Subscribe to Lemonada Premium for Bonus Content

Episode 5 — Eric turns to the people who lived alongside Harry and Clementine Robinson to show him what it was like to start over in the new reality of the 1930s. They are outcasts in their own city, but gradually become central figures in what is emerging as the Black middle class community there.

For documents, photos and other source material related to this episode, go to: https://www.startribune.com/ghost-of-a-chance-podcast-episode-5-guide/601204959

Transcript

.

SPEAKERS

Gideon, Regina Williams, Kirsten Delegard, Interviewee, Melissa Townsend, Raymond Cannon, Greg, Eric roper

Eric roper  00:12

When I first started learning about Harry and Clementine Robinson, I found out they were part of a wave of black families who lived in this part of Minneapolis in the early 1900s and I knew they were gone by 1940.

 

Melissa Townsend  00:25

All this time, he had been trying to figure out what happened to them, and now he knew.

 

Eric roper  00:30

After more than a decade of resisting the pressure to leave their home in southwest Minneapolis, they lost their fight.

 

Melissa Townsend  00:40

But what Eric still didn’t know was what happened to them? Would Harry and Clementine be able to pick themselves back up and regain all that they had lost? And what does the rest of the story tell us about the place where George Floyd would die in 2020?

 

Eric roper  01:02

You’re listening to Ghost Of A Chance from the Minnesota Star Tribune. This is the story of my search to find out what happened to Harry and Clementine. Robinson, I’m Eric roper.

 

Melissa Townsend  01:12

I’m Melissa Townsend. This is episode five, one day when Eric was digging around for details about Harry and Clementine, he found an interesting little feature in the Minneapolis journal newspaper. It was from New Year’s Day, 1931.

 

Eric roper  01:32

Yeah, it’s dated January 1, and it looks like the paper had this section where local businesses could post a New Year’s message the owner of the Globe Realty Company, for example, said greetings to friends and patrons. The people behind the fu Chu Cafe said Happy New Year to all. And the owner of the Little Dixie sandwich shop, which we know, of course, is Harry Robinson, wished, quote, prosperity and happiness in 1931.

 

Melissa Townsend  02:01

But Harry’s wish for prosperity wouldn’t come true.

 

Eric roper  02:05

In March that same year, he placed ads to sell the business, and in July, Clementine and Harry lost their house to foreclosure.

 

Melissa Townsend  02:14

It was the 1930s the depression was taking a huge toll on the whole city, but especially on the black community. We knew black residents were already at a disadvantage. Eric found a survey from 1926 that said half the companies surveyed would not hire a Black Worker, and it looks like the depression was only making that worse.

 

Eric roper  02:44

So by 1936 the Minneapolis spokesman and the St Paul recorder newspapers have opened that year, the papers reprinted an editorial about how discrimination has increased against black people in their jobs, and that even so called Negro jobs, porters, waiters, etc, are no longer available. The editorial said, quote, unemployment spreads, and in every section of the nation, the Negro is fast becoming a jobless race unquote.

 

Melissa Townsend  03:14

A man named AB Cassius was living in the city at the time. You might remember him from a previous episode where he talked about what it was like to be a waiter in Minneapolis back then. In that same interview, he talked about the job situation for black men during the Great Depression.

 

Interviewee  03:31

Department stores, Dayton’s denying no blacks the glass block, which was famous throughout the world, they hired no black that meant that you could walk all day downtown in Minneapolis and see three or four porters washing windows. That’s all.

 

Melissa Townsend  03:51

He said construction work was off limits. Some men did service work on cars, but they weren’t paid fair wages. The jobs on the railroad and then the hotels were still there, but there were fewer of them.

 

Interviewee  04:03

If you weren’t doing that, you were on relief, direct to indirect course on relief, then you could live off of $15 a week.

 

Melissa Townsend  04:14

By relief AB Cass meant unemployment assistance or welfare. Eric couldn’t find any data about the number of people on relief in Minneapolis, but he did find that in 1932 nearly half of St Paul’s black population was receiving government assistance. Eric wanted to know how Harry and Clementine were handling the depression. They were 50 years old, so we went to the city directory.

 

Eric roper  04:45

We know that by 1932 Harry had luckily found a job as a waiter, and Clementine had reported that she was a hairdresser again. So they’re back to these jobs that they had started with roughly 25 years earlier.

