Reporter’s notebook: Minneapolis police, Black men find common ground in Alabama’s past
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Editor’s note: This story includes a racial slur.
I’m often asked about my favorite stories I’ve covered as a reporter. That’s a hard question to answer after spending 35 years working in journalism, most of them as a local television reporter.
Rarely does anyone ask about my hardest moments. That question brings to mind a very vivid memory.
In December 2015, I stood in the middle of Plymouth Avenue in north Minneapolis facing the Minneapolis Police Department’s 4th Precinct building, watching angry officers and defiant community members clash.
Days earlier, police had shot and killed Jamar Clark, a 24-year-old Black man, during a confrontation. Community members wanted answers. Protesters blockaded the entrance to the 4th Precinct and the street outside.
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In front of me stood armed officers in riot helmets telling the crowd to disperse, and protesters screaming back and holding their ground. I saw the handcuffs come out and arrests happen. Police pulled down a “Black Lives Matter” banner from the building as they cleared out a spreading encampment. I could feel the distrust and rage between the mostly Black residents and mostly white officers.
The shooting and its aftermath pushed Minnesota to the center of a painful national debate over police, people of color and deadly force.
Months later, the Twin Cities would be torn again by another police shooting of a Black man, Philando Castile. In 2020 came George Floyd, killed by a Minneapolis police officer as he lay handcuffed and face down in the street, pleading that he couldn’t breathe.
‘You want me to go where? With who?’
Nine years after witnessing the battle for the 4th Precinct, I got a message from a manager at MPR News, where I host a morning talk show. The bosses wanted me to travel to Montgomery, Ala., a city at the center of the slave trade and the Civil Rights Movement, with a contingent that included 4th Precinct officers.
Reading the message, remembering what I witnessed in 2015 and the department’s history of dysfunction and accusations of violence, I thought, “You want me to go where? With who? Why?”
Turns out there was a good reason for the ask.
Emerging from the killings of Clark and Castile, a small group, the Police and Black Men Project, had formed to talk about the roots of their distrust. They included Minneapolis police officers, Black and white, along with Black community members, leaders of nonprofits, government agencies and private businesses. Some were once incarcerated. All have strong opinions about law enforcement. Group members have met regularly the past eight years.
They went to Montgomery in 2023 to tour museums and historical sites. They wanted to do something bigger in 2024, to go back to Alabama with a larger group and wider audience. They called MPR News.
Nine years after Jamar Clark’s killing, I was called again to witness police and Black men but in a very different way.
We were invited to go along in December and record the group’s private discussions as they processed what they had seen and heard at each of the tour stops. Our team included editor and producer Stephen Smith and freelance photographer Desmon Williams, who goes by “Dolo.”
In their conversations, this group explored a significant part of American history, one many people still struggle to discuss and understand or even acknowledge.
400 years of racial terror: Inside The Legacy Museum
We arrived in Montgomery on a Tuesday afternoon after flying from Minneapolis to Atlanta and then renting SUVs for the two-hour drive. The weather was terrible. Torrential rain and dangerous driving conditions. I wondered if it was some sort of sign of what’s to come.
We gathered with the group — all men — for dinner, the first of many meals these men would share. I discovered some of them have known each other for years and others are still getting to know each other.
The next morning, the officers and community members filed out of a hotel in downtown Montgomery, all dressed the same — hooded sweatshirts with artwork on the back and the words “Black Men and Police Project” and “Peace” and “Alabama 2024.” On the back, there’s an image of a handshake between a black and a white hand with the downtown Minneapolis skyline in the background.
The design was created by teenagers in a life-skills mentoring program run by group member Jamil Jackson. It’s called Change Equals Opportunity. Jackson is also head basketball coach at Minneapolis Camden High School and one of the founders of Freedom Fighters, which focuses on public safety.
Throughout the next few days these sweatshirts would turn heads. Passersby would ask them questions about the Police and Black Men Project as the group walked down the street and waited in lines at restaurants and museums.
On this day, our first stop is The Legacy Museum. This is a place to learn about 400 years of American history involving slavery, racial terrorism, legalized segregation and mass incarceration in a way that pulls you into the past.
The museum sits on the site of a cotton warehouse where enslaved Black people were forced to work when the cotton economy drove American slavery. I can’t bring my microphone in for what seems to me an excellent reason — to respect the solemnity of a museum dedicated to the memory of a national atrocity.
Organized evil
Moments after stepping into the first area of the exhibit space, you find yourself in darkness, standing in what looks, feels and sounds like the bottom of the ocean. You’re introduced to the terrifying expanse of the Atlantic Ocean that more than 13 million Africans were forced to cross in slave ships. Nearly 2 million of them died in this Middle Passage.
