The African American legacy of South Minneapolis

Millions of African Americans left Southern states from 1910 to 1970 in pursuit of new lives, industrial work, and to escape Jim Crow. Many of them moved to South Minneapolis, arriving by the 1930s during the Great Migration.

Restrictive housing covenants, redlining, and racist realtors pushed Black Americans into three distinct areas in Minnesota, including the south side of Minneapolis, between East Thirty-Fourth and Forty-Sixth Streets, and from Nicollet Avenue to Chicago Avenue, which was first populated by Swedes and Norwegians, according to MNopedia, an online encyclopedia of Minnesota history. 

The other two areas for Black residents were on the north side of Minneapolis and in Rondo, St. Paul.

In a state that systematically excluded Black Americans from housing, lending, and even restaurants, Black residents built parallel institutions in this mostly middle-class neighborhood: churches, newspapers, social clubs, and small businesses.

Greg McMoore’s family entered Minnesota in the 1860s. His third- or fourth-generation grandfather, James Wallace, killed an overseer in Virginia and escaped enslavement. Wallace came in contact with the Union Army’s Third Minnesota Infantry Regiment and settled in Hastings.

By 1912, the Black community in Hastings had dispersed. At that time, McMoore’s grandmother moved to South Minneapolis after the family’s AME church was set on fire. The family searched for another AME church and a community with more Black residents.

“Black folks at that time, we wanted to be around folks like us. That’s where we felt supported and secure,” McMoore said. “The Southside African American community, it’s always been a healthy community and a community where, in many ways, we took care of each other.”

The addition of I-35W in 1959 further segregated the Southside.

“Once that freeway went through it was thought, ‘Well, we’re going to make our own community, we’re going to make it work, we’re gonna build a community for ourselves,’ and that is what happened over the years,” McMoore said.

The Old Southside had schools, businesses such as Mr. Crown’s barbershop, Dreamland, the Minneapolis Spokesman-Recorder, and a bank, he said.

“We had everything there,” he said. “We really didn’t have to leave the community except for the world of work. When we would leave the community, there were a variety of different kinds of jobs, everything from running on the railroad to post office work, to bankers, business people, etcetera.”

The neighborhood’s first community center, Sabathani Community Center, was established in 1966 and has been a longstanding cornerstone in the community.

Bill English came to Minneapolis in 1959 after earning a degree in sociology at Eastern Michigan University. He began working at Hallie Q. Brown Community Center as a youth worker before being asked by Rev. Stanley King to help start Sabathani.

“We didn’t have a community center in South Minneapolis,” English said. “St. Paul had Hallie Q. Brown, North Minneapolis had Phyllis Wheatley.”

The center taught Black history to children and offered summer sex education programs, English said. There were activities in the gym and a place for teens at the Malcolm X Center.

English remembers the majority-Black community with many railroad workers and waitresses. “They made decent livings,” he said. “And they built their community.”

“The neighborhood changed further in the 1980s and the 2000s, when it was negatively impacted by rising crime, harsh economic conditions, and the crack cocaine epidemic,” MNopedia published. 

“The closing of the last local school, Central High School, in 1982, destroyed the neighborhood’s cohesiveness. All of the African American businesses closed except the Spokesman-Recorder.”

McMoore said some community members moved away after this. “By the 1990s, it was a rough neighborhood to live in,” he said.

Since then, Black-owned businesses have not resurged. There hasn’t been a lot of African American investment, he said, aside from a few businesses.

“It seems as though the investments have been made more on the north side because the African American population is more dense there; it’s really concentrated. One of the pieces of being African American living on the south side is that South Minneapolis is a big area.”

Initially arriving as seasonal laborers from Mexico and Texas, early Latino families in Minnesota worked as migrant farm workers and later established lasting communities across St. Paul’s West Side and East Side, throughout Minneapolis, and in Inver Grove Heights, in the 1920s. In the late 1990s, English said he began to see the Hispanic population increase in the historically Black neighborhood.

English said he would like to see more collaboration between the Hispanic and African American communities in South Minneapolis, including through organizations and the use of Sabathani’s facilities. “We tell them we will collaborate with you on any issues you want to collaborate with us on,” English said. 

“So we don’t divorce you, but we recognize you want to lead your own organizations, and nothing is wrong with that because we insist on doing that for ours.”

McMoore noted an influx of young white families moving into the neighborhood as well. Every group lives in a bubble, similar to other places, he said.

Looking ahead, English said he believes the area will become increasingly diverse. “It’s going to have to be a diverse community. We’re just going to have to learn to collaborate and work together. We have different cultures, but we value each other’s culture.”

McMoore said he has been disheartened by the current state of community life. He believes the area needs more businesses, education, churches, and participation in these entities.

“If there was an investment made in the neighborhood we might have a chance, but folks worldwide in this country, what they know about our neighborhood is George Floyd and now ICE coming here and murdering people.”

He added that outsiders often dictate what the community needs, even though they never lived there. “There’s still the flavor that this is where a healthy, prosperous group of Black folks lived, and concentrated, and so it’s almost as though it’s, ‘Can we get back to that in some way, shape or form?’”

Remembering the past, McMoore said everyone lived together and supported each other. “We just don’t have that anymore,” he said. 

“Though you cannot go back and recreate everything that was African American in this neighborhood, one should be able to take those lessons and use that model to bring other groups of people into it, because it worked.”

Damenica Ellis welcomes reader responses at dellis@spokesman-recorder.com.