(gentle music) (gentle music continues) - [Yohuru] Five years after George Floyd's murder and the violent unrest that followed, the Minneapolis Police Department's third precinct sat burned, encircled by razor wire.

A troubling monument to the volatile tensions between American police and the communities they're supposed to serve.

I'm Dr.

Yohuru Williams, a historian, author, and educator with an interest in diverse history, people's movements, and an understanding of how the past impacts the present.

(gentle music continues) (protestors chanting) When George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis Police, like much of the world, I wondered, "Why Minnesota?"

How did this and other deadly police encounters happen here in the land of liberal ideals, and the progressive political legacies of Hubert Humphrey and Walter Mondale?

This building is one of the places to look for answers, not just in its destruction, but in its construction four decades ago.

The city celebrated the opening of this precinct in 1985, highlighting how it was designed to be more welcoming, to be a police precinct for the people.

But over the years, it became a home to some of the most notorious cops in the department, officers with multiple complaints of brutality, including Derek Chauvin.

In the years following the events of 2020, the building sat, its future unclear.

This inability to resolve the future of the third precinct reminds me of how Minneapolis has struggled to reform its police department.

Of mayors who offered both liberalism and law and order, but ultimately were unable to affect lasting change.

Of police chiefs and officers trying to change a culture the US Department of Justice determined to be dangerous.

And a resilient Black, Brown, and Indigenous leadership who championed self-reliance, resistance, and reform, that has always been met with growing resistance by a police union that pushed its way into politics.

So to move toward a better future of public safety, we have to look to the past.

(gentle stirring music) (gentle music) - [Yohuru Williams] Maya Angelou once observed that history, despite its pain, cannot be unlived.

But if faced with courage, it need not be repeated.

With this in mind, I launched into a deep research project to uncover what happened to the Minneapolis Police Department, the MPD, and its fraught relationship with the community.

- Some citizens are able to imagine the police as providing safety where other citizens cannot.

- I'm joined in this work by Dr.

Michael Lansing, one of the most noted historians of politics and progressive movements in the Midwest, with whom I share a deep interest in the process of historical recovery.

Why is historical recovery important?

- There's a difference between history and memory.

Memory is what people individually or as communities choose to remember about the past.

History is about evidence-based interpretations of the past.

(gentle music) - [Yohuru] Our work of historical recovery begins at Hennepin County's Central Library in downtown Minneapolis, the keepers of some of the city's founding documents, including the city charter.

- In Minneapolis, the city charter is set up so that the only thing the mayor really is in charge of is public safety.

So the mayor is the head of the police department.

- The best way to think about the charter is that it's the city's constitution, so it outlines what are the major rules and responsibilities of the various bodies of city government.

- [Yohuru] Michelle Phelps is a sociologist specializing in crime and punishment, whose research helps make connections on public safety's past and present.

- There is a section of the city charter that in fact requires a police department.

- Even though Minneapolis is a rapidly growing city, a rapidly industrializing city, the police thing hasn't been sorted out.

The police force is established in 1867 when the city's established.

But what the police look like is still kind of an open question.

There are so many ways in which police officers are connected to this charter.

- The very first sentence about the police department in the city charter says the mayor has complete power over the establishment, maintenance, and command of the police department, and that's different from a lot of other city agencies.

- [Yohuru] So the Minneapolis Mayor is directly responsible for the police department.

This relationship will be at the center of efforts to reform the department for the next century and a half.

- It was that section about the police department being entirely under the executive control of the mayor's office and a required mandatory minimum number of officers per residence that really formed the crux of the debate in 2021 about a potential charter amendment to rethink how we organize public safety.

- Early voting has begun in Minneapolis on an amendment that would bring change to the city's police department.

- That is the only department in the entire city charter that has that unilateral control by the mayor.

- And so by striking out everything related to the MPD, that charter amendment would've gotten rid of the mandatory minimum and would've gotten rid of the mayor's exclusive control of this new department and reoriented the department around this holistic model of public safety.

- [Reporter] The closely watched public safety amendment was defeated handily.

- Amending the city charter will be one of the ways citizens and politicians will seek police reform in the years ahead.

But one of the first efforts at reform speaks to how relatively new American policing still was in the late 19th century.