You’re surrounded by underwater sculptures of human bodies, looking at what appears to be the heads, shoulders and arms of enslaved Africans who died after being chained together and then forced onto ships during the transatlantic slave trade. Many of them died from illnesses on the ships due to the horrific conditions. Their bodies were thrown in the ocean.
The facial expressions portray horror and despair. As you look at them or try not to, you’re hearing the sounds of waves.
Later in the day in small group discussions, I listened to the officers and community members discuss what it was like to walk through this display. Several described the experience of feeling shook to the core as they took in this particular scene at the start of the tour.
George Warzinik, a sergeant in the Minneapolis 4th Precinct, said later he was shocked by the organized evil of lynching.
“My image was always this mob stormed the police station or something, the officers are overwhelmed or whatever, looked away. But there was a headline that said there's a lynching scheduled for tomorrow at 5 o’clock. This is cold calculated. This is, it’s booked, it's scheduled, and the governor said he couldn’t do anything about it. The governor!” said Warzinik.
“We’re not talking about the local police guy down there with two, two deputies who’s overwhelmed. So, the kind of organizational part of it, you know, that’s just really struck me.”
As we continue to walk through the exhibit spaces, we move into a section about mass incarceration. You can sit down on a stool and pick up a phone and watch a video that depicts a prisoner welcoming your visit.
Each person tells you about the conditions inside the prison and declares their innocence in a crime that landed them behind bars. These are stories told by real incarcerated people.
It was after sitting through these video testimonials that I needed a break and went and sat in the women’s restroom for a few minutes.
‘Not a glimmer of hope’
Later in the museum cafeteria filled with students, we met for lunch over delicious soul food to talk about what we’ve seen. Moving into small groups in a private room, I heard the men share their thoughts about what they’d seen.
Like Warzinik, group leader Bill Doherty was struck by the banal efficiency of enslaving and terrorizing people. A retired University of Minnesota professor, his family foundation helped pay for the trip in 2024.
“One of the things I got this time is that it takes organization and big systems to do this kind of evil. It's not just in the hearts of individuals,” he said.
“I never knew how much the banking system was involved in, in slavery and the slave trade, but slaves were collateral for loans. So the banks were supporting the system by saying, ‘Yeah, you got 12 slaves. I'll lend you this money.’ Oh my goodness,” he said.
Sherman Patterson, vice president of a Minneapolis nonprofit called Lights On!, noted a quote on the wall about the loss of hope: “I was taught that there was hope after the grave. I lost all hope after I was sold to the South.”
“Just think about that, what that’s saying,” said Patterson. “That’s just, not a glimmer of hope. That’s just pure hell. And then the woman who was raped several times and had the kid by her master and she defended herself and killed him and then the justice system said you have no right to defend yourself,” said Patterson, one of the elders in this group.
“I grew up in Savannah, Georgia,” he added. “I grew up in true segregation as a kid up until 1975 and saw those things. My grandmother was born in 1919 and sitting on a porch watching her be calling the nigger and all of this here. We could not go downtown in certain places because we were taught you can’t, you better not, and this is what you do. So there is anger, but being with this group, this is why we’re here. There’s hope. There is hope and we’re moving forward.”
We stop next at the Freedom Monument Sculpture Park. It’s a 17-acre site overlooking the Alabama River and the city of Montgomery. On this river, tens of thousands of enslaved people were transported in chains to the slave market. Many, many thousands toiled in fields and factories up and down the Alabama River. And Montgomery was one of the largest slave-trading centers in the United States.
‘One heart, and it bleeds the same color’
On Day 2, we went to First Baptist Church on the edge of downtown Montgomery. It’s a handsome red brick building with a bell tower and a large, round stained glass window. First Baptist was founded in 1867.
It is one of the first Black churches in the Montgomery area and became one of the largest Black churches in the South. It played a huge role in the Civil Rights Movement. The Rev. Ralph Abernathy, a close friend and associate of Martin Luther King Jr., was pastor.
In the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955 and 1956, First Baptist was a community organizing center. During the Freedom Rides of 1961, this church was besieged for a time by a huge white mob threatening to burn it down.
I’d been looking forward to this visit. I grew up in Black Baptist churches in rural communities in southern Virginia. My grandparents raised me, and my grandfather was the pastor of several churches when I was a child. We were greeted in the parking lot by an older Black man, Deacon Emeritus Howard Davis, who reminded me of my grandfather.
Davis, 81, was baptized at the church and spent his entire life there as an active member and leader. He greeted each of the men in the group with a smile and a handshake. He shared a bit of the history of the church and the role the building and the people who sat inside it played during the Civil Rights Movement.
He described how his family taught him to stay away from white people, particularly white women and girls, and how to this day white women make him nervous. He understands the flip side of that and how white children were told to stay away from Black people and fear them, and how that affects how many of them view Black people today.
