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- [00:02]
Melissa Townsend
Lemonader. Previously on Ghost of a Chance.
- [00:10]
Eric Roper
A group of black families lived in and around my neighborhood. And then by 1940, almost all of those families are gone. And one of these families lived in my house. Their names were Harry and Clementine Robinson.
- [00:27]
Melissa Townsend
For more than four years, Eric has been searching for every detail he can find about the Robinsons.
- [00:34]
Bill Greene
You're not property anymore. That's a very different disposition on life. You know, he was excelling in every way.
- [00:40]
Melissa Townsend
And that very much impresses me because if they stayed in Mecca, there's nothing there for them. The elation turned to disappointment must have been palpable. I mean, I can't imagine she's living.
- [00:52]
Eric Roper
In this boarding house at 1107 Harrison street and who else is living in this boarding house? A man named Harry Robinson.
- [01:01]
Bill Greene
If you're black in Kansas City at.
- [01:03]
Melissa Townsend
That moment before the great migration, it's a really tenuous place to be and.
- [01:09]
Bill Greene
Moment to be there.
- [01:10]
Eric Roper
You know, they came to Minnesota to find something a bit better than where they were. The hope that the farther north you go, the better off you're gonna be as a black person in America.
- [01:22]
Kirsten Delegarde
You don't understand a lot of things.
- [01:24]
Bill Greene
Now, but later on you will.
- [01:33]
Eric Roper
You're listening to Ghost of a Chance from the Minnesota Star Tribune. This is the story of my search to find out what happened to Harry and Clementine Robinson. I'm Eric Roper.
- [01:43]
Melissa Townsend
I'm Melissa Townsend.
- [01:45]
Eric Roper
This is episode two.
- [01:52]
Melissa Townsend
Save on feel good favorites with great everyday prices at Whole Foods Market. Look for the yellow low price signs throughout the store on quality proteins like responsibly farmed Atlantic salmon. Prioritize well being for less with 365 by Whole Foods Market supplements and delicious smoothie ingredients like organic whole strawberries and almond milk. Don't sacrifice quality shop. Great daily prices at Whole Foods Market store and online. When Eric started his search to find out what happened to Harry and Clementine Robinson once they arrived in Minneapolis, he realized the local mainstream newspapers didn't cover the black community here very much. But lucky for him, the black newspapers from the 1900s had recently been digitized. They were online, and they were a gold mine. In 1908, there was a black newspaper published in St. Paul, Minnesota. In it was called the Appeal. It was one of the premier black newspapers in the Midwest.
- [02:51]
Eric Roper
The Appeal and the other black newspapers like it were sort of like my time machine into this period to sort of hear what are people saying? We can see both national news and also opinionated editorials.
- [03:02]
Melissa Townsend
The editor of the Appeal at the time was a man named J.Q. adams. And J.Q. adams had a daughter. Her name was Adena Gibbs. This is an old recording of her part of a set of oral histories at the Minnesota Historical Society. And she's talking about why her father published the Appeal. My father wanted so much to educate colored people to be decent, to be upright. He always wanted them to appear in a right light. I have recollections of his telling them when they were in groups that they didn't behave themselves. You know, he just tell them, don't act like this. Don't let these people see you acting like this.
- [03:54]
Kirsten Delegarde
Newspapers defined respectability.
- [03:58]
Melissa Townsend
Bill Greene is an historian based in the Twin Cities.
- [04:01]
Kirsten Delegarde
That's one source of knowing what we need to do in order to be respectable. And that's one reason why they were so important to the black community.
- [04:12]
Eric Roper
You see a lot of images of people's houses on occasion today, we would find that very odd to just put a bunch of people's houses in the paper. But it's sort of a celebration of, here's who we are, here's where we live, here's what we have accomplished.
- [04:26]
Melissa Townsend
And then there are the social pages.
- [04:32]
Eric Roper
When you read it, it's like social media today, with people tagging where they are, who they're with, what they're doing.
