The Mapping Prejudice Project at the University of Minnesota’s John R. Borchert Map Library taps into a growing community interest to confront painful legacies of racism and to work towards a more equitable future.

The project aims to change Minneapolis for the better and its first legislative victory came this spring at the Minnesota State Capitol Building. Gov. Tim Walz signed a new law that allows Minnesota homeowners to amend their property deeds in order to denounce racist language that was added to many deeds in the early 20th century.

The new law came about because of persistent work by activists who were inspired and supported by the findings of the University Libraries’ Mapping Prejudice Project. Project leaders uncovered, documented, and mapped the systematic use of property deeds to enforce racial segregation in the Minneapolis area.

More than a million Hennepin County deeds were processed to reveal over 38,000 restricted deeds. These documents were then transcribed and verified by a team of six researchers and a volunteer force of 2,924.

According to Project Director Kirsten Delegard, “Libraries are the best incubator for new forms of research and scholarship that can serve the needs of our communities.” 

Origins of Mapping Prejudice

“Minneapolis has some of the highest racial disparities in the country and I was interested in looking at the past to understand how we got to that place,” Delegard said.

This research question grew out of Delegard’s work with the Historyapolis Project, which she founded in 2013. Historyapolis brought history alive for the general public by using social media and other digital tools to share images, documents, and stories from Minneapolis’ complicated past.

When Delegard began searching the archives for evidence of racial disparities in Minneapolis history, she found a set of documents that had created a system of racial segregation starting in the early 20th century. These documents were housing deeds that included something called a racial covenant — a racist clause that restricted the sale of certain houses and lots based on a person’s race. White people could purchase, but Black and brown people were excluded.

Although racial covenants have been illegal since the Fair Housing Act of 1968, the racist language remains present in many housing deeds today. 

It was clear to Delegard that these covenants were worth further research. As she saw it, racist housing practices enshrined inequality in the law, creating unequal opportunities that could have repercussions lasting well beyond the time period when covenants were enforced. Delegard imagined it would be possible to create an interactive map that would show the spread of racial covenants through different Minneapolis neighborhoods over time. Such an illustration would be dynamic and compelling — and critical for educating the public about a painful part of Minneapolis history that had remained hidden in a set of housing records.

Problem solving and team building

Delegard contacted Penny Petersen, a local historian and author with decades of experience researching historic property records in Hennepin County. Petersen had relied on property records to plot the boundaries of Minneapolis’ long-forgotten brothel district for her book Minneapolis Madams: The Lost History of Prostitution on the Riverfront. She knew that Delegard’s proposed project would not be easy.

“I thought it was an intriguing idea, but an overwhelming one. I don’t think she was aware there are millions and millions of deeds and, really, where do you start?” Petersen said.

In addition to the overwhelming number of documents, Delegard’s project would also need some very specific expertise...