Minnesota civil rights leaders
Since before its statehood, Minnesota has cultivated a strong yet complicated Civil Rights legacy. On November 9 and 10, Vice President Walter Mondale and Congressman Keith Ellison will join U of M Law School professor Myron Orfield and labor, political, and faith leaders for The Summit for Civil Rights at the U. The goal? To assemble a new political coalition for ending segregation. This is how we got here.
Dred Scott and Harriet Robinson
1837
Dred Scott, a slave owned by Army surgeon Dr. John Emerson, marries another slave, Harriet Robinson, in a civil ceremony at Fort Snelling, in what was then the free territory of Wisconsin.
1857
In Dred Scott v Sandford, the Supreme Court rules 7-2 against Scott’s argument that a slave who lives in a free state should then be free. The case brings the country to the brink of Civil War.
1869
Minnesota’s Republican-led legislature passes a law outlawing segregation in the state.
1923
Roy Wilkins, raised in St. Paul, graduates from the University of Minnesota with a degree in sociology.
Clarence Mitchell Jr.
1937
Clarence Mitchell Jr. does graduate work at the U of M. He goes on to become a lobbyist for the NAACP, known nationally as the unofficial “101st senator.”
1937
U of M president Guy Stanton Ford overturns the segregationist dorm policy put in place by his predecessor, Lotus Coffman.
1946
Minnesota outlaws racial covenants (a housing practice meant to exclude on the basis of race) two years before the Supreme Court case that held that courts could not enforce them.
1946
Minneapolis Mayor Hubert Humphrey forms the nation’s first Fair Employment Practices Commission, which investigated discrimination complaints and pursued remedial actions.
Mayor Hubert Humphrey
1948
Mayor Humphrey gives his famous Civil Rights speech on the floor of the Democratic convention in Philadelphia, prompting a “Dixiecrat” walkout led by South Carolina’s Strom Thurmond.
1963
March on Washington
Executive secretary of the NAACP Roy Wilkins helps Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. organize the March on Washington. One year later Wilkins becomes executive director of the NAACP.
1964
Senator Hubert Humphrey co-writes and co-sponsors the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discriminatory voter registration requirements and segregation in schools and public buildings.
1964
President Lyndon Johnson, with Humphrey on the ticket as his vice president, wins reelection in a landslide.
Future Minneapolis Urban League director Josie Johnson
1964
Future Minneapolis Urban League director Josie Johnson leads an interracial group of Minnesota women on a march to Mississippi.
1965
Minnesota’s entire congressional delegation, including Democrats Eugene McCarthy and Walter Mondale, and Republican Al Quie, votes for the Voting Rights Act, which enforces the 14th and 15th amendments.
Senator Mondale
1968
Senator Mondale helps pass the Fair Housing Act, which makes it a federal crime for landlords to discriminate based on race, religion, or national origin.
1968
Vice President Humphrey loses the 1968 presidential election to Richard Nixon.
1973
Minnesota establishes state rules to end segregation in all public schools.
1984
Vice President Walter Mondale loses the 1984 presidential election to Ronald Reagan in a landslide.
1998
As state attorney general running for governor, Skip Humphrey enacts an “equity in place” policy, which discontinues the interschool busing policy and eliminates fair housing rules on the basis of preventing reverse racism. Tragically, the new rules roll back many of his father’s achievements.
Senator Paul Wellstone
2002
Senator Paul Wellstone, who declared, “I am a Civil Rights senator,” dies in a plane crash.
2015–16
The shootings of Jamar Clark in November 2015 by Minneapolis police, and of Philando Castile by a St. Anthony officer in July 2016, spark protests, marches, and the occupation of Minneapolis’s 4th Precinct station by Black Lives Matter.
2017
Senator Al Franken opposes the nomination of MN Supreme Court Justice David Stras to the 8th Circuit bench, releasing a statement skeptical of Stras’s commitment to Civil Rights.