- [04:38]
Melissa Townsend
We asked a man named John Coleman to read the headlines from the black newspapers. He's a voice actor based in Minneapolis.
- [04:44]
John Coleman
The May party given by Madame Nellie Hale McCullough at Holcomb Hall Wednesday night was a most delightful affair, which was well attended. Ms. Bertha Clay was crowned Queen of May.
- [05:00]
Melissa Townsend
If you were hoping to aspire to the middle class like we think Harry and Clementine were, the paper told you how you needed to present yourself. And so it's a good sign that after Clementine finished her course at the Mueller School of Dermatology and joined Harry in St. Paul, it was posted in the Appeal newspaper.
- [05:20]
Eric Roper
It's dated May 2, 1908. And this is kind of a cosmic date that we see throughout the story because that was Harry and Clementine's shared birthday.
- [05:30]
John Coleman
Ms. Clementine Brown, a graduate of Moeller College of Dermatology, Chicago, is in the city, the guest of Mrs. Willis Green. She contemplates following her profession if the field looks good.
- [05:43]
Eric Roper
So then I found a marriage certificate that showed that just a month after Clementine arrived in Minnesota, she and Harry got married.
- [05:50]
Melissa Townsend
And for a long time, that's where their trail ended. Eric knew they would end up in his house in 1917, but he didn't know how they got there.
- [06:04]
Eric Roper
I'm searching, I'm searching online for quite some time and finding. Finally I found some clips in the Twin City Star newspaper saying Mr. And Mrs. Robinson of Duluth are visiting some friends. And then I think, well, that's interesting. And I start to poke around Duluth more, and I find a Harry Robinson in the city directory. And he's working as a chef, and he's also listed as working as a cook. And he's living right next to the primary Black Church of Duluth.
- [06:36]
Melissa Townsend
So he found Harry Robinson, but Eric still couldn't find Clementine.
- [06:40]
Eric Roper
You know, I had tried, like, Clementine Robinson, Harry Robinson, looking keyword searches. I'm getting really nothing. I'm getting some other Harry Robinsons. Then I start seeing though C.H. robinson and I'm like, oh, that's interesting because Clementine went by CH Once in a while later on. And then I look at these classified ads and it's like, Mrs. C.H. robinson is a dermatologist.
- [07:02]
John Coleman
Okay, Mrs. C.H. robin, graduate of dermatology to do your hairdressing, manicuring, hand massage, facial massage, shampooing, singeing, dyeing and bleaching. Scalp treatment, a specialty. Special attention to residents and hotel calls.
- [07:21]
Melissa Townsend
So Eric actually dug up a textbook from the Mohler School of Dermatology to figure out if there was a match between what Clementine learned in school and the services offered in these classified ads. He really wanted to be sure this was Clementine.
- [07:36]
Eric Roper
She's doing everything. It's like almost like chapter by chapter, it's the hair, singeing the hair, the bleaching, I mean, everything, one by one, it's matching up with that textbook. And I'm like, okay, got it. And I knew for sure that they were living in Duluth.
- [07:53]
Melissa Townsend
Now, for those of you not in Minnesota, Duluth is a small city in northern Minnesota. Right on the shores of Lake Superior is about 90 miles to the Canadian border, as the crow flies. When Eric told me Harry and Clementine were in Duluth, I was like, why? What's in Duluth that would draw a young black couple in 1908?
- [08:15]
Eric Roper
Duluth is a boom town in this period, basically. In addition to sawmilling, which is a huge industry, and lumber, you have one of the largest reserves of iron ore in the countries on the iron range of northern Minnesota. And there's a lot of foreign born people living there. For example, you have a lot of Finnish immigrants who are arriving there. And sometimes it's known as the Helsinki of America. And this stuff gets shipped out to the rest of the country through the Port of Duluth. And so what you have are iron mining magnates, steel magnates. There's a saying around Duluth that it had the most millionaires per capita in the United States.