In 1876, for Mayor Albert "Doc" Ames, reform was in the clothing cops wore.

He thought they should dress the part.

There's some interesting things that are contained in that policing reform package that he offers.

- Mayor Ames very clearly establishes what he thinks the rules should be, and those include police officers should not own other businesses in the city.

Those include police officers must wear uniforms at all times.

There's a lot of resistance by these newly created police officers.

We think of them, of course, as almost always men and almost always wearing blue.

In fact, that has to be established.

And you see the mayor trying to reform the department in 1876 saying, "No, you have to wear uniforms.

You have to be visible to citizens on the street in this very particular way so that everybody knows who you are."

And that early attempted reform is something that signals to us that from the very moment of their birth, these municipal police departments are experiencing these reform efforts.

- What's driving that with the Ames administration?

- That moment in 1876, this is about a new mayor establishing who is in charge of the department.

He says that a police officer will not make the decision about who is to leave town.

Only the mayor will make such a decision.

So that tells us that something like that was happening before, and it tells us that Mayor Ames has decided this now is going to reside in the mayor's office.

So it's about the mayor's accrual of power and making any number of other potential centers of power within the department submit to him.

- [Yohuru] But Mayor Ames was hardly a well-intentioned reformer as reported by muckraking journalist Lincoln Steffens when he added Minneapolis to his list of cities called out in his landmark reporting and book "The Shame of the Cities."

This reporting on Ames's fourth and last term as mayor at the turn of the last century reveals a level of corruption that would surprise many Minnesotans who see their civic history as one of the best in the nation.

- [Narrator] "He set out upon a career of corruption, which for deliberateness, invention, and avarice has never been equaled.

Immediately upon his election, before he took office, he laid plans to turn the city over to outlaws who were to work under police direction for the profit of his administration.

He chose for chief his brother Colonel Fred W. Ames, who had recently returned under a cloud from service in the Philippines."

- We see this national story about Minneapolis and corruption and Dirty Doc Ames as mayor.

- [Narrator] "More and more thieves and swindlers came hurrying to Minneapolis.

Some of them saw the police and made terms.

Some of them were seen by the police and invited to go to work.

There was room for all.

This astonishing fact that the government of the city asked criminals to rob the people is fully established.

The police and the criminals confessed it separately.

Their statements agree in detail."

- The entire police department is bound up in these webs of corruption when in fact it's a public agency that taxpayers are paying for to create public safety.

So that kind of politicization of policing, and this question of reforming leads to a situation in the early 20th century where we have to deal with police departments.

We have to get rid of this corruption, we have to professionalize.

And so you see reform in the early 20th century focused on this shift to professionalizing and breaking the bond between policing and city politics.

But it proves to be much harder than anyone ever imagined.

- What's the pushback against?

So at the turn of the 20th century, corruption was creeping into the city and its police department, but also present was the racialization of policing.

Some of the early police in the Twin Cities were ex-military who had been involved in the Dakota War, and it's widely established that part of American policing's origins is rooted in so-called slave-catching patrols of the South.

The focus of policing communities of color is as old as the institution itself.

So Michael, there's a long history of reform, but there's also a long history of the racialization of the police.

Tell me about that.

- Yeah.

If we think about racialized policing here in Minneapolis, one of the stories that comes to mind right away in terms of this long, very deep history, very difficult history, is the story about Ophelia Rice in 1899.

- 1899, absolutely.

That takes place in October.

There's a police officer named Thomas Britt who's on patrol at Lyndale and Lake, and he observes two Black girls whom he later says were strangers to him.

And so he stops them and asks where they're going.

The girls, of course, respond that it's none of his business and, you know, wanna proceed on their way.

And at that point, Britt attempts to detain them.

- [Narrator] "They alleged that he swore at them and followed them home."

- Mrs.

Rice steps out and she says to Britt, "What are you doing to my daughter?"

And Britt responds to her, "Go in the house, mind your business."

- Yeah.

And of course that's not what happens because in fact it's an escalation.

And Officer Britt then turns his attention to Ophelia Rice, and he ends up choking her and physically harming her in other quite severe ways.

- A lot of these early police officers in the Minneapolis Police Department weren't what we think of as like trained officers.

