Feb 20, 2025 Story by: Editor
Maplewood, Minnesota, a suburb of St. Paul, is home to approximately 40,000 residents today. However, when journalist Lee Hawkins and his family relocated there 50 years ago, its population was about 25,000, with 90% of residents being white.
Hawkins recalled that his family settled in a concentrated area of Black families, an enclave spanning roughly 20 square acres. Despite being a place where Black families could establish their lives, “Black Maplewood,” as Hawkins referred to it, was not always welcoming. He remembers being called racial slurs at school and hearing them shouted from passing cars while riding his bike.
Mark Haynes, a childhood friend of Hawkins, described the community as deeply connected:
“It was like family, you know. All of them are like aunts and uncles to me, cousins,” Haynes said. “It just felt like they were having a lot of fun. I think there was an investment club, too.”
However, this community was built through perseverance. The first Black families arrived in Maplewood only about 30 years before Hawkins’ time. In the early years, these families endured acts of racial terror, including cross burnings and dead animals left on doorsteps. Yet, despite the challenges, they persisted, paving the way for future generations.
Breaking Barriers in Housing
The foundation of Black Maplewood can be traced back to James and Frances Hughes, who played a pivotal role in establishing a Black presence in the suburb. Their journey began with a land purchase that allowed Black families to secure better housing, education, and safer living conditions.
“My grandpa was able to find someone that actually sold the land to him out there, and that’s where it all started, really,” said Carolyn Hughes-Smith.
The road to homeownership, however, was fraught with obstacles. Frances Hughes explained the struggles in a 1970s interview, which Marketplace accessed with support from the Alicia Patterson Foundation:
“It was just after the war. There was a tremendous shortage of housing, and a great deal of new development was going on to try to fix that,” she said. “But, my dear, Negroes couldn’t even buy a lot in these developments. They didn’t need deed restrictions to turn us away. They just refused to sell.”
Fortunately, one landowner defied this practice. Frank Taurek, a white farmer, and his wife, Marie, sold the Hughes family 10 acres of land for $8,000. This was despite a St. Paul real estate company attempting to derail the sale by offering an additional $1,000 to keep Black families out.
“The farmer could have very easily accepted the $1,000 and told us ‘no,’ and there would have been nothing we could have done,” Frances Hughes said.
Expanding Housing for Black Families
Once they secured the land, the Hughes family helped others access housing. This effort coincided with the construction of Interstate 94, which displaced many Black families from the Rondo neighborhood in St. Paul, including Hawkins’ family.
Ann-Marie Rogers, another Maplewood resident, noted: “So at that time, I imagine Mr. Hughes had the surveyors come out and divided up into, you know, individual living blocks.”
The necessity of this initiative was evident. “Housing for Blacks was extremely limited after the freeway went through and took so many homes,” Frances Hughes recalled in her 1970s interview. “We wanted to sell to Blacks only because they had so few opportunities.”
This chain reaction of land sales provided families like the Hawkins’ a path to homeownership and economic stability.
Uncovering a Hidden Legacy
This history was largely unknown to the descendants of Frank Taurek until Hawkins reached out to his great-granddaughter, Davida Taurek.
“When I received your email, it was quite shocking … like that somehow I could be, in this weird way, part of this amazing story of making a difference,” she said. “You know, like you said, that there’s generational wealth that’s now passed down that just didn’t really exist.”
Hughes-Smith reflected on the significance of her family’s efforts: “What makes me happy is our family was a big part of opening up places to live in the white community.”
The Enduring Impact of Racial Covenants
The challenges Black families faced were not isolated incidents but part of a broader system of racial discrimination. One of the most significant barriers was racial covenants—clauses in property deeds that prevented Black families and other marginalized groups from purchasing homes.
According to historian Penny Petersen of Mapping Prejudice, Minnesota played a major role in this discriminatory practice. The first known racial covenant in the state dates back to 1910, a decade before such restrictions became widespread nationally. By the 1920s, developers such as Samuel Thorpe of Thorpe Brothers had incorporated racial covenants into numerous Minneapolis properties.
Thorpe also held leadership roles in the real estate industry, serving as president of what is now the National Association of Realtors. Under his leadership, racial covenants were codified into the organization’s ethics guidelines in 1924, leading to their proliferation across the country.
Minnesota’s government also contributed to this discriminatory system. Before becoming lieutenant governor, state legislator Thomas Frankson developed a subdivision in St. Paul’s Como Park neighborhood, which explicitly excluded Black buyers.
Although the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1948 that racial covenants were unenforceable, they persisted for decades. Minnesota officially outlawed them five years later, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968 banned them nationally. However, their effects remain visible today. Research indicates that properties with past covenants tend to have higher present-day home values.
A new analysis by the APM Research Lab highlights the disparities that resulted from this history: while 77% of white families in Minnesota own homes, only 32% of Black families do.
The Ongoing Fight for Housing Equity
Margaret Thorpe Richards, a Minnesota real estate agent and granddaughter of Samuel Thorpe, only learned about these covenants in 2019 while serving on the board of the Minneapolis Area Association of Realtors.
“I was horrified. It felt shameful. I’m not going to fix anything, but I would like to show up in a way that says I think this was wrong and I’d like to help make it right,” she told Hawkins.
In 2020, the National Association of Realtors formally apologized for past discriminatory practices, followed by a similar statement from Minneapolis Area Realtors.
Jackie Berry, a board member at Minneapolis Area Realtors, underscored the severity of the issue: “That’s an incredible spread in the housing disparity gap that we have. If we’re talking about Minnesota, in comparison to other states, we are one of the worst with that housing disparity gap.”
Minnesota’s current lieutenant governor, Peggy Flanagan, who holds the same office Frankson once did, is pushing for the state to acknowledge its role in housing discrimination.
“I think that an apology is powerful,” Flanagan said. “But in the same way that I think things like land acknowledgments are powerful, if you don’t have policies and investments to back them up, then they’re simply words.”
Flanagan pointed to initiatives aimed at closing the racial homeownership gap, including down payment and loan assistance programs for first-time homebuyers.
“I think when we increase homeownership rates within our communities, it’s a benefit to the state as a whole,” she said.
The story of Black Maplewood serves as a testament to the resilience of Black families who fought for their place in Minnesota’s suburbs—while highlighting the work that remains in the pursuit of housing equity. Source: Market Place
