Project finds whites-only history in 7 Mankato neighborhoods (and 1 cemetery)

Feb. 18—The rule barring sales to "anyone except a member of the Caucasian Race" wasn't from an Alabama lunch counter.

And it wasn't 150 years ago when the words — "No persons of any race other than the white race shall use or occupy any building or lot... " — were attached to multiple homes in a particular subdivision.

Instead, it was seven residential areas (and one cemetery) in Mankato. And the racial restrictions were imposed as recently as the 1950s. The people creating and purchasing homes in the whites-only subdivisions were the parents and grandparents of people living in Mankato today.

And many of the racial restrictions are still attached to the properties, even if they are no longer legal or enforceable.

It was a shock to the 180 college and high school students who did the research for MSU history instructor Angela Jill Cooley's "Mapping Mankato" project. The lessons learned in most K-12 schools is that segregation and Jim Crow laws were something that happened in the former Confederate states, said history major Olivia Johnson, who joined Cooley in a public presentation on the project at the Blue Earth County Historical Society Saturday.

"We're taught the North was a safe place, that everybody was welcome here, that it didn't happen in Blue Earth County," Johnson said.

But it did, starting in the 1920s but mostly in the 1940s and early 1950s.

After three semesters of poring through all of Mankato's property records, the project has identified restrictive covenants in all or part of seven neighborhoods.

There's Glencrest (a small subdivision between Main Street and Glenwood Avenue); Oak Knoll (in west Mankato, including homes on Baker Avenue, Shadywood Avenue and Ridgewood Street); Oaklawn (a subdivision west of the hospital that includes homes on Main and Mulberry streets); Dellview Heights (a small hilltop neighborhood across Main Street from Alexander Park); Scheurer's Knollcrest (just north of the Bethany Lutheran College campus, mostly along Woodshire Drive and Belleview Avenue); Sunset View Addition (west Mankato, including Sunset Boulevard, Eginton Road and Ridgewood); and Sumner Hills (a hilltop cul de sac near Lincoln Park).

And for the Mankatoans who felt strongest about keeping non-whites at a distance, there was even the prospect of eternal segregation. Grandview Memorial Park, now known as Woodland Hills Memorial Park Cemetery and located just below the Skyline hill, the burial plots were once restricted to white bodies.

That was an unexpected development even for Cooley.

"I'm a Southerner. I come from Alabama," said Cooley, adding that there's a long history of segregated cemeteries there. "I was really surprised to find one in Mankato."

Johnson said the racial restrictions on the graves were virtually identical to the ones on the homes, so much so that the students initially figured the properties were residential.

"We didn't really know it was a cemetery until we looked it up," she said.

The research was fascinating enough to persuade Johnson that she wants to be a historian, enough to get students in Cooley's "History in Black and White" class to show up 20, 30, even 45 minutes before the scheduled starting time each day to begin digging into the records.

"And if you know college students ...," Johnson said to laughter from the full house attending the presentation.

The project was initiated following another presentation by the co-founder of the University of Minnesota's "Mapping Prejudice Project," which focused on mapping racial covenants in Hennepin County. Cooley worked with the Greater Mankato Diversity Council, MSU's Office of Diversity and Inclusion and the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences to kick off a similar effort in Mankato.

Over three semesters, seven MSU classes — aided by East High School's Ethnic Studies class — did the bulk of the research. Along with history classes, students in education and communications classes participated. Johnson said some of those past participants still approach her in the MSU hallways looking for updates.

While the students did most of their work on digitized property records, some of those electronic records were incomplete. In those cases, historic paper-based deeds were checked with the help of community volunteers at the Blue Earth County Government Center.

In some cases the race restrictions on who could purchase or live in a house were attached to the deed. In other cases, it was filed separately for a subdivision — similar to the official and binding rules of a neighborhood association.

In 1948, a U.S. Supreme Court ruling made racial covenants unenforceable in court. But they continued to be added in new subdivisions, including in Mankato.

"These laws were regulated more by personal relationships," Cooley said, describing it as white people trusting their white neighbors to follow the rules when selling.

Minnesota made it illegal in 1953 to put racial restrictions in a property record, and it was prohibited nationwide in 1968.

The Mapping Mankato project is still working to better understand why some subdivision developers and property owners were so motivated to exclude prospective neighbors by race and ethnicity.

"There's a lot of work we need to do to contextualize the information," Cooley said.

The research has indicated that Glen S. Dixson, developer of the Oak Knoll subdivision in the 1920s, came to Mankato from the South. But the students so far have not learned much about him and the attitudes that might have prompted him to make the racial covenants a common feature of his subdivisions.

An Oak Knoll resident in the audience Saturday said he found newspaper ads from 1922 that included the "whites only" restriction when lots were being sold — an indication that marketing was part of the motivation for the racism.

Cooley, who has looked closely at Sumner Hills, said it appears classism joined racism in spurring some of the restrictive covenants.

Developed by Rex Hill and Sumner Carlstrom, there were just five property owners when the small subdivision was formed in 1946. The Caucasian-only racial restriction on property ownership was just one of 10 placed on Sumner Hills properties. Others prohibited animals other than dogs, cats and horses; banned low-quality structures such as sheds; required large yards; prohibited apartments; and required a review of building plans to ensure that neighbors' views wouldn't be impeded.

Cooley noted that the rules, while barring non-white ownership, included an exception allowing certain non-white people to live in Sumner Hills. Servants could be of any race.

"It's a race-based covenant, but it's class-based, too," she said.

Audience members, during the question and answer portion of Saturday's presentation, pointed out that Mankato's nonwhite population was minuscule in the first half of the 20th century. So with or without restrictive covenants, there was virtually no chance a person of color would be bidding on a home.

"Even though we don't have Blacks here, we don't want 'em here," summarized audience member and former MSU ethnic studies instructor Dalton Crayton.

Crayton praised Cooley and Johnson for "a beautiful presentation." And although frequent attendees of the presentations at the History Center were thrilled by the turnout — the 50 chairs were filled and about 10 more were added as more attendees arrived — Crayton said he wished the crowd would have been overflowing into the hallway.

"I'd love for that to happen on March 14," Cooley said of an even more comprehensive panel discussion scheduled for next month.

The event, free and open to the public, is to run from 5-7:30 p.m. at MSU's Ostrander Auditorium.