They would harass people.

- [Yohuru] Acoma Gaither is a public historian specializing in structural racism, mutual aid, and cultural expression.

- An article that I pulled up, it was called "A Deplorable Condition," and it talked about Black women, specifically in Minneapolis, not being able to feel safe to walk around the city and advocating for people to walk with them in certain places and areas because they would get harassed.

I know a lot of people think police brutality and racism was really concentrated in the south, but it happened in every part of this country.

- Ophelia Rice was a true Minnesota pioneer.

She is said to have arrived in the state through the Underground Railroad and like other trailblazing Black women of her era, she defied racial barriers to break new ground.

She was one of the founders of Bethesda Baptist Church and a member of the Negro State Federated Women's Club.

And yet in that moment there is at least some coverage in the paper.

How do we account for that?

- We have to think about the fact that Mrs.

Rice is not only an important person in the African American community.

She's an important member of the Women's Christian Temperance Union.

She's a reformer herself.

She's deeply involved in community affairs.

The fact that this will be heard in court at all is important to the broader population of the city.

- Certainly resonates with the Black community at that time.

In fact, the previous June, there had been an article that had been published making the case that there was only one Black officer on the force at the time with a resident population of Black people of 3,000.

And you have residents demanding that there be the addition of more officers of color, more Black officers.

Ophelia's case is an early example of Black women defending their children against police abuses.

It drew significant media attention.

But I have to wonder how many similar cases went unnoticed and unreported, and like so many high profile incidents, did Ophelia's case spark interest not just because of who the victims were, but because the abuse was all too common.

Such an important find here.

- Oh, yeah.

- Ophelia Rice's home.

- [Michael] Yeah, in the city directory.

(gentle music) - Here we are more than a hundred years later, and what do we have but MPD's ShotSpotter?

It's remarkable because we've been on this journey for so long, and to come to this space is a reminder both of the sites of trauma within the city and this history that still needs to be recovered.

(gentle music) (pensive music) - [Yohuru Williams] Downtown Minneapolis's bustling North Loop neighborhood has a trendy sheen that belies a violent history.

In 1934, these streets were stained with blood during the infamous 1934 trucker strike.

- [Reporter] In Minneapolis, a truck driver strike was climaxed by severe riots and fights between the strikers and the police.

- [Yohuru] That witnessed one of the most alarming instances of deadly force used by the government or police in the state's history.

- [Interviewer] What were you striving for, higher wages or the right to bargain?

- [Speaker] First of all, to have a union.

- [Yohuru] The Citizens Alliance, a powerful organization of business owners that operated as a union against unions, spent decades suppressing labor organizing in Minneapolis.

The Teamsters Union took them on, clashing with management and city authorities in what was then the market and warehouse district.

The Minneapolis police with their own union now established were literally in the middle of the deadly melee.

- [Speaker] There hadn't been a strike won in this city for about 16 or 18 years.

It smashed every little strike.

We knew that we had to be able to win the first strike.

We thought that was the most important thing of all, because if we didn't, well, you would never heard of any strikes here.

- Let's talk about the trucker strike 1934.

Very important moment in the history of this community and how it relates to this question of police reform.

- The trucker strike transforms the ways in which laboring people of every sort in the city of Minneapolis are able to think about themselves and able to organize.

So it's a very powerful moment on multiple levels, and of course, the police are at the center of that action.

- [Yohuru] It's a moment that underscores the paradox of a police union.

An entity that will become a bruising political force in the city in the early 21st century.

But that began as a real attempt to give police worker's rights and protections in the early 20th century.

(dramatic music) - [Lewis] My attitude towards the police department will be different than that of the ordinary police chief.

I have been a working man myself, and my sympathies are with the poor man.

- [Yohuru] Lewis Harthill's proletarian pronouncements upon becoming police chief aren't surprising when you know the mayor who appointed him.

Minneapolis Mayor Thomas Van Lear is one of a small number of socialists to become mayor of a large American city when he was elected in 1916.

As he took the reins in City Hall, like the mayors before and since, he quickly set to reforming the Minneapolis Police Department, including upping pay to lessen the temptation for graft.

He also appointed a fellow labor organizer and union member as chief.

