The thing I most appreciate about Chad Montrie’s book, Whiteness in Plain View, out last year from the Minnesota Historical Society Press, is its broad scope. Too often when discussing Minnesotan racism, we focus only on the core cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, which have long been home to the majority of the state’s people of color.
That’s a fine and necessary step, but Montrie’s book casts a welcome wider net. He includes chapters detailing racism in Austin, Duluth, and the Twin Cities suburbs of Bloomington and Edina, expanding the scope of the conversation to include places where people of color rarely live, in addition to where they do. Montrie calls out these places around the state, including most of the suburban metro, as cities predicated on racial exclusion.
To me, Montrie’s chapter on Edina was the most eye-opening. The chapter opens with a photo of a minstrel competition that took place at the Edina High School in the 1950s, apparently a regular event since the 1930s. The image of a stage full of children dressed in blackface is shocking, and it forms the preface for Montrie’s story of how, as it grew, the city of Edina transformed from a diverse, multi-racial place into an all-white, wealthy suburb.
Most of Montrie’s story details the estrangement and gradual departure of long-established Black families from Edina; people who had owned farmland in what was then a small, rural community. That diversity changed pretty quickly as Edina grew, and as golf courses and culs-de-sac appeared, Edina became synonymous with exclusivity.
“We can make an argument for saying that the government has to do something to undo racial exclusion,” Montrie said during his book launch earlier this year at the Edina Historical Society. “(Without that), we run a risk of overlooking the extent to which policy and law reflected and sustained and reinforced popular white will. And the ways in which racial exclusion sometimes was done in an extralegal way.”
By now we should be familiar with the list of usual suspects, tools of urban segregation: racial covenants, urban renewals, freeway construction, discrimination and Montrie’s “extralegal” group violence. For example, Montrie tells the story of the Taylors, an African-American family that built a home in Edina’s Morningside neighborhood around 1960. After overcoming a great deal of institutional and personal racism, they eventually moved into Morningside, and enrolled their kids in Edina schools.
But the Taylors were the exception that proved the rule, and remained the only Black family in their community for over 15 years. According to Montrie’s work, it was par for the course for most U.S. suburbs.
“The ghosts of racial exclusion are all around us,” Montrie said. “This doesn’t just happen in Edina or in Morningside or in Minnesota. This book is just one sort of puzzle piece in something larger that we need to do for national reckoning.”
Pushing for change
Things might be starting to change, even in Edina. For years, there’s been a push to create more opportunity and diversity in the affluent suburb. In part inspired by Montrie’s work and the work of groups — especially the Mapping Prejudice project — which have been shining a light on the history of racial exclusion in the Twin Cities’ affluent ‘burbs, grassroots groups and city leaders have been trying to push Edina to embrace affordable housing
“We had very stiff opposition,” said Hope Melton, a retired urban planner who co-founded the group Edina Neighbors for Affordable Housing in 2017. “It was the same folks who really controlled the city’s agenda for many years. But Edina was changing and it was a very propitious time to start.”
Melton met her first cohort of housing advocates during the 2016 Bernie Sanders campaign, after which they began looking for ways to push for equity at the local level. Since then, it’s been an uphill battle to get affordable housing into the agenda of a city which has long been predicated on its opposite.
But at least people are aware of the problem these days, and there’s a growing movement in Edina, both at the grassroots and in City Hall, to try and fix its longstanding lack of housing opportunity.
“One of the first things we did was a lot of work educating the city about the need for affordable housing,” Melton said. “We try to help people understand why there’s a need, and who needs it, and why it’s difficult to create. We’re trying to dispel the old stereotypical notion of what affordable housing is.”
With the help of advocates like Melton and her colleagues, Edina completed a study two years ago that outlines the need and barriers to building affordable housing in the city of 50,000 people. The report details the lack of affordable housing in the city, a place where almost 90% of residential land is restricted to single-family housing. The list of hurdles includes the lack of public financing, regulatory hurdles and an overly restrictive zoning code.
“It’s very tough,” Melton said. “Financing is tough, and a big part of that is the single-family zoning which keeps the land scarce and expensive. We tried to build a couple of modest homes in area that had been a city park, and we lost that one. Neighborhood opposition was pretty stiff. But on the whole, the city’s made tremendous progress.”
For example, Edina adopted an inclusionary zoning policy in 2020, which will make it easier to incentivize or fund affordable housing for construction projects going forward. As Melton points out, the city has added around 300 new units of income-restricted affordable housing in the past few years.
That number is far short of the need. The Metropolitan Council suggests Edina should build 1,800 new income-controlled homes by 2030, leaving the city far short of that goal. The city has been running an education campaign aimed at building support for needed changes and funding.
Still, given the historical context described in Montrie’s book, even small progress marks a large change from previous generations. Perhaps that’s why folks from the Edina Neighbors for Affordable Housing seem so optimistic.
“Edina’s changed and changing for the better,” Melton assured me. “Back in 2015, we did a month’s long visioning process. We very clearly wanted to be an open and welcoming community. We have a ways to go, but the city has changed a lot.”
60 Minutes this past Sunday had an interesting segment about a Black family that bought a house in rural Virginia mostly as a vacation retreat for a large extended family. Turns out it was once the house for a large plantation and outback was a dilapidated shed that was slave quarters. And further research showed that it was their family that occupied the slave quarters. In the interview the Black guy that bought it is with the White guy who sold it after it being in his family for over 100 years. The Black guy said he put the offer in, but thought he had no chance because of his skin color (in 2020). The White guy selling it expressed genuine surprise that he would reject an offer for that reason.
