Whiteness in Plain View

Whiteness in Plain View examines the ways white residents in towns, cities, and suburbs across Minnesota acted to intimidate, control, remove, and keep out African Americans over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Their methods ranged from anonymous threats, vandalism, and mob violence to restrictive housing covenants, realtor deceit, and mortgage discrimination, and they were aided by support from local, state, and federal government agencies as well as openly complicit public officials. What they did was not an anomaly or aberration, in some particular place or passing moment, but rather common and continuous, prevalent throughout the state from decade to decade. Additionally, the all-white communities that resulted became their own justification, supporting the notion (among whites) that blacks' supposed racial failings must be what kept them out or demonstrating (to whites) that blacks wanted to live with their own race.

Chad Montrie is a professor in the history department at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. He is the author of four books, including The Myth of Silent Spring: Rethinking the Origins of American Environmentalism. His article "In that Very Northern City: Recovering a Forgotten Struggle for Racial Integration in Duluth" appeared in the Summer 2020 issue of Minnesota History magazine.