- [08:52]
Melissa Townsend
Eric knew a lot about Duluth, but what he didn't know was what it was like to live there as a black person in the early 1900s. And this is when Eric began to see a side of Minnesota that he never knew.
- [09:07]
Eric Roper
I found this old recording of a woman named Ethel Nance. She was a black woman who grew up in Duluth. And when I checked the city directories, I realized that Harry and Clementine moved into the neighborhood where she grew up. She said her father worked on the boats at the port and in the hotels in town. And in this old recording, she talked about the time that he bought their first house in Duluth.
- [09:31]
Bill Greene
He came down and was walking around the back of the house, and the neighbor woman came to her door and stood there with her arms akimbo. And he said he purposely walked slowly to give her a chance to really get riled up. And when he came up close enough, she said, I hope you don't think you're going to live there. And he said, well, I was thinking about it. But he didn't tell her that he.
- [09:56]
Melissa Townsend
Already owned the place. Ethel said once her family moved in, the neighbors didn't become any more friendly. Neighbors on one side of the house built a fence that she called a spite fence. The only thing you could see out the windows of the house was the fence. So her father built another story onto the house to see above the fence. But then the neighbors on the other side of the house sabotaged their drainpipe.
- [10:21]
Bill Greene
But it was raining, and I came in and said, Mrs. Rickard, move the water pipe. At that time, we had a family living in the basement, and it meant by turning that water pipe, the water would go into a window.
- [10:37]
Eric Roper
You know, I've heard a lot about the history of Duluth. I hadn't heard about the attitudes that black people were putting up with. I'm sure that has, like, a powerful impact on people's psyche over times in neighborhoods like this.
- [10:49]
Melissa Townsend
In that recording, Ethel Nance said it did have an impact on her father.
- [10:53]
Bill Greene
Well, he always said that these people were antagonistic and didn't want us there, and he didn't want us to run errands or do anything at all for them and really didn't want us to talk to them.
- [11:08]
Melissa Townsend
There's a book that came out in 2022 that includes some of this history. It's written by a man Named Chad Montreal. So Eric reached out to him and he asked, what should I know about the experience of black residents who were living in Duluth in the early 1900s? And Chad said at the time, Duluth was very racially segregated. And where you could live, where you could socialize, where you could work.
- [11:33]
Eric Roper
A lot of them work as waiters.
- [11:36]
Melissa Townsend
Or they work as elevator operators or custodians.
- [11:39]
Chad Montres
Whites do not let them have access to most other jobs.
- [11:44]
Eric Roper
Now, obviously, this is commonplace in the Jim Crow south, but Harry and Clementine, you know, they moved north to get away from that. And Minnesota was supposed to be different.
- [11:54]
Melissa Townsend
Eric knew that in southern states from Maryland to Texas, there were Jim Crow laws that required racially segregated schools, railroad cars, parks, even jails. Many states made interracial marriage illegal. But he also knew that that wasn't the case in Minnesota. In fact, at the time, there was a law on the books that made it illegal to discriminate against black people in public places. So Eric asked historian Bill Greene about it, and Bill said it was a paradox. Not just in Duluth, but across Minnesota.
- [12:30]
Kirsten Delegarde
There are two Minnesotans, one that is high minded and liberal and coexisting at that time. There's another group of whites who are anything but, and they tend to be in the majority. They seemed to elect progressive leaders, but it didn't really relate to them being progressive towards blacks. Discrimination was widespread. Blacks couldn't go into hotels, couldn't go into restaurants, despite the fact that Minnesota had a law banning that kind of behavior.
- [13:08]
Melissa Townsend
Chad Montres said, yeah, just look at what happened between white settlers and the indigenous people from the region. There was a War in 1862 between U.S. forces and the Dakota in Minnesota, Chad said, that sharpened the racism that then would be aimed at newly arrived black residents.
- [13:28]
Eric Roper
So, and I think the Dakota war.
- [13:30]
Chad Montres
Is in my book because that's the.