- Since the 1890s, police departments and police officers around the country, despite the fact that they're being deployed time after time to put down labor uprisings, what you see is police officers themselves starting to think about like maybe we should have a union too.

It's contradictory, but like so much about the past, the contradictory is what unlocks this vision of how things might be different.

- [Yohuru] After a failed strike by Boston police in 1919, many city police unions collapsed, and the major unions refused to sponsor or support police union organizing for decades.

So during the 1920s, the Minneapolis Police Federation became one of the most visible and viable police unions in the nation.

- They emerge in the early 1920s as a pretty important force.

They're not engaged in collective bargaining, but they do represent the needs of police officers as city employees.

And they are actually even starting to participate in the local labor movement at the head of Labor Day parades here in the city of Minneapolis in the mid 1920s.

- [Yohuru] But Minneapolis was not a union town, and a circle of local business leaders, the Citizens Alliance, initially tolerated, but eventually went after the Federation, just like it did any other union in the city.

- The Citizens Alliance actually forced the police officers in 1927 to renounce their notions of a union.

The Police Officers Federation remains, but it's essentially an association rather than a labor organization.

- [Yohuru] This led to the pivotal moment in 1934.

- It's a moment of intense public disorder in what is already a really unsettling time.

So hundreds and hundreds of people are in the streets in the North Loop, strikers, protestors, as well as police officers, but those police officers are joined by these special deputies.

These are recently deputized citizens, mostly representing business interests.

Some of them are even small business owners, and they are there alongside the cops to have a show of force, a law and order show of force in the streets to ensure that this strike gets taken care of.

That's what the Citizens Alliance wants.

There are two kind of significant moments in this months-long labor dispute in the summer of 1934.

The first is in May.

That incredibly violent day in the streets of downtown Minneapolis in what is now the North Loop.

What you see is police officers actually pulling back, not engaging in what stereotypically, police officers had done.

That is to ensure through not just the threat of force, but through the use of force that strikers are put down.

Some of these deputies, these citizens find themselves abandoned on occasion by some of the cops who are supposed to be helping them.

And you see them complaining about the police.

The police are recalcitrant.

The police kind of disappeared on me when the strikers showed up with brick bats.

I looked around and the officer was gone.

By the time the violence crescendos a second time in July of 1934, the Citizens Alliance has really cracked down and the police force is definitely going to serve the interest of business.

There's no question of recalcitrance.

And you see the officers really unleashed.

- [Yohuru] So in July of '34 in the North Loop, police have indeed returned to the fold of the powers that be, this time with shotguns.

- [Reporter] In Minneapolis, a truck driver strike was climaxed by severe riots and fights between the strikers and the police with many casualties.

- Strikers arriving in trucks were drawn into what some researchers have described as an ambush.

Minneapolis police opened fire, several strikers were killed by police gunfire, and dozens were injured.

It's often said wounds produce narratives, and there's a definite narrative coming out of the trucker strike in 1934, both on the part of organized labor and on the part of the police.

What is the narrative for the police coming out in 1934?

What are the lessons learned?

- They have to line up.

They have to make sure that they are doing the work that the mayor and anyone who's bringing pressure on the mayor wants them to do.

In many ways, the truckers are successful, and they break the kind of overarching power of the Citizens Alliance.

Pro-business interests are gonna continue to remain significant in the city in the decades to come, and there will be a deep, deep gap between organized labor and businessmen in the city that lingers for decades.

- In the modern era, it isn't as obvious as the Citizens Alliance in terms of the pressure that business interests put on the mayor's office and put on by extension the MPD, but that doesn't mean it's not there.

When you have a downtown business district, then it's really about who's coming into your city.

And so all of these questions about how do we make downtown welcoming to the suburbanites become really important.

And so police have always played a really core role in creating and maintaining those zones.

Whenever there's a debate about the MPD about staffing levels, about priorities, those downtown business interests have an outsized voice in speaking to City Hall, because so much of the tax revenue of the city is dependent on downtown continuing to thrive.

(dramatic music) - [Yohuru] Early 20th century police made attempts to evolve and innovate.

The hiring of few Black officers was an early response to calls for more diversity among police departments that still echoes today.

And bringing women into the MPD was an effort to provide public safety and support for women encountering police on either side of the law.

