- Your forefathers have made this mistake and it cannot be remedied without a lot of pain and suffering and the expenditure of hard, cold cash.

- Reparations have recently reemerged as a national political talking point.

But the history of advocating for reparations from US slavery stretches all the way back to emancipation.

While there is disagreement on what exactly reparations entail, the root of reparations is in the word: repair.

Righting the historical wrongs and addressing the present day consequences.

While Minnesota was technically not a slave state, racism was weaponized here, through white violence, racial covenants, and more.

How can white Minnesotans today be a part, in ways large and small, of repairing the wounds caused by Jim Crow of the North?

(dramatic music) With St. Paul's recent action around reparations, Minnesotans were quick to point out that theirs was not a slave state.

But as Professor Christopher Lehman explains in his book "Slavery's Reach," slave trade money is in Minnesota's roots.

(steamstacks whistle) Wealthy southern slaveholders were warmly welcomed here as tourists and investors.

- Because so many southerners, so many slaveholders invested in Minnesota, their money from slave labor helped to build the state.

It helped to build neighborhoods.

A slave holder who owned 800 slaves gave a loan to the University of Minnesota, so slave labor's part of that institution, as well.

Slavery's history is Minnesota's history.

- [Acoma] Black people also lived and labored in our state as enslaved people.

In more recent times, racial covenants and redlining had a catastrophic impact on generations of Minnesotans of color.

These once-legal segregation tactics prevented large-scale homeownership by Black Minnesotans, and with it the generational wealth enjoyed by so many of their white counterparts.

- Helping people understand that racial covenants and the discriminatory policies have not only hurt Black and brown people, but they advantaged white people.

And I think white people need to understand more about where their wealth comes from and where their stability comes from, and oftentimes it's because of that discrimination.

- It was used as a powerful tool that locked out anyone who was not white from a neighborhood, a home, a block, a community.

When you look at the segregated places in Minneapolis, specifically the all-white neighborhoods, those are the neighborhoods that are often blanketed in racial covenants.

So they were effective.

They worked.

(dramatic music) - [Acoma] Housing discrimination was not the only weapon of racism in the north.

In 1931, the Lee family endured a staggering volume of threats and terror at the hands of their white neighbors.

Threats of violence were an everyday reality for Black folks in Minnesota.

- The law applies to FHAVA.

- [Acoma] We pulled an interview from our archives in which Minnesota Civil Rights legend Katie McWatt shares an experience from her childhood.

- I was born in Minnesota, in Minneapolis, and this was a predominantly white neighborhood.

I was walking home from school and some boys took my jump rope, I had a jump rope, and pretended they were going to string me up.

And that was frightening and upsetting.

I will never forget those incidents.

And also then my grandmother's--who lived with us-- reaction to those things when I told her about them which was that "You tell 'em if they do that again, tell 'em to come by here.

Your grandma will take care of 'em and will make chicken soup out of 'em.

You just go tell 'em that."

And I think that she and others in my family all had a way of coping with a prejudice and discrimination at that time, and one of the ways was you don't have to take it.

You can find ways to change or fight back.

- [Acoma] Katie McWatt was raised not to tolerate bigotry and then spent her life working towards racial justice and equity.

(bluesy piano music) There is much damage to repair, but where to begin?

Enter Free the Deeds, an artist activist group harnessing creativity for good.

- Free the Deeds is so ambitious.

Our vision and dream is to illuminate this hidden history.

The heart of this project is about every homeowner that discovers they have a racial covenant on their deed getting a lawn sign, putting it in front of their house.

We're hoping that people can travel all over the city of Minneapolis and see the places where these racial covenants literally lived.

I think I have one box of posters.

- [Acoma] Free the Deeds has a multi-faceted approach to their activism.

Lawn signs to visually depict this history of housing segregation throughout the city, art created to connect the public with the emotion and heart of this issue, outreach to educate neighbors, and reparations to transform the homeownership landscape in Minneapolis.

- Okay, you gonna put yours in?

And we're gonna be at farmer's markets in a lot of the neighborhoods where these covenants are handing out these lawn signs, asking people to look up their home, use the Mapping Prejudice Project to see if they had a racial covenant on their deed, work with Just Deeds to begin the process of erasing that covenant, bringing their lawn sign to their home, and starting to have those conversations with their neighbors.

- In fact, I had one of those conversations this morning with a neighbor who just moved in and he was walking his dog, and he said, "Great sign, but it's not all great news."

And I said, "You're right."

And then we had a conversation, and then he said, "Well, my house is new, so I guess I'm off the hook."

And I said, "Actually, let me get a map.

I'll show you."

And he realized it was the property that was at stake here, not his house.

And so he got more interested in it and feels like he can do something, too.

- We're really aiming at connecting the heart to this project.

Certain housing to be exclusively for white people.

This community and this country wants me to believe that I don't belong here, and sometimes that gets me down.

But I also have decided that I refuse to live that way.

I belong everywhere.

(people chatting) - We are the generation, it is us that get to rewrite that history.

And one of the major pieces of this project that we're really excited about is the chance for people to practice reparations.

So with every lawn sign that people purchase, or if people don't have a racial covenant, they're still more than invited and welcome to donate to a down payment assistance fund for African American families.

(piano music) (projector whirring) - [Acoma] Reparations to Black Americans have been linked to land ownerships since emancipation.

In 1865, reparations advocate Reverend Garrison Frazier said, "The way that we can best take care of ourselves is to have land, and turn it and till it by our own labor, and we can soon maintain ourselves and have something to spare.

We want to be placed on land until we are able to buy it and make it our own."

- There's a lot of resistance around this word "reparations" from white people, and I think it's a really critical conversation for white folks to be having with one another.

White folks need to be able to step up and step into that conversation with love.

- [Crowd] I can't breathe!

I can't breathe!

I can't breathe!

I can't breathe!

- [Diver] While there is some work that needs to happen in coalitions of folks that are not white, there are pieces that feel essential for white folks to get on board with, moving beyond guilt to say, "Okay, I'm here now.

What can I do?"

- [Woman] The African American community, it was close-knit.

- Realtors were heavily engaged in keeping Black people in Black spaces.

- He did everything he could to have us move someplace else.

(dramatic music)