 

Melissa Townsend  04:59

This the D directory also told Eric that Harry and Clementine hadn’t found a new place to settle in.

 

Eric roper  05:06

I can see in the directory that, starting in 1932 they’re moving around from place to place. It looks like they live in two different places in two years, and I think it’s safe to say that they’re renting these places.

 

Melissa Townsend  05:19

We know that they had money troubles. That’s why they lost their house. So maybe it makes sense they didn’t go out and buy a new place right away. But why was it that they were moving around so much? What were they looking for? When Eric told me the addresses where they were renting, I realized that these places were near their old house, and I thought, well, maybe they were trying to stay in that Southwest neighborhood. But when we talked about this with historian Kirsten delagard, she said, by the time the 1930s rolled around, that probably wasn’t possible.

 

Kirsten Delegard  05:56

Any contemporary writing publication written by black people from the 19 teens through the 1950s they all talk about the tightening restrictions you know that is absolutely impossible for black people, certainly to buy a house, but even to rent a house or occupy a house outside of those zones that have been identified as black.

 

Melissa Townsend  06:23

We knew that at least one neighborhood association in southwest Minneapolis was trying to keep out black residents, but Eric told me about another even more violent situation in another part of the city. Right at the time, Clementine and Harry were losing their house.

 

Eric roper  06:39

In 1931 Arthur Lee, who is this he works for the post office. He’s a World War One veteran. Arthur and his wife, Edith and their daughter Mary, move into this house in South Minneapolis.

 

Melissa Townsend  06:52

And again, this is not southwest Minneapolis, where the Robinsons used to live. This is a different part of the city, a few miles east of there.

 

Eric roper  07:00

So initially, this follows a trajectory that we are familiar with, where the neighborhood association comes in. They don’t want black people in the area. They actually have sort of a voluntary agreement among the association not to sell to anyone who is not white, and they’re sort of seeing if they can buy him out. But then this erupts. I mean, crowds are forming paint and rocks are being thrown at the house the mayor’s office is involved. It’s on the front page of the papers, and Arthur Lee hires Lena olive Smith as his attorney. Now we know that Lena is a good friend of clementines, and notably, she was the first black female attorney in Minnesota, and at this point, she was the president of the local chapter of the NAACP, and she is prepared to fight this thing. There are also people inside the house who are preparing to defend Lee and his family.

 

Melissa Townsend  07:56

Eric found a recording of a man who was part of that group inside the house. His name was Raymond Cannon. You might remember him from a previous episode where he talked about how his family had moved to Minnesota before it was even a state. In that same recording, he said that when trouble erupted at the Lee house, he joined up with a group of men that were headed over there.

 

Raymond Cannon  08:19

We got out there to Lee’s home, and after we had identified ourselves, we were admitted. There was one man sitting in the dark front room, big picture window, with a rifle across his knees. Two or three others were in their arms.

 

Melissa Townsend  08:36

According to Raymond Cannon, things died down that night, but then a few days later, Arthur’s wife, Edith, got an anonymous phone call saying 6000 people were going to come that night and storm the home. This group that he was a part of went to the chief of police and pleaded with him to do something. But that night, Raymond Cannon says, 1000s of white people gathered in front of Arthur Lee’s house and on his lawn, everyone was on edge, and then cannon said, just in the nick of time, a fire truck came screaming down the street.

 

Raymond Cannon  09:10

And the engines pushed in the crowd, and people began falling back, you know, and letting them through. And the fires were pulling those out. They couldn’t see any fire, see. So finally, the crowd had done good natured and began to brew the fire and they’d make fun of and when the apparatus drove away, the crowd dispersed.

 

Melissa Townsend  09:35

Arthur Lee and his family managed to stay in that house for a few years. Then Arthur missed a payment on his contract for deed.

 

Eric roper  09:42

And ultimately they have to move and they leave this house.

 

Melissa Townsend  09:47

Kirsten Delegard had said it was nearly impossible for black residents to rent or own a place outside a neighborhood that was considered black. And now we understood what she meant. We already knew this. Southwest side of the city was antagonistic to black families, and Eric has evidence that that continued into the 1930s and as the Lee family found out, this was also happening in other parts of the city. I can imagine. That’s why Clementine and Harry were moving from place to place. They didn’t want to be cordoned off into a segregated neighborhood. So where would they be able to settle down? That’s after the break.