- [13:32]
Eric Roper
Context for whites in Minnesota. Then thinking about what's going to happen.
- [13:36]
Chad Montres
Now that blacks are emancipated if they move north.
- [13:40]
Melissa Townsend
It didn't matter that the black community in Duluth was only 1/2 of 1% of the population. Bill Green told us it never mattered how many black people were in any town. They were always seen as a threat.
- [13:54]
Kirsten Delegarde
There was a lot of talk among white property owners that the smaller numbers of blacks moving into Minnesota was an indication of a horde about to move in.
- [14:07]
Melissa Townsend
In the end, Harry and Clementine didn't stay in Duluth for very long.
- [14:11]
Eric Roper
In 1913, and this is four years after they moved to Duluth, they leave and they head south to this bigger city with A bigger black community. Minneapolis.
- [14:23]
Melissa Townsend
And Eric wanted to know, what were Harry and Clementine walking into? Was Minneapolis any more welcoming than Duluth? To find out, he went to talk with a woman named Kirsten Delegarde. She's an historian who specializes in race and housing policies, especially in Minnesota. She runs the Mapping Prejudice organization.
- [14:44]
Chad Montres
So just to be clear, in 1910, Minneapolis is not particularly segregated, nor is St. Paul. And the cities are not unique in this regard. This is true of almost every American city in this time. Like at the beginning of the 20th century, they are not particularly segregated.
- [15:01]
Melissa Townsend
But she said right around the time that Harry and Clementine moved to Minneapolis in 1913, all that was changing.
- [15:10]
Chad Montres
I mean, there's this whole so called science of the real estate industry that's emerging at this time where you have real estate economists developing these models that are saying, oh, yeah, if there's one black person in the neighborhood, it brings down the property values this amount. I just want to be clear, this was not based on fact in any way. You read a lot of the press and the interviews with white people in this period, and that's what they'll say. They're like, you have to understand, like, everything I own is in this house. And how dare these black people come in and try to attack the value of my house, which is all, you know, all I have in the world.
- [15:51]
Melissa Townsend
On top of that, real estate developers specifically had their eye on the southwest corner of Minneapolis. It's a lovely part of town. There are a couple of lakes, there are a lot of parks, There's a nice band shell for outdoor concerts. And those developers thought it was ripe for upscale development exclusively marketed to white residents. But there were already black people living there. So Eric asked Kirsten, what did the white residents in that part of town do to their black neighbors? And Kirsten told him about this one family who was living in southwest Minneapolis around that time.
- [16:31]
Chad Montres
The Myrick family. Mary Myrick owned a house which was a home for her, her extended family. She was a domestic worker. And neighbors pledged to come together and say, we will not give her any work and we will make sure that she doesn't get any work. So she will be forced to leave because she will not be able to afford to stay in her house.
- [16:51]
Melissa Townsend
Kristin said Mary Myrick held on for eight years before she was forced to sell her house in southwest Minneapolis. So in 1913, when Harry and Clementine were moving down to Minneapolis, they needed to pick a place to live.
- [17:09]
Eric Roper
The first time that we see where they're living is in 1915 and they had found a little apartment, a duplex on the south side of the city, south of downtown.
- [17:19]
Melissa Townsend
Kirsten said it was several blocks away from the southwest neighborhoods where there was growing racial tension.
- [17:25]
Chad Montres
It's considered the very desirable, stable, integrated neighborhood with good access to parks that people use a lot.
- [17:34]
Eric Roper
I presume that Clementine was still doing beauty work at this point. And I know that Harry was a waiter. And one of the things that surprised me is how many jobs were off limits to black men in that period. And there's like, studies to show that, you know, you see waiters, porters, barbers, janitors, elevator operators. You know, these are mostly jobs in service. Occasionally you'll see someone works for, like the post office. But, you know, very limiting of what you could do.