Black pioneer Ethel Ray Nance was among these early officers referred to as police matrons.

But race, gender, and police have a fraught history in America, with interracial relationships being a beat aggressively patrolled by the Minneapolis police in this era.

This dynamic of white women, Black men, and police remains a dangerous triangle today, but it was even more perilous in the early 20th century as seen in the racist language from a Minneapolis law enforcement official's report.

- [Official] Instances of white women being abducted forcibly on the streets and attempts being made to do so have been more numerous.

One hardworking white woman barely escaped a burly negro driving a big, expensive car.

The police threw a dragnet over the negro district of the city and arrested and detained for examination 106 suspects.

Unless some method is devised to at least subdue the activities of these negroes, there are certain to be a series of race riots in Minneapolis, followed by the usual lynchings and killings.

- There's instances where mainstream newspapers in Minneapolis would glob on to an interaction between police and African American community members, and really incite this fear of a race riot happening.

- [Yohuru] Rising to the defense of Black people, along with civil rights organizations, was the local Black press, with a steady drumbeat of reporting on police harassment and brutality.

- You would see Black press papers really trying to dive into the issue of holding police officers accountable for their actions, getting witness testimony of what their accounts of the interaction was, and making sure it wasn't really one-sided, but making sure that public safety was at the forefront of their reporting - [Speaker] By just what lawful authority police take such action is not disclosed by state laws or city ordinances.

As long as a man or a woman is orderly and is a law abiding citizen, no police officer has a right to subject him to humiliation and abuse simply because one or the other of them does not happen to be of the same race.

- [Yohuru] I find the language in this op-ed both overly careful, but also courageous when you consider how this issue has always been the third rail in American race relations.

Moderate activism was a through line from Cecil Newman's Minneapolis spokesman in St.

Paul Recorder Papers, now the Minnesota Spokesman Recorder, one of the most important longest running Black newspapers in the nation.

- Cecil Newman was an early publisher for the Black press within the Twin Cities and was a huge advocate for disseminating information, not just African Americans, but to the community at large.

- [Yohuru] In the 1930s and 1940s, Newman's Papers center Black leaders like lawyer Lena Smith and their efforts to challenge police brutality, including a series of stories where Smith successfully had two abusive cops reassigned out of a Black community.

But the moderate Newman also prioritized and cultivated white allies and subscribers.

- An early tactic that Cecil Newman used was to get investment from the white community because he wanted more subscriptions.

He wanted more sponsors and advertisement in the newspaper.

He wanted to make sure that white folks understood what was happening in the Black community.

- The white politicians who wanted to maintain the support of the Black community realized that Newman was a way to do that.

So they had sort of a symbiotic relationship.

- [Yohuru] Iric Nathanson was a community organizer and political staffer in the '60s, and his contributed research and writing on the civic history of Minneapolis.

- Newman had very close ties to the DFL leadership.

- He was a really close friend with a lot of politicians, notably Hubert Humphrey.

- [Yohuru] Newman and Hubert Humphrey would become lifelong friends and allies.

When Humphrey became mayor of Minneapolis in 1945, many wondered, could this new era of Black and civic leadership finally bring real reform to the Minneapolis police?

(reflective music) - [Yohuru Williams] Within months of his victory at the polls, newly-elected Mayor Humphrey would be tested on his campaign promises of racial equity and police accountability.

- Humphrey's elected in June of 1945.

And at the end of August in 1945, there had been a police raid on the Dreamland Cafe on the city's South Side.

- [Yohuru] Dreamland Cafe is significant because it's run by- - [Michael] African Americans!

And in particular, Anthony Cassius.

- [Yohuru] Very important African American within the city.

- Not just for the African American community, but for organized labor, as well.

Because organized labor is a part of the coalition that has emerged behind Humphrey.

And of course, it's only a few years before that you have that incredibly deadly violent trucker's strike.

So this police raid on the Dreamland Cafe ends up with two African American women being arrested.

Because they refuse to talk to these officers who had not shown their badges, or described who they are, what they want.

They just start asking questions.

- Common lament, no proper identification.

Simply the exercise of police power.

And authority in ways that are not transparent to citizens.

- Exactly.