 

Melissa Townsend  10:38

In the 1930s on top of the difficulties caused by the Great Depression, discrimination against black residents in Minneapolis had continued. So Eric wondered how and where would Harry and Clementine land on their feet in one of our conversations with historian Kirsten Delegard, she told us that around this time, there were basically two neighborhoods in Minneapolis where it was relatively safe for a black family to live. One was on the south side of the city, not as far south as where Arthur and Edith Lee tried to live, and the other one was in the north side of the city.

 

Kirsten Delegard  14:02

So the near north side is the largest black neighborhood in Minneapolis, and everybody who lived in the neighborhood, who studied the neighborhood, who did business in the neighborhood, talked about how conditions were terrible. There was massive overcrowding. The buildings were dilapidated. Most of the living units didn’t have running water. There was sewage running in the streets. People didn’t have any place to dispose of their garbage, so they would throw it in the back yard. There were dead animals. You get the picture. Black leaders were appalled and protesting constantly about this.

 

Melissa Townsend  14:38

But the neighborhood on the south side was different. This neighborhood is now called the Old South Side.

 

Kirsten Delegard  14:47

The old south side is a very stable, very integrated, racially integrated. It’s seen as a black neighborhood, but reality, it’s an integrated neighborhood.

 

Melissa Townsend  14:55

Some black elders who lived there talked about having neighbors who were Jewish or Japanese. These are white.

 

Eric roper  15:01

And  in 1934, this is the neighborhood where Harry and Clementine finally settled down. I don’t think a lot of people today know sort of how vibrant and racially diverse this community was back in the day, and importantly, that it was home to this emerging black middle class. I mean, there were blocks and blocks of modest but nice stucco and clapboard homes, and this whole neighborhood was organized around this one little commercial area that everybody called the corner. And this is at 38th Street and Fourth Avenue, and they rent a house just a block from the corner. They’re on 37th Street and Fourth Avenue.

 

Melissa Townsend  15:41

Eric thought they must have been relieved to find a home in a more welcoming community, but at the same time, they had fought so hard for so long to stay in that predominantly white neighborhood all those black families had. So what was it like for them?

 

Eric roper  15:57

I haven’t found a note or a letter from Harry or Clementine about how they felt about moving into a more racially diverse neighborhood, but I did find something from a man named Nelson Piri. He was a teenager in the Old South Side during the 1930s and he wrote about his life in a book called Black Fire. Unfortunately, we don’t have an old recording to play for you, but I do want to share this one passage about the old South Side. He’s describing the first time that he went to services at the local African Methodist Episcopal Church, which we assume is St Peter’s ame, which is still there in South Minneapolis. Quote, A buxom woman stepped forward, the pianist struck a few melancholy chords to give her the key, and the woman began to sing acapella.

 

Melissa Townsend  16:49

We asked Minneapolis based actor Regina Williams to play the part of this woman singing […]

 

Eric roper  17:26

Here he goes on, I knew at once that these songs, rooted in the slave pens and shacks of the Delta were mine. They made me feel a deep sadness, but I also had a feeling of pride and warmth. As far as I knew, aside from the discrimination, these songs were all we Negroes had in common, they held us together and formed a kinship wherever we found one another […]

 

Melissa Townsend  18:02

It’s seems that what Nelson Peary was saying was that there wasn’t just sadness about the circumstances or anger over the injustices or fear about the future. I mean, there were all those things, but there was also connection. And he said it was a connection you could feel in the community, especially on the corner at 38th Street and Fourth Avenue. He wrote about it in his book.

 

Eric roper  18:28

The Dreamland Cafe, which sold 3.2 beer and served short order dinners, was owned by Anthony Brutus Cassius. Everyone liked this. Barrel chested, pock marked, light brown skinned Bull of a man, cheerful and honest, he always conducted himself as if he were responsible to and for the people of our neighborhood. Sam Pantel owned the grocery. He overcharged everyone to make up for what he lost, giving credit to his destitute customers. Chris Christensen’s shoe shop always hired a black kid as an apprentice Shoemaker. Brownie, the brown skinned lady barber sold policy slips, and her shop was the gossip center of the community. She charged 25 cents for a haircut.

 

Melissa Townsend  19:17

It sounds like a nice, tight knit community. There was kindness and laughter and joy. It had been nearly three years since Clementine and Harry had started over in the Old South Side. They were both 53 years old, and finally, it looks like Clementine was beginning to act like her old self again.