- [18:04]
Melissa Townsend
We don't know what Harry's experience was like. But in this old recording, a man named A.B. cassius talked about his experience being a waiter in the 1920s. When I went to the Curtis Hotel to work as a waiter, I was very discouraged because they only paid $17 a month wages.
- [18:25]
Kirsten Delegarde
And if you caught you with any.
- [18:27]
Melissa Townsend
Cream in your coffee, they charged you a nickel.
- [18:30]
Bill Greene
And if they caught you with a pat of butter, you had to pay a nickel.
- [18:34]
Melissa Townsend
And if you broke a glass, which in waitering you're bound to break some, that was all deductible. So there was no way for you to get $17 a month. So each payday for two weeks, you drew about $6 or $7.
- [18:55]
Kirsten Delegarde
If you didn't make any tips, you.
- [18:57]
Bill Greene
Didn'T have anything today.
- [18:59]
Melissa Townsend
That would be about $100 every two weeks.
- [19:03]
Bill Greene
I discovered that the white waiter downtown at the Radisson and the Nicollet and.
- [19:12]
Melissa Townsend
The Minneapolis Club, the Athletic Club, they were all paid $75 a month.
- [19:19]
Bill Greene
And I said, this can't be right today.
- [19:22]
Melissa Townsend
That would be about $500 every two weeks. The pay discrepancy was remarkable between white and black waiters. Harry and Clementine were probably struggling financially. But Eric found an announcement in the newspaper that signaled everything was about to change for them.
- [19:46]
Eric Roper
And it was in the Appeal newspaper. And it's dated November 4, 1916.
- [19:51]
John Coleman
Madam C.H. robinson has been appointed body massourist at the St. Barnabas Hospital under Dr. Farr.
- [20:02]
Eric Roper
She's working for Dr. Farr. Dr. Farr is not just some doctor. Dr. Farr is a pioneering, very sort of high tech, eccentric guy. He's playing music in the surgery room, which was very innovative at the time. He's actually innovating in anesthesia at the time. And. And he was also taking motion pictures of some of these surgeries. And you can imagine he's also thinking like, okay, and the other thing I'm gonna do is when the patients are done, we're gonna very carefully massage their wounds and so that they heal appropriately. But again, the guy is like on the cutting edge.
- [20:37]
Melissa Townsend
When Eric told historian Bill Greene he was impressed.
- [20:41]
Kirsten Delegarde
Black woman with that kind of role at a hospital, a white hospital, that strikes me as noteworthy. This is important.
- [20:52]
Eric Roper
Clearly it allowed Clementine and Harry to have enough financial stability to say, okay, we're going to stop renting. We're actually going to buy a house.
- [21:02]
Melissa Townsend
This is a big deal. This is when Clementine and Harry bought the house that now belongs to Eric. In order to get all the details, Eric reached out to a woman named Penny Peterson. She's an historian who also works with the group Mapping Prejudice. She specializes in analyzing historical property records.
- [21:21]
Eric Roper
She found the original ad in the newspaper from 1916.
- [21:26]
Melissa Townsend
Stop paying rent. Nice little six room house with three bedrooms near Nicollet and second car lines can be bought of owner for $3,000 cash and $35 a month.
- [21:40]
Eric Roper
Today that $3,000 would be more than $70,000 for the house with a monthly payment of roughly $900.
- [21:48]
Melissa Townsend
Since Eric also bought this house, he can imagine all the features Clementine and Harry probably loved about it.
- [21:55]
Eric Roper
It's not a big house, very cottage style. There's a beautiful small stained glass window in the living room. There's arched passageways between the rooms. Downstairs there's big bay windows up in the bedroom. Upstairs there's a big clawfoot tub, which, you know, I sit in today and think about we all sat in the same tub, but nobody wants to hear that.
- [22:16]
Melissa Townsend
So in 1917, Harry and Clementine bought the house. Maybe it was the clawfoot tub that really cinched the deal.
- [22:23]
Eric Roper
And even though they have this steady income, they don't have sort of a nest egg to put into a house. So they buy the house on a contract for deed.
