Updating the ongoing struggle
First of two parts
Since African Americans began migrating mainly from the South to Minnesota as newly freed slaves, they have been fighting to obtain equal rights. That fight continues today through everyday people addressing racism and discrimination in their jobs, sharing the history of the struggle, and community activism.
Buster Cooper and Yousef Mgeni have been on the front lines for several years in St. Cloud and St. Paul respectively. Their work has made a lasting impact on the communities they served.
Mgeni and St. Paul
Yusef Mgeni answered St. Paul NAACP’s emails and voicemails during his retirement. “Generally, [residents] contact us when they are at their wit’s end,” he says. “They are going to get evicted; their car is getting repossessed… [or] there is a warrant out for them.”
The NAACP does not have lawyers or other professional service providers on staff. Instead, it refers callers to pro bono legal, housing and education services, among others.
“[We] assist in navigating the system, either filing complaints with the EEOC, with the state or local human rights department, or obtaining legal counsel,” says Mgeni. In addition, the Minneapolis NAACP offers expungement workshops and St. Paul offers homeownership workshops.
Mgeni’s connection with the organization began before his birth. It was established in Minnesota in 1911 by Fredrick Lamar McGhee, the first African American lawyer in Minnesota and Mgeni’s great-uncle.
At St. Peter Claver Catholic School where he attended, Mgeni says the NAACP was as relevant to the Black nuns who taught there as the Ten Commandments. Student learning wasn’t limited to the NAACP’s work on Brown vs. the Board of Education; it included their fight to gain equal pay for Black teachers.
When “Birth of a Nation” was shown in the Twin Cities in 1915, the St. Paul and Minneapolis NAACP picketed in front of the theater. When Blacks were not allowed to eat at lunch counters, and department stores treated Black shoppers differently than whites, the NAACP marched outside the establishments.
In the 1960s, the NAACP held its national convention in St. Paul. At 17, former St. Paul Mayor Debbie Montgomery was on the national youth board. “She told me if I didn’t buy a membership … she was going to whip my butt,” says Mgeni. “I bought a membership for myself, and I bought one for my brother, too.”
Longtime NAACP president and MSR columnist Matt Little was a friend of Mgeni’s. As a journalist, Mgeni would call Little and other NAACP leaders to identify issues relevant to the Black community and write about them in local newspapers.
“I had to keep community-based organizations at arms-length because I was covering them,” he says. “I was holding them accountable.”
Cooper and St. Cloud
Meryl “Buster” Cooper moved to St. Cloud in 1986 after accepting a job at St. Cloud State University. He lived there until 2005 and says the racism the city currently struggles with is the result of its long history of racism.
Sylvanus B. Lowry, whose father was a Kentucky slave owner and Presbyterian minister, moved up the Mississippi River along with Winnebago people being forcibly removed by the state of Iowa. In 1855 the family settled in St. Cloud.
Several Southern families who vacationed in St. Cloud were slave owners. Lowry began the town’s pro-slavery newspaper, The Union. Lowry was elected to the Minnesota Territorial Council and later was voted council president advocating for slavery when most Minnesotans were opposed because of the economic competition.
He was elected to the State Senate in 1862. Christopher Lehman, a Black faculty member at St. Cloud State, detailed the city’s history in his published work.
The year before Cooper arrived, the St. Cloud Daily Times published “Minority recruitment unpopular” on April 15, 1985. It detailed the influx of the immigrant population into a town where hegemony was preferred.
The years that followed the growth in its immigrant population included several racist acts by community members. For instance, a Somali student was held for three hours in his apartment and beaten: “Incident of racial harassment leads to conviction of two St. Cloud residents,” University Chronicle, February 20, 1987.
The immigrant populations of both Somalis and Hmong residents continued to grow through the 1990s. “There was something like 40,000 Somali [immigrants] allowed to come to Minnesota,” Cooper says. “Two to three thousand probably ended up in St. Cloud.”
Cooper and his colleague Michael Davis felt they needed to warn prospective students about the racism they could experience if they attended the university.
“We decided we would send letters to the PTA groups, asking them to share the information we sent,” he explained. Using headlines from various publications, they informed students and their families of racism through news articles. “We feel we saved some people heartache and possible trouble.”
St. Paul NAACP today
After the murder of George Floyd, a defund-the-police movement reflected the lack of trust in the city’s police department by many of its residents. Minneapolis City Council members and the police union began negotiations in September of 2023 for a new contract that wasn’t finalized until July of this year.
A covenant between the police and the St. Paul community was established in 2001. In the 10 years before George Floyd was killed, the city of Minneapolis spent $70 million on excessive force complaints. In that same period, St. Paul spent less than $3 million.
St. Paul’s covenant was established by the St. Paul NAACP. Mgeni says the organization is as relevant now as it was in the past. “The [challenges] we face are much more daunting, sophisticated, [and] far-reaching.
“Our kids can’t even afford to buy their parents’ houses,” he explains. “If you don’t have an advanced degree, you’re working at Super American or Amazon.
“Look at all the people who worked in the service industry who died during the Covid epidemic. Those were mostly low-income, marginally educated poor people. People who couldn’t afford to take two years off or work virtually from home.”
Since its inception, people across religious and cultural organizations have maintained the NAACP’s relevance. “[Volunteers] were very comfortable going out and securing resources, assistance, or legal help from some of the pillars of the business, legal and public policy communities,” says Mgeni. “And because of that the NAACP has been respected and trusted.”
St. Cloud today
By 2007, according to the FBI, St. Cloud topped the state in race-based hate crimes: “Rapes occur three times that of the nation; St. Cloud Times, February 18, 2007. In 2022 the Star Tribune’s “Code Red for Enrollment” examined the 37 Minnesota State school system’s enrollment gains and losses.
The article helps Cooper better understand how racism has affected the city’s economy. It cites that St. Cloud State University lost 47.06% of enrollment from 2010 to 2021. By comparison, Mankato State University lost about 6%.
In the article, outgoing President Robin Wacker gave four reasons for the loss: lower birth rates, lower high school graduations, national economic downturns, and the effects of Covid-19.
However, “The community and the university are paying a hell of a price for their racism,” says Cooper. He hopes his efforts helped St. Cloud to acknowledge its racism. At the very least, he hopes he has helped prospective students.
“The number of students they lost in some ways reflects a cause-and-effect situation,” he says. “The cause is racism. The effect is [students] boycotting, avoiding, leaving, fleeing the place. That is costing them a lot of money.”
Vickie Evans-Nash welcomes reader responses to vnash@spokesman-recorder.com.