And when citizens assert their rights under the Constitution as these two women did, they found themselves under arrest.

(reflective music) Cecil Newman hears about this and he calls Mayor Humphrey in the middle of the night.

Mayor Humphrey and Cecil Newman meet at City Hall along with the detective who's in charge of the Morals Squad who led the raid.

- [Yohuru] And it's this access that Cecil Newman has to Humphrey that will allow that moderate voice to have some influence in a way that Humphrey's thinking about policing.

Specifically with regard to the Black community.

- When Newman articulates the needs, wants, and desires of Black folks in Minneapolis, Humphrey is listening to him and taking him seriously.

And that's relatively new.

That's not something that had happened in Minneapolis before.

That kind of access to power.

Humphrey figures out that these women should be released immediately.

He releases them and he takes them along with Cecil Newman to breakfast the next morning.

Famously... And of course, that's a story that spreads in the community.

This is a white mayor who's gonna take us seriously.

- So that mayoral intervention in that moment sends a message both to police and to the Black community.

What's that message?

- Well, the message is complicated as it turn out.

Because even though it seems like the police don't get what they want in this instance, because of course, these women get out of jail.

The officer who engages in that illegitimate arrest is not disciplined.

In fact, he's lifted up in the papers a few weeks later as an especially important detective.

So what you see is Humphrey kind of threading a needle here.

Ensuring that these women get out of jail quickly.

Ensuring that Black folks feel and know that they have been heard.

But in fact, not necessarily discipling the white police officers involved, either.

- [Yohuru] Humphrey would become a household name in American politics.

With his landmark civil rights speech delivered at the Democrat National Convention in 1948.

(audience cheering) - The time has arrived in America for the Democratic Party to get out of the shadows of states' rights and to walk forth rightly into the bright sunshine of human rights.

(group cheering) - [Yohuru] Humphrey came to this speech with solid civil rights footing.

Including a mayoral campaign focused on police reform.

Where the progressive Democratic Farmer Labor candidate built strong relationships in the Black and Jewish community.

With a promise to impress upon the police department the magnitude of Minneapolis's racial equity issues.

His innovation... A ground-breaking human rights training program for police.

(echoing music) - This idea of training police officers for racial bias.

Hubert Humphrey's early attempts at reforming the police.

Which is combining racial bias training with over-policing, we see those echos in today in the way that politicians view policing and controlling racial issues within police departments.

(reflective music) - [Yohuru] Humphrey still had to deal with corruption and graft in the Minneapolis Police Department.

- Humphrey did realize, yes, the cops were getting paid off.

And he said, "One of the ways that we can solve this "is to try to professionalize the force."

- [Yohuru] Hubert Humphrey was proud of what he called, "A new era in law enforcement."

The color-blind cop training, the anti-corruption efforts increased pay, and embracing the police union, were part of Humphrey's liberal law and order reforms.

- Enthusiastic and friendly politics.

And after everybody is- - [Michael Lansing] And then of course Humphrey would become one of the 20th century's leading liberal lights.

It's really critical to understand the ways in which Humphrey invents this new way of talking about Minneapolis.

And in some ways helps invent this liberal reputation for the city.

(upbeat music) (group applauding) - [Yohuru] But the rising political star wasn't long for City Hall.

(group applauding) (upbeat music) - Humphrey made his mark.

Now he only stayed for three years as mayor before he then goes off to Washington and the Senate.

(upbeat music) - [Yohuru] So once again a new mayor would have to establish his leadership of the police department.

In June of 1949, interim appointee, Mayor Eric Hoyer, ran to continue Humphrey's successful liberal law and order platform.

But shortly before the election, he fired the police chief for supporting his opponent.

Saying the chief had, quote, "Entered politics "when the police department should be kept out of politics."

When Hoyer made assurances with the Police Officers Federation, they wind up on his side against the dismissed chief.

(dramatic music) The union's leader, William Joyce, offered a curious critique of a police chief meddling in city politics.

- [Joyce] An attempt to influence government or the outcome of elections, have the makings of a police state a dangerous thing.

(pensive music) - [Yohuru] A warning?

A prediction?

An irony?

I'm not sure what the right word is to describe the police union's stance.

It's illusion to totalitarian states rang powerfully in that moment.

