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Morning Edition
Cathy Wurzer and Gracie Stockton

Mapping Prejudice Project granted access to Stearns County property records

Paper photocopies are spread out on a table
Students researched public databases to unearth some of the racial covenants that were once placed on properties throughout Stearns County.
Paul Middlestaedt for MPR News | 2023

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The University of Minnesota’s Mapping Prejudice project now has permission to search another county’s property records for racist housing deeds.

Stearns County commissioners voted earlier this week to approve a memorandum of understanding with the University of Minnesota Libraries so they could comb for racial covenants — clauses in property deeds that barred specific ethnic groups from owning homes or land.

Those covenants supported racist housing policies for decades.

A clause in a Mankato property
A clause in a Mankato property deed includes a racial clause only allowing the property to be owned by someone of the Caucasian race. Racial covenants in property deeds are no longer enforceable.
Jackson Forderer for MPR News | 2023

Brittany Merritt Nash, an assistant history professor at the College of St. Benedict and St. John’s University, has been working with her students to uncover dozens of deed restrictions in Stearns County. She said most people who look for racial covenants in their community find them, and she’s glad for the increased access to property records.

Related reporting

“The research about racial covenants more commonly occurs in large urban areas, and Stearns County, of course, has a small city — St. Cloud — and is also largely rural, so it is a little unique to find racial covenants in these areas further away from urban cores,” Merritt Nash told Morning Edition host Cathy Wurzer on Thursday.

Statewide, 77 percent of white Minnesotans are homeowners while just 32 percent of Black residents own homes, according to research from the Minnesota Housing Partnership. Merritt Nash said the homeownership rate for Black Minnesotans in Stearns County is just 8 percent.

A woman speaks while sitting at her desk
Brittany Merritt Nash leads a discussion about the findings her Community Histories students discovered in historical deeds in Stearns County in 2023.
Paul Middlestaedt for MPR News

“So we’re hoping to use this research to shed light on historic inequalities that continue to linger into the present, that can be used to create initiatives in this effort towards housing equity in the future,” Merritt Nash said.

Merritt Nash said community donors offered to cover the filing fee for Stearns County homeowners who want to discharge racist language on their deeds. While it doesn’t remove the covenant, discharging adds language saying the owner disavows the language.

MPR News correspondent Kirsti Marohn contributed to this story.