 

Eric roper  19:40

I started to see her name in the black newspapers again.

 

Interviewee  19:43

A new chapter the order of the Eastern Star, Prince Hall affiliation, Minnesota jurisdiction, was organized Sunday May 27 1934.

 

Eric roper  19:52

The Eastern Star is a fraternal organization related to the Freemasons. It’s an opportunity to be with other like minded black women.

 

Melissa Townsend  19:59

She was also. Part of the local chapter of the Council of Negro Women.

 

Eric roper  20:03

They are promoting black women. And so clearly, Clementine still has an emphasis and a focus in the success of black women, just like the Business Women’s Club back in 1921 she’s still involved in things like that.

 

Melissa Townsend  20:18

She was hosting guests and socializing again, and there was one especially prominent guest.

 

Eric roper  20:25

Her brother, Gideon, is becoming very famous in Kansas City. He’s a doctor, and he has a lot of connections here in town. And he would come here and the papers would talk about how he was quote, unquote, continuously entertained.

 

Gideon  20:39

En route to the Mayo Clinic at Rochester, Minnesota. Dr Gideon Brown, prominent Kansas City physician, stopped over in Minneapolis to visit his sister, Madam H Robinson. Monday night, a large portion of Minneapolis society called at the Robinson home to extend a welcome to the distinguished Missouri doctor.

 

Eric roper  20:58

Very nice.

 

Melissa Townsend  20:59

Clementines Professional Life was also getting a boost. There’s this clip from the Minneapolis spokesman newspaper in 1935.

 

Interviewee  21:07

Mitzi green, famous screen star and actress playing in person this past week at the State Theater was attended by madam Robinson, well known masseuse of Minneapolis.

 

Eric roper  21:17

I should note that the actress Mitzi Green was white.

 

Interviewee  21:20

In other visits to the city Mitzi Green has always been attended by white professionals, and the fact that Madam Robinson was chosen this time is complimentary to the ability and well established reputation of this Minneapolis business woman.

 

Melissa Townsend  21:37

While Clementine was all over the newspapers, Harry was absent throughout the 1930s and 40s. There were years he was listed as a cook or a caterer in the city directory, but then there were years he was listed with no occupation. Eric scoured the papers, but he found only one article.

 

Eric roper  21:56

So there’s one point in 1943 where there’s a birthday party, and it’s attended by or it’s thrown by a number of the quote, unquote old residents, and Harry Robinson is among the old residents.

 

Melissa Townsend  22:09

And that’s all we knew about Harry. Kind of weird. Meanwhile, we know from the papers that Clementine got some additional schooling in the 1940s and Eric found a record of her working at the University of Minnesota hospital.

 

Eric roper  22:24

She’s listed in the 1950 census as working as a nurse’s aide.

 

Melissa Townsend  22:32

Eric thought this seemed like a pretty big deal for Clementine. She had had that job with Dr Farr back in 1916 but there was so much employment discrimination that it seemed unlikely she would get another one. So Eric wondered, How did Clementine manage to land this job? He did some digging, and he found that right around this time, Minneapolis began to outlaw racial discrimination in hiring.

 

Eric roper  22:57

A couple years earlier, Hubert Humphrey had been elected mayor of Minneapolis, and he is really coming in on a Civil Rights Platform. Here’s a mayor who is listening to the plight of black people in the city and also Jewish people in the city who are being discriminated against. But one of the big things that comes out of the Humphrey administration is that Minneapolis is one of the first cities in the country to ban discrimination in employment.

 

Melissa Townsend  23:21

Not everyone was happy about that.

 

Eric roper  23:23

There’s literally like an attempt on his life during this process. But for the black community, it worked. After that happens in 47 some jobs start to open up because it’s now illegal to discriminate against black people. This is around the exact same time that Clementine is finding work as a nurse’s aide at the hospital.

 

Melissa Townsend  23:42

And then Eric told me that in 1952 when she and Harry were both 71 years old, they did something surprising.

 

Eric roper  23:53

I found the notice in the Minneapolis spokesman, that’s the local black newspaper.

 

Interviewee  23:58

The H W Robinsons have moved from Fourth Avenue South to East 40th Street.