Given the recent defeat of Nazi Germany and the emerging cold war with the Soviet Union.

But the union support of Mayor Hoyer did bolster their political power.

And through the 1950s and beyond, further reform of the MPD would move further out of reach.

And racialized policing would start to include Native Americans.

Who's population in Minneapolis was growing.

In the 1950s, downtown building owner, Johnny Rex, filmed 16 millimeter footage of the places and people in the Gateway District.

The so-called Skid Row between the Mississippi River and the downtown core.

- The footage has riveted viewers for decades with its unflinching vivid documentation of the addicted, the underemployed, and the unhoused of the era.

(reflective music) The most difficult moments for me to watch are the brief appearances of Indigenous people.

The open wounds of colonization and historical trauma are evident.

Yet the so-called King of Skid Row behind the camera, along with many viewers over the past 75 years, remain unaware of the full context of these images and how Skid Row as a point of entry into the city would bring Native People under the racialized policing of American cities.

(reflective music) Historian Katrina Phillips of the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe, stresses the importance of understanding what brought Native People to the cities in large numbers.

And what they experienced when they got here, including racialized policing.

(reflective music) You talked about Federal Indian policies stating the Indian policy.

Can you unpack that a little bit for us?

- Minnesota has always been a native place.

But in this moment, right?

In the mid-20th century that's when you have an influx of Native folks from reservations because of what's known as relocation policy.

In 1956, Congress passes what's know as the Indian Relocation Act.

And the purpose of this act is to take Native folks off their reservations and move them into urban areas.

And so you have a large influx of Native People into urban spaces like Minneapolis.

The jobs that they are promised don't exist.

They face a lot of discrimination when it comes to employment.

The housing that they are promised, if they're even able to access it, is subpar.

And they become much more visible.

In some instances, they become hyper-visible.

And so with that added visibility they become a target, for in this instance, for the police.

(grim music) - The West is often framed in terms of this problematic notion of frontier.

And yet when we think about this in terms of policing, in particular, and the way that you talked about how Indigenous folks, Black folks are dealing with being over-policed and under-protected, their bodies and communities become an extension of this notion of frontier.

- I hate to say it, it's a great way to frame it.

Because when we think of the frontier, it's always painted as this lawless place that requires justice, that requires policing.

When you have the military that goes out and starts chasing Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce.

They're not just going after Sitting Bull.

They're going after his followers.

And so that policing never stops.

But it shifts from the cavalry at the Battle of Little Bighorn to police officers.

There is such a long and deep history of the policing and surveillance of Native bodies... And Black bodies.

That what we see happen in the 1960s, what we see happen in 2020... Is unfortunately not unique.

It is simply the manifestation of it in a different form.

(reflective music) - [Yohuru] According to human service research and news reporting from the late 1950s, Native Americans were over-represented in the work house.

Meaning police encounters were all too frequent.

(somber music) But across downtown from Skid Row, there was the Elliot Park House.

Where social worker and Red Lake band member, Daniel Hardy, worked in support of the growing urban Indigenous populations.

(somber music) And women's groups like the Broken Arrow Group and the white earth based, Sunshine Group, retained cultural and communal traditions in the city.

(reflective music) This cultural work, often led by women, would be the basis for Native self-help, cultural survival, resistance police abuses, and self-defense in the decades to come.

- [Katrina] But even in those urban centers, you have Native folks finding each other.

And they still find community.

(reflective music) - [Yohuru] By the early 1960s, the city charter would once again be the focus for police reform.

Michael's research reveals how the Police Federation successfully campaigned against an amendment that would have strengthened the mayor's role.

Police incurred support for friendly aldermen.

And a front-page newspaper photo of anti-amendment lawn signs being stored at police headquarters, stirred controversy of ramped-up police politicking.

The union also successfully lobbied for a charter amendment in their favor.

This one would lock in the ratio of sworn police officers to the city's population, ensuring that their be two cops for every 1,000 residents.

(somber music) Again, editorials to cry the rising policy influence of police officers and their union.

But the Police Federation's campaigning proved successful.

The charter was changed by voters in 1961.

The MPD and their union showed their political power as the new decade began.

(reflective music) (upbeat music) (bright music)