whole, this idea that, you know, in order to be tough on crime, you need tough cops, and those cops need to be able to, you know, bust heads and take numbers. And what that leads to, or what that encourages, is the very brutality that we saw visited on George Floyd’s body.