He also spoke of the modern day challenges that Black people face. He took questions from men in the group and didn’t hesitate to shake his head at times and admit he didn’t have the answer. At one point one of the group members asked him to pray for them, and he did.
Our next stop was Montgomery’s former Greyhound Bus Station, now the Freedom Rides Museum. In 1961, teams of volunteers from the North and South challenged the Jim Crow practice of racially-segregated travel on buses and trains in the South.
The Freedom Riders were mostly young people, Black and white. They were arrested for violating state and local segregation laws by riding together and ignoring the segregated seating. Local police in many southern towns let the Ku Klux Klan and other mobs attack them.
Here, I recorded audio of an interview with community member Brantley Johnson. He reflected on what he saw and how he felt about going on this trip.
Johnson said he ran with a gang in Minneapolis and ended up in prison. “When I got out, I promised my kids that I would never leave them again.” He’s been part of regular meetings around the 4th Precinct and has been trying to work on ways to build trust between police officers and residents.
“We have to meet them at their hardest moments, just like they have to meet us at our hardest moments,” he said of the police. “Because at the end of the day, we all have one heart, and it bleeds the same color, no matter what.”
Later, we head to the Rosa Parks Museum on the campus of Troy University. Parks played a pivotal role in the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott. She refused to give up her seat in the so-called “colored section” so that a white woman could have it. Parks was arrested for violating the local bus segregation law.
In response, Montgomery’s Black community boycotted the bus system for more than a year. The protest brought King, then a local pastor, to national prominence and led eventually to the U.S. Supreme Court declaring bus segregation unconstitutional.
Our last two stops on this trip are a walking tour of downtown Montgomery and then the National Memorial for Peace and Justice. It’s a profoundly moving 6-acre site in downtown Montgomery. Out of respect for the solemnity of this space, we’ve been asked not to record audio during the visit.
The group splits into smaller groups and scatters in different directions. I follow a group up a hill to what’s known as the lynching memorial.
I’ve been there before. A year ago while attending a conference in Birmingham, my husband and I drove to Montgomery to visit The Legacy Museum and the memorial.
I found a monument with the name of a city very close to where I grew up, Danville, Va. The first name on the monument was of a man whose last name was Davis and I took a picture of it. Edward Davis, 11.03.1883. That’s when he was lynched. I wonder if we’re related.
Courage to say ‘No’
We return to Minneapolis, where the temperature is in single digits, a little colder than the 50s in Alabama.
Not only is the weather different, the men appear different than they were when we gathered at the gate to board our flight days earlier.
That morning they were relaxed, even joking around with one another. Now the mood is more somber and the facial expressions appear to be more reflective. I sense a new confidence in them. To me they look like they are ready to approach future interactions with more knowledge and understanding, more empathy.
At different points of the trip, many of the men said they were surprised by how much of the history of this country is not taught in schools. Some seemed troubled by how much they didn’t know.
The group disperses at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. I can tell everyone’s eager to go home. I know I am. I want to be alone with my thoughts and there’s a lot to think about.
Like, how does one person change things? How does a small group bring change to a whole police department? How does a small group of community members bring change to a whole city?
When I get home, I immediately start to unpack. Most of my souvenirs are clothes, including the navy blue T-shirt I bought at the Rosa Parks Museum. It has a small drawing of her face on the right sleeve and on the front there’s one word followed by a period.
It simply says “No.”
Rosa Parks became famous for the moment in time when she’d had enough of racial segregation, injustice and violence. She said no. When I saw that shirt hanging on a wall in the museum gift shop I screamed “Yes!” I searched for my size and bought it.
Back at home in St. Paul, I’m wondering why that shirt speaks to my heart in such a profound way?
I think it’s because it represents a response from a Black woman living at a time when America was at a breaking point. Much like I feel we are today. And the answer to the problem on that day on the bus for Rosa Parks, was a bold refusal to continue on the same path.
It takes courage to say no when it’s easier and safer to say yes.
What I saw in each of the men I spent four days with in Montgomery was a bold refusal to continue on the same path.
Each brought curiosity to every site we visited. Each brought an understanding they have a lot to learn. Each sought a way to take something they learned in Montgomery back to Minneapolis and put it to work, taking law enforcement and community relations in a different direction.
History has shown us where racial segregation and abuse of power lead. My question is this: What will you say when presented with circumstances that don’t feel fair and equitable?
What will you do when you are encouraged to go along to get along, even if those actions reinforce racism and division? Will you say “No”?
Angela Davis hosts MPR News with Angela Davis, a weekday talk show that airs at 9 a.m. She’s been a journalist for more than 30 years in the Twin Cities and across the country.