MPS hosts the “Separate Not Equal” Hale-Field exhibit  

The Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) district is hosting the “Separate Not Equal: The Hale-Field Pairing” exhibit from the Hennepin History Museum (HHM) at its offices on West Broadway. With the recent Supreme Court decision on affirmative action, the exhibit, created by HHM curator Alyssa Thiede along with members of the Hale and Field school communities, is even more timely as it details the desegregation of the two schools in 1971. 

Thiede says HHM has been hosting the exhibit for roughly a year and had planned to take it down soon. As the museum did not have a permanent place to keep it, it would have been disposed of had no other organizations stepped up to host it. MPS Interim Superintendent Rochelle Cox said that when she heard the exhibit was looking for a new sponsor, she immediately knew that MPS would be a good home for the exhibit.  

“It’s just so important to understand the past to really disrupt what is happening now and in the future,” Cox said. “That’s why it’s so important for us to have this and our staff, our families, our communities to be a part of understanding it.”

The exhibit details the history of the Hale-Field pairing, where the two South Minneapolis neighborhood schools were desegregated. Both schools had served kindergarten through sixth grade prior to being paired. 

Hale’s student body was 99 percent White, while Field’s student body was 60 percent students of color. After the two schools were paired, Hale served all students, regardless of race, from kindergarten to third grade, and Field served all students from fourth to sixth grade. The pairing involved the transfer of older students from Hale to Field, and young students at Field were sent to Hale.

In response to Booker v. Special School Dist. No. 1, a federal lawsuit brought by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) against the state of Minnesota to desegregate schools, the pairing was a pre-emptive move by MPS in anticipation of the state losing the lawsuit. The lawsuit was settled in 1972, and put the state’s desegregation efforts under federal supervision, even though the Hale-Field pairing occurred a year prior to the Booker settlement. 

“There was all this bussing, and they had to diversify staff, essentially because what they had done was too little too late,” Thiede said.

As part of the exhibit, MPS also hosted a panel on the pairing of the two schools on June 21, which included Thiede, Mike Andrews, who taught at Field during the pairing, and three former students who went to Hale or Field during the pairing—Carole Franson, Francis Tucker and Monica Lash.

Derek Francis, executive director of equity and school climate at MPS, co-moderated the panel with MPS’ Lori Ledoux, district arts program facilitator. Francis played a key role in bringing the exhibit to MPS.

“[I] wanted to share the history of some of the practices that are going on here and how we need to correct it and work towards making schools more inclusive,” Francis said.

Lash said there was a difference she noticed “right away” going from Field to Hale. She noted that, unlike Field, Hale “felt like being in a castle.” Hale had large bathrooms with more than one stall and classrooms with carpeted floors.

“I remember getting to Hale and realizing right away what a different place it was compared to where I was,” Lash said. “It was welcoming, the teachers were welcoming. The one thing I remember is it was just so big compared to [Field].”

Franson was a fifth grader and had already been attending Field when the pairing happened. She said she recalls parents from both Hale and Field being apprehensive about the pairing. Thiede said about 70 percent of White parents at Hale opposed the merger.

“It wasn’t an issue for us [kids], whereas the parents were putting up the barriers more,” Franson said.

Francis Tucker was in fourth grade when the pairing happened and ended up attending Field for all seven years of elementary school. He said he and his friends did not play with White children much before the pairing, but that the “color thing was thrown out the window” after the pairing and children of all races started mingling, even outside of school hours.

Tucker said a group of White boys from school taught him how to fish with a net at Lake Nokomis. In exchange, Francis and several Black friends introduced their newfound White friends to many of their favorite hangouts.

Thiede said racial violence was a concern throughout the community on the opening day of the pairing, but that the first day went off without a hitch.

“It went beautifully, just great,” Field principal Bradley Bentson told the Minneapolis Tribune the day after the pairing. “We’ve had almost no problems. The only things wrong were a kid not finding his room or a parent not knowing where the bus stop was.”

The “Separate Not Equal: The Hale-Field Pairing” exhibit will be available for viewing at the MPS’s district offices, the Davis Center, on Broadway through the summer. The exhibit will begin rotating between Hale Elementary School and Field Elementary School when the school year begins.