 

Eric roper  24:03

It’s a very small notice, but a very big deal. First of all, this address is still in the Old South Side neighborhood, and I don’t know if they couldn’t move out or they didn’t want to move out, but they’re sticking around. And second, they’re not renting. They bought this house.

 

Melissa Townsend  24:20

Eric was surprised because Clementine and Harry were in their 70s. It had been 18 years since their last move. But he was also surprised because he learned that at the time, banks were making it difficult for black people to get a mortgage to buy a house.

 

Eric roper  24:37

This is known as redlining, because back in the 1930s local banks and real estate industry professionals had helped make these maps of the city. And the core of the old South Side is colored in red, and the red is labeled as hazardous. And so basically, banks and the whole real estate industry were saying that the ratio. Integrated and black neighborhoods were the riskiest places to lend money, and that includes the old South Side.

 

Melissa Townsend  25:08

So Eric did some digging, and he found that Harry and Clementine were able to buy this house because they got some help from a white couple.

 

Eric roper  25:17

So it’s actually interesting. What we know is that the former owners of the house were the Lebrun family, and they were white, and it seems that the lebruns wanted the Robinsons to have this house, and they co signed, essentially on the mortgage with Harry and Clementine.

 

Melissa Townsend  25:34

If at some point Harry and Clementine couldn’t pay this house loan, the lebruns would be on the hook for it. But Eric doesn’t know who the labruns were.

 

Eric roper  25:44

Yeah, I mean, the labruns are one of the mysteries of this story. I mean, the idea that the former owners of this house are saying, like, we are going to co sign on a loan with these buyers. The lebruns seem to have sort of put their faith in the Robinsons in this transaction.

 

Melissa Townsend  26:01

Eric showed me a current picture of the house on Zillow.

 

Eric roper  26:04

It actually just sold. So this is the house. Oh yeah, it’s up on a little hill. It’s a more modest home. It feels a little bit more modern. It’s like much one story. It’s smaller than his, yeah, it is one story, and it looks like the main rooms may be all on one level. Maybe they’re trying to, like, not have stairs in the house because they’re like.

 

Melissa Townsend  26:24

Old now and they’re having a hard time getting around.

 

Eric roper  26:26

Maybe

 

Melissa Townsend  26:32

they were getting older, maybe they were sick. It wasn’t clear. But then Eric came across a news article from 1959 and it answered all The questions he’d been asking. That’s after the break.

 

Melissa Townsend  27:04

Eric couldn’t find much about Harry’s life during most of the 1930s 40s and 50s, except for that one social gathering in the newspaper in 1943.

 

Eric roper  27:13

But then I came across an article that helped me understand what was going on. It was in the spokesman newspaper, and it was dated May 1, 1959 it wasn’t actually a news article. It was an obituary.

 

Interviewee  27:30

Harry Robinson, 76 A pioneer resident of Minneapolis, died at his home Saturday, evening, April 25 after a prolonged illness. The deceased was born in Mitchell, Indiana, and had resided in Minneapolis for over 55 years. He had been in failing health since 1935 and for the past eight years, had been hospitalized intermittently.

 

Eric roper  27:52

I looked up Harry’s death certificate, and it says that he died from rectal cancer.

 

Interviewee  27:57

His only survivor is his wife, Mrs. Clementine Robinson, to whom he had been married for 50 years. The couple would have observed their 51st wedding anniversary on May 2, 1959 the remains were cremated Tuesday, April 28 at Lakewood cemetery.

 

Melissa Townsend  28:15

Eric actually found out that he requested his ashes be scattered in the Mississippi River. We asked a lot of people about this, and we heard that it was very rare for a black man to be cremated at that time. And it was even more peculiar because Eric knew Harry had bought a burial plot in a local cemetery.

 

Eric roper  28:37

The records from the company that owns the cemetery show that Harry and Clementine had bought two adjoining cemetery plots. So why did he decide to get cremated? Well, I think what may have happened is that he and Clementine may have had some discussion where he said, Okay, finances are tight. The burial plot is technically an asset, so I’m gonna be cremated, and then when you need to you can sell the grave site. So this is sort of a financial rip cord, you know, pull in case of emergency.

 

Melissa Townsend  29:07

We don’t really know if that conversation ever happened, but after all that they had been through, it’s nice to think about Harry trying to look after Clementine after he was gone. Maybe it was his way of saying thank you to her for taking care of him for all those years.

