Whiteness in Plain View by Chad Montrie

Author:Chad Montrie
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Minnesota Historical Society Press

“A Better Chance”

Not surprisingly, the gauntlet the Taylors had to pass through to live in Morningside, and that other Black families had to navigate to move into all-White suburbs elsewhere in the Twin Cities metropolitan region, effectively dissuaded all but a handful of African Americans from making a similar move. Likewise, the early “black pioneers” who did venture into the White suburbs often struggled to be accepted. “Although Minnesota residents are working to bring about a total change in the ‘traditional’ community attitude,” the State Commission Against Discrimination reported in 1968, “there are at present, few communities which would welcome minority families into the mainstream of activity and encourage them to participate in the total spectrum of community life.” In fact, after Edina’s transformation from a racially integrated village of small farms to a racially exclusive “streetcar suburb,” there was no larger demographic or cultural shift there for quite a while, even after it reabsorbed Morningside in 1966. Except for the Taylors, the area remained all White until 1977, when Sandy Berman, a White librarian, moved in with his wife, Lorraine, an African American schoolteacher, and her two kids from a previous marriage to a Black man. They bought a house at 4400 Morningside Road, several doors down from the Hoags and a few blocks over from the Taylors, and nobody tried to stop them or harass them away. But while overt displays of racial prejudice may have been less tolerated, and some White residents continued to openly express their belief in racial equality, incremental change like this did little to fundamentally transform the suburb.29

Edina High School’s yearbook the Whigrean included a spread featuring A Better Chance participants, 1973. Courtesy Edina Historical Society

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.