History of the African American Community of North Minneapolis >>>>> Part Four: 1970s into the New Millennium

Part Four:  North Minneapolis African American Community, 1970s into the New Millennium

 

By the early 1970s, the world that the young people who had grown up when Phyllis Wheatley, Sumner Field, Glenwood (now Theodore Wirth) Park, Sumner Elementary School, Lincoln Junior High, and North High School were in their heyday was gone.  In programming and service to the community, Phyllis Wheatley faded to a shadow of its former self;  in the mid-1960s, the old building had fallen to the forces of urban renewal and a new professional social work approach to providing an array of community services at separate locations.  Sumner Field had lost its own best programming and no longer offered the warming houses to ice skaters in winter and the friendly, concerned personnel that had staffed the park during the 1920s-1940s era.  Glenwood (Theodore Wirth) now seemed far away to a generation oriented more toward Plymouth and Broadway Avenues.  Sumner Elementary had succumbed to the construction of Olson Highway, Lincoln became an elementary school, and North High was housed in a new building that was increasingly filled with African American students, with scant evidence of the Jewish young people that had so outnumbered the African American kids just a few years before.

Ironically, in a country in which desegregation now was the official policy, African American kids grew up in a residential and academic world that became increasingly segregated.  Whites left the Northside and other inner city areas in great numbers.  As the previously restricted housing covenant eased, many middle class African Americans also chose to move to the suburbs.  By the 1980s, the Northside became the residential focus of another wave of migrants, this time from other northern cities, notably Chicago.  The quality of housing, education, social services, and standard of living in Minneapolis seemed to most of these new arrivals to be much better than that which had prevailed in their previous locales.  A few saw Minneapolis as relatively virgin territory to ply a trade in the newly popular drug of crack cocaine, or to establish a base for gang activity.

A number of new institutions arose to serve the needs of this less stable and more restive African American population.  From the late 1960s through the early 1980s, first Syl Davis and Gwyn Davis, then Spike Moss did their best to keep hope alive among African American young people with programming that in some ways was reminiscent, though with a much more activist edge, of that which had been offered by the old Phyllis Wheatley:  The Way and Opportunities Unlimited offered classes in African American history and culture, encouraged and developed talented young musicians (including Terry Lewis, Jimmy Jam, and Prince), sponsored marching bands, and inspired young people such as Bobby Champion, who would found the highly successful gospel choir, Excelsior.  In the early 1990s, The City, Inc., already operating on the Southside, would establish itself on the Northside and in many respects carry on the work of The Way.  Pilot City would come into a spot at Plymouth and Penn formerly occupied by a synagogue, bringing an array of medical and social services to a community in need.  Peter Hayden would found The Turning Point to help those who sought to put the world of drugs and addiction aside and begin life anew.  Eric and Ella Mahmoud would establish two promising new educational institutions, the Seed Academy for those of preschool age, and Harvest Prep for those at K-8.  Al Macfarlane would turn Insight News into a dynamic new African American newspaper, sponsoring also the influential Insight News Forum every Tuesday at Lucille’s Kitchen, and later a similar program, “Conversations,” on Mondays.  Alfred Babbington-Johnson, with his values-oriented entrepreneurial initiatives at Stairstep Foundation;  and Jerry McAfee, with his community outreach activities through his pastorate at New Salem Missionary Baptist Church, emerged in the 1990s to offer hope to people in a community searching for spirituality, meaning, identity, and economic uplift.   In the late 1990s, Sherrie Pugh would come on staff as the executive director of the Northside Residents Redevelopment Council, offering a creative vision of community beautification and more high-quality, affordable housing.  Clarence Hightower, inheriting the legacy of Gleason Glover and Gary Sudduth, would oversee the construction of an impressive new building at Penn and Plymouth, and a number of “continuous improvement” initiatives at the Minneapolis Urban League. 


Scott Gray's tenure as Minneapolis Urban League President/CEO was not successful.  The verdict on the current tenure of Steve Belton is still out. 

North Minneapolis, Past and Future

 

Young people on the Northside almost surely know the names and accomplishments of Terry Lewis, Jimmy Jam, and Prince.  They may very well know the names and the work of Spike Moss and Bobby Champion.  But there are a bevy of people who grew up in the older Northside, the world focused on 6^th Avenue and Phyllis Wheatley, who have achieved great things, who rest not on the tips of young tongues but who are now or have until recently graced life in North Minneapolis with their presence.  There are in fact too many to give proper due to all of them, so that a few examples must suffice. 


Just within the last few years those who knew Harry Davis and Earl Miller have been forced to witness the passing of their superlative lives.  Mr. Davis was the Golden Gloves mentor who emerged as a major municiple leader, and who ran for mayor in 1971.  Earl Miller, along with Nellie Stone Johnson, worked with DFL luminaries Orville Freeman and Hubert Humphrey to bring greater justice to working people.  Bertha Smith was a path-breaking Minneapolis teacher (there were no African American teachers in the city until the 1950s, and very few well into the 1960s) and guiding force in a number of community organizations.  Larry “Bubba” Brown exerted a steady presence that helped to bring a more diverse work force to Hughes Contractors and initiated a mentoring organization for Minneapolis youth.  Marion McElroy worked in local businesses and for several years in Washington, D. C., forging the kind career that gained for her a place on one recent list of 100 African Americans in the United States who have made outstanding contributions to community and nation.  Jack Hyatt was for many years a foreman at Onan Industries, where he mentored such other Northsiders as Melvin Stone.  Charles Beasley was a fine jazz musician who long led a band that played every week in St. Paul and select venues in the greater Twin Cities.

And there are many others, people whom these generally low-key and humble community elders would say deserve mention ahead of themselves.  All would wish that Richard Green, the Northsider who became the first African American superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools, could be counted among the living and thus mentioned with the others in the paragraph above.  They would say the same of Archie Givens, who rose from very humble roots to the status of Minnesota’s first African American millionaire, and whose legacy lives on in the Givens African American Literature Collection.  And they would likely say that Pauline Young, despite the fact that she is not a native Northsider, needs to be mentioned for the entrepreneurial energy that she and husband Sylvester brought to their hair salon and barbershop for many years on Plymouth Avenue.

Jack Hyatt, one of the great fountains of information whose memories have informed these pages, has said to me more than once, “I wish you could see 6^th Avenue and the old Northside through my eyes.”  Although I can’t literally do so, this gentle and articulate man brought me into a greatly enhanced line of vision of the community that he loves, and for which he retains great hopes. 


The overhaul of K-12 education as delivered by staff at the Minneapolis Public Schools will be key in fulfilling the hopes of the eminent Jack Hyatt and other stalwart Northsiders whose spirit guides our activism.