Giving Compass' Take:

• Greg Miller explains that Mapping Prejudice is using historical records to show why Minneapolis has the lowest rate of homeownership among African American households of any U.S. city.

• How can funders use this information to drive efforts to truly integrate Minneapolis and other cities? 

• Learn how local governments reinforce racial segregation. 

Before it was torn apart by freeway construction in the middle of the 20th century, the Near North neighborhood in Minneapolis was home to the city’s largest concentration of African American families. That wasn’t by accident: As far back as the early 1900s, racially restrictive covenants on property deeds prevented African Americans and other minorities from buying homes in many other areas throughout the city.

In 1948, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that such racial covenants were unenforceable. But the mark they made on America’s neighborhoods lived on: By excluding minorities from certain parts of a city and concentrating them elsewhere, these racist property clauses established enduring patterns. They were reinforced by redlining, a discriminatory home lending practice promulgated by real estate agents and federal housing programs in the 1930s; later, urban planning decisions on highways and other infrastructure projects followed the lines inscribed by decades-old covenants.

The effects still reverberate today: Despite its reputation for prosperity and progressive politics, Minneapolis now has the lowest rate of homeownership among African American households of any U.S. city.

Now, a group called Mapping Prejudice is uncovering these roots of the city’s racial disparities by documenting and mapping all of the old restrictive covenants in Minneapolis. “All that civic rhetoric about [Minneapolis] being a model metropolis at the cutting edge of great urban planning obscures some darker truths about the city,” said Kirsten Delegard, a Minneapolis historian and project co-founder.

Read the full article about segregation in Minneapolis by Greg Miller at CityLab.