 

Eric roper  29:25

I remember when I first found the obituary, I was really shocked at how long Harry was sick toward the end of his life. I mean, it was really sad. And this happens really right after he loses his business. So again, just very sad, and I just hope that at the end that Harry had some things that brought him peace and joy. I kind of hope that he’s hanging out down at the barber shop, sipping coffee, you know, talking to some old friends of his down there. You know, maybe he goes to church, finds community there. Maybe when he’s home sick, that there’s some sort of pet. You know that he’s nurturing that brings him some comfort, or maybe he’s watching the birds come and go and that that brings him some peace? I don’t know. I just hope, after such a challenging life, that he had something good at the end, even though it sounds like he was probably in a lot of pain.

 

Melissa Townsend  30:18

Right after Harry died, Clementine put a note in the Minneapolis spokesman newspaper.

 

Interviewee  30:25

Mrs. Clementine Robinson desires to express her sincere appreciation and thanks to the many friends who were so kind and thoughtful during the illness and death of her beloved husband. I shall ever remember and cherish them in my heart sincerely, Mrs. Clementine, Robinson.

 

Melissa Townsend  30:45

It was 1959 Clementine Robinson was living alone in her very own house for the first time in her life. She was 78 years old, surrounded by the old South Side black community the neighbor in the neighborhood that we’re walking through right there are people alive today who lived in that neighborhood right alongside Clementine Robinson. Eric has talked with a number of elders who grew up in the neighborhood he spent the most time with a man named Greg Mcmoore. This is Greg giving Eric a tour of the neighborhood.

 

Greg  31:20

Right on this spot were a row of businesses across the street from where I am right now. There was a mosque, mom and pop, grocery store, all business.

 

Melissa Townsend  31:30

He was born in 1953 that was before Harry died.

 

Greg  31:35

Record store, barber shops, hair stylists, that kind of thing, which really gave to the community, obviously.

 

Melissa Townsend  31:42

Greg also remembered the Dreamland cafe, just like Nelson Pirie did.

 

Eric roper  31:47

The owner, AB Cassius actually opened up another club right down the block, and it was called the nakarema. And if that sounds a little strange, well that’s because it’s American spelled backwards. How’s that for a statement?

 

Melissa Townsend  32:01

That kind of reminds me of the Little Dixie sandwich shop. When I asked Greg to come into the studio for a conversation. Does that sound all right? That sounds good. He described the old South Side. This was the community that clementines generation built.

 

Greg  32:18

Back in the 60s. There was always the ideology that people of color and black folks should invest in their communities, because we couldn’t depend on the outside influence to do that. That’s where we felt supported by each other, and that’s the community that we built.

 

Melissa Townsend  32:46

It sounds like when Clementine and Harry moved into the old South Side in 1934 it was an emerging black, middle class neighborhood, but by the time Greg was there in the 1950s it was well established.

 

Eric roper  33:00

I read a city report from 1966 it’s called minority housing in Minneapolis, and it really kind of highlights the old South Side. It says that the neighborhood was, quote, composed of slightly older and definitely more stable Negro families. It parallels the city white population in education, income and employment rates only in occupational status. Do its Negro residents appear less advantaged, end quote.

 

Melissa Townsend  33:28

From all that Eric had learned, it sounded like the old South Side neighborhood was a space for black people to escape threats and harassment and suspicion. One person we talked to even called it sacred space. But it’s also clear that one of the downsides of living in this segregated neighborhood was that it was isolated. White people and people of color had few shared experiences. AB Cassius talked about this in that old interview he did. He was the owner of the Dreamland cafe and the Nakarema.

 

Interviewee  34:01

The thing in Minnesota was that the blacks didn’t know the whites and the whites didn’t know the black because there was nothing to assimilate them or bring them together.

 

Melissa Townsend  34:12

In our conversation with Greg Mcmoore, he talked about what it felt like to be in the middle of all of that. He says, outside his neighborhood, he felt self conscious and uncomfortable. In fact, he still feels that way.

 

Greg  34:25

We probably have our own language and our own way of behaving and acting, but once we walk outside, we’re walking into another world. And I have been conscious of that. I have been conscious of that pretty much my whole life, living in Minneapolis, I’m conscious that I’m the only person of color, and made to feel that way when you get that certain look you know about who is that person, which is a suspicion, you know, who’s that person, all about.

