History 21 The Podcast - 4.11 Mapping Prejudice

Before 1968, contractors and landowners deliberately wrote racial covenants and clauses into some property deeds to keep anyone "other than the caucasian race" from buying or occupying homes. Rebecca Gillette talks about the history of these racial covenants and their work at Mapping Prejudice to find and identify them among millions of pages of documents, including in Anoka County.

This is a portion of a program given at the ACHS Annual Meeting, May 19, 2024.

Host Rebecca Desens, ACHS Director, and Sara Given, ACHS Volunteer Coordinator.

Discrimination shaped our landscape

For several years, the Anoka County Historical Society had an exhibit called, “Farms to Flamingos: Building a Mid-Century Modern County.” This display showcased the post-WWII housing boom that created what we know today as the suburbs, as well as that idyllic time in history when neighborhood baseball teams, washing machines and family trips in large cars became typical.

It also featured a companion display titled, “Shattering the Myth.” This exhibit called out the societal inequalities of the era, as well as blatant discrimination practices against people of color such as redlining and disproportionate combat casualties in Vietnam.