The racial covenants are long gone and illegal. Today, Edina is full of rich White guys and rich Black guys. As the map shows, the current problem is housing availability for disparate incomes. Maybe two articles, an historical piece on Edina Morningside (drive around, there are some cool, old, expensive houses occupied by rich White people) and another on the issues when a community has isolated itself from any but the wealthiest. Putting the two together muddles things up a little.
I guess my point is that if you are a rich Black guy, Edina welcomes you, a poor White guy, not so much.
Maybe historians focus on the past, but what is happening in Edina today? The superintendent of schools is a Black woman, one of five city council members is a Black man, a park was recently remained by one of earliest families – also Black – who were really well respected in the early days. If you go in with a historical checklist for common racist behavior, easy to miss this. And probably the most important thing is how diverse Edina’s population has become since the 1950. A chart with Census data would show this.
Not really sure what the commenter above is talking about when it comes to Edina being home to black people. Edina has a black population of 2.7% while the metro’s demographics is 8.6% black. Edina is extremely segregated. I live in a different city near the Edina border and walk a formerly redlined neighborhood which still has white legacy money flowing from generation to generation.
Star Tribune covers the mansions sold in this neighborhood as if the system wasn’t rigged against anybody who wasn’t white.
I neglected to mention the Edina ABC program, operating since 1972 – 50 years.
http://www.edinaabc.org/about-us.html
Currently 30% of Edina students are racial minorities, equally divided between Asian, Black, Hispanic and other or mixed race.
https://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/minnesota/districts/edina-public-school-district/edina-senior-high-school-10781
There are dozens of Black millionaires living in this area. I wonder how many live in North Oaks.
Edina was also quite anti Semitic. I think Interlochen country club kept Jews out into the 1970’s for instance. And it should be mentioned that Edina has made news with it’s attempts to scrub it’s racism and anti Semitism from it’s history.
All people, by law, have been able to live anywhere they like since 1964. With zoning set for single family units, large, low income housing units are not likely to find much traction there. The folks that live there (I doubt they are closet racist, white supremacists) vote for city Council members that are concerned about house values.
Joe, gentleman’s agreements, bank redlining, realtor discrimination, etc. kept/keep racist discrimination and de facto covenants alive well into the 1990’s and even today. This did NOT all end in the 60’s
The Fair Housing Act was not signed until 1968 (I know you’re a stickler for accuracy about these things).
Zoning ordinances and master plans can be changed, especially when they appear to have the effect of perpetuating old de facto patterns of discrimination.
Maybe Edina became what it is due to the old real estate saying: location, location, location. Convenient to the airport, the Bloomington strip, highways running both north-south and east-west. One of the closest suburbs to downtown Minneapolis. Beautiful rolling land with lakes and ponds and lots of trees. And just out from the most desirable part of residential Minneapolis.
That’s the reason. Don’t overthink this.
Restrictive covenants had nothing to do with it, right?
Membership in Interlachen is regional, it happens to be located in Edina. Almost all country clubs black=balled Catholics and Jews into the 50s and 60s. It was a major reason we now have the Hillcrest and Oak Ridge clubs.
Alan, nobody said anti Semitism or racism were/are exclusive to Edina. However Edina was clearly more anti Semitic than Saint Louis Park for instance.
Cites please.
How is Alaska doing with Blacks? Or Hispanics? Or Southeast Asians? Maybe the people who don’t live in Edina DON”T WANT TO LIVE IN EDINA!
Edina is a city filled with rich liberals who don’t want poor people living anywhere near them. Not an usual scenario at all.
If anyone wonders why anti Semitism and racism persist in this country all they have to do is look at the comments about an article like this. The so-called self declared purveyors conservative “truths” and “values” always come out of the woodwork to defend or deny racism and discrimination whenever the subject arises. Here we’re told that documented racism and discrimination either never REALLY existed (i.e. blacks didn’t live in Edina because they didn’t want to) or that discrimination ended for some reason in the 1060’s, or that discrimination in Edina is/was acceptable because there is/was discrimination elsewhere. Whatever.
Racism, anti Semitism, discrimination, are real and documented historical AND contemporary facts of American life, and anyone who denies that these prejudices have produced ongoing legacies or effects is simply in denial. That denial would be a mere curiosity were it not for the fact that racism and anti Semitism have actually gained MORE momentum during the recent conservative power surge wherein Nazis, Neo-Nazis, and Clansmen have increased their attacks on everything from Synagogues and Mosques to the nation’s capital. To deny is to promote and we’ve seen a significant increase in promotion over the decades.
“AND contemporary facts of American life”
And back to the article, in the case of Edina MN do we have a current instance of housing discrimination that can be reported on? That would be known as NEWS.
Otherwise it is just speculation based on an assumption, maybe a true speculation, but that would just be a debate game.
Sure Edward, all traces of racism, discrimination, and prejudice have completely disappeared from contemporary American life. It’s been what? Almost two years since the last riot, and a few days at least since a unarmed black man was shot in his bed or couch. Likewise it’s been a day or two since a mosque or synagogue was vandalized. And anyways… there’s no such thing as historical legacies right? So whatever happened in Edina in the past can’t POSSIBLY be having any lingering effects today right?
When “conservatives” try to argue that history is irrelevant, you know you’re in the presence of pseudo conservatives.
It’s so easy to deny the existence of something that doesn’t happen to you, especially if you’re white and/or male. Don’t deny other people’s lived experience.