 

Melissa Townsend  35:01

It seems like this feeling of alienation was part of what black leaders in the 1920s were battling when they were battling against segregation. They knew the black experience was invisible at best and vilified at worst, and this was a big problem. A woman named W Gertrude brown gave a stunning speech about this very thing in 1925 Eric found a copy you might remember Miss Brown from a previous episode. She was the first head resident of the Phillis Wheatley settlement house in North Minneapolis. She was also Clementine and Harry’s friend.

 

Eric roper  35:43

So it’s 1925 and W Gertrude Brown is at this conference for social workers, is at the University of Minnesota, St Paul campus, and the crowd was mostly white. And it seems like she knows that they don’t know much about what it’s like for black people in Minneapolis at the time. So she starts with a little introduction.

 

Melissa Townsend  36:01

We’ve asked Minneapolis space actor Regina Williams to read this for us.

 

Regina Williams  36:08

I wish it were possible for me to tell you the many disadvantages under which the Negro labors in an urban community. Since that is impossible, I want to call your attention to a few of the most serious handicaps.

 

Melissa Townsend  36:22

She went on to detail the ways black residents were being pushed aside.

 

Regina Williams  36:27

The question may be asked, why hasn’t the Negro accumulated more? Has it ever occurred to you that he hasn’t a ghost of a chance? Have you ever stopped to think that every real money making Avenue is closed to him.

 

Melissa Townsend  36:44

Her whole speech is truly remarkable. We’ll include the full recording in a bonus episode, but for now, I want to skip to the ending. This is where she asks the social workers to open their minds.

 

Regina Williams  36:59

The Negro is not understood, and few are willing to take a little time and learn about him.

 

Melissa Townsend  37:07

And then WG Gertrude brown recited a poem. It was written by a man named Edgar Albert guest. It’s about the importance of getting to know people who are different from you.

 

Regina Williams  37:20

When you get to know a fellow, know his joys and cares, when you come to understand him and the burdens he bears, when you learn the fight he’s making and the troubles in his way, when you find that he is different than you thought him yesterday, you find that his faults are trivial and there’s not so much to blame in the brother that we jeered at when you only knew his name, we are quick to see the blemish in the distant neighbor style when we can point out all his errors and may sneer at him the while And our prejudice sharpen and I hate more violent grow. Often talk about the failure of the man we do not know, but when drawn a little closer and our hands and shoulders touch, we find the traits we hated don’t really amount to much.

 

Melissa Townsend  38:21

But Eric found that city and state leaders in Minneapolis and Minnesota did not create plans for racially diverse residents to draw a little closer so their hands and shoulders could touch, despite Hubert Humphrey and other people’s efforts to reduce discrimination, racial segregation only got worse, and in the 1960s city and state leaders did something that would end up segregating the south side of the city even more, and Clementine Robinson could see it happening right from the front stoop of her little house on the hill. That’s next time.

 

Greg  39:04

You want to talk about generational wealth, it’s got to start somewhere. And when you live in some of the kind of communities that we do, and you’re kicking your behind all the time, it makes it difficult.

 

Melissa Townsend  39:18

This is Ghost Of A Chance. Our website is Startribune.com/ghostofachance. There you can see pictures and documents from the podcast, and you can also sign up to receive news about discussion guides and events. Our email is ghostofachance@Startribune.com. Get in touch if you have a question or feedback or a tip related to the Robinson story. We’d also love to know if this story motivated you to do something in your community. So let us know. You can help pay for this incredible story and others like it with a subscription to the Minnesota Star Tribune. Go to our website Startribune.com.

 

CREDITS  39:57

Ghost Of A Chance is reported by Eric Roper and written and produced by me Melissa Townsend. Our executive producer is Jenni Pinkley. Our editor is MaryJo Webster. Fact checking by Eric Roper and MaryJo Webster. Sound Design by Marcel Malekebu. Our contributing editors are Star Tribune managing editor, Maria Reeve and Star Tribune editor and senior vice president Suki Dardarian. Legal review from Randy Lebedoff. The art for our show comes from Anna Boone and Brock Kaplan. Special thanks to Kyndell Harkness, Zoë Jackson, Laura McCallum, James Eli Shiffer, Nancy Yang, Casey Darnell, Laura Ewan, Tane Danger and members of the local community who served as our advisors.