- [22:30]
Melissa Townsend
And that made Penny Peterson say, oh, so contracts for deeds are bad. You don't get the deed until you've paid off the entire house. If you miss one payment, you'd lose everything. Back in those days, as is now, you could have a big balloon payment that you somehow have to put together. And that's where people often lose it. It's clear that Harry and Clementine were taking a big risk when they bought this house, partly because of what Penny Peterson said about the contract for deeds, but also because of something Kirsten Delegarde pointed out about the location of the house.
- [23:07]
Chad Montres
So the Robinsons house is sort of in this contested zone in the years after they move in.
- [23:12]
Melissa Townsend
In other words, they were now going to be living in southwest Minneapolis. That's where the Myrick family lived. That's where Eric's house is.
- [23:22]
Eric Roper
By the way, I didn't know any of this history, but the census data shows us that there's more than 6,000 families who are living there, and only nine of them are black. And it was one of those areas of the city where white residents are starting to target their black neighbors.
- [23:39]
Melissa Townsend
So why buy this house? Why take this risk? Eric Asked historian Bill Greene.
- [23:46]
Kirsten Delegarde
It's an investment. You know, the challenge that the African American faces is acquiring property, getting wealth in that way. We don't necessarily want to integrate, but we want better property.
- [23:59]
Melissa Townsend
That's one reason. But Bill Green said there's also another reason. This house was a signal that they were part of that aspiring middle class with their lives splashed across the pages of the Appeal newspaper.
- [24:14]
Kirsten Delegarde
Yeah, that's. That's it in a nutshell, actually. The leadership of the black community at the end of the 19th century took efforts to kind of embrace the trappings of middle class status, which was how respectability was defined in the larger world as well as in the black community.
- [24:37]
Melissa Townsend
For Harry and Clementine Robinson, buying this house was a signal that they were worthy of respect. But now they had to keep it. We'll be right back.
- [25:00]
Chad Montres
This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. So what do you want your 2025 story to be? Every January, we're handed 365 blank pages just waiting to be filled. Maybe this year you're ready for a plot twist or to finally revise that one chapter that's been holding you back. No more resolutions that fade by February. This year, take charge of your story and become the author of your own life. And therapy can be your editorial partner, helping you write new chapters, navigate challenges, and create the meaningful story you deserve to live. For me, therapy has been a game changer. Not just for those big dramatic moments. It's also about learning positive coping skills, setting boundaries, and becoming the best version of myself. BetterHelp helped me find a great therapist, and it was super easy. It's fully online, affordable, and so convenient. With a network of over 30,000 credentialed therapists, you'll find the right fit for your unique needs. And if you want to switch therapists, no problem. It's at no extra cost. Write your story with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com ghostofachance to get 10% off your first month, that's BetterHelp. H-E-L-P.com ghostofachance save on feel good favorites.
- [26:15]
Melissa Townsend
With great everyday prices at Whole Foods Market. Look for the yellow low price signs throughout the store on quality proteins like responsibly farmed Atlantic salmon. Prioritize well being for less with 365 by Whole Foods Market supplements and delicious smoothie ingredients like organic whole strawberries and almond milk. Don't sacrifice quality shop great daily prices at Whole Foods Market, in store and online. The Robinsons bought their house in a predominantly white neighborhood in southwest Minneapolis in 1917. That same year the United States entered World War I.
- [26:56]
Eric Roper
Industrial jobs are suddenly opening up a little bit. You know, these jobs that we were talking about that were closed off, they're starting to loosen up. And so Harry landed a job as a furnace man at an ammunition factory that was run by the Minneapolis Steel and Machinery Company. And for a little bit there I thought, was he just adjusting the temperature of the machinery company? No, he's actually running these fiery hot furnaces that are helping with the heat treatment of shells.
- [27:26]
Melissa Townsend
We don't have any information about how Harry felt about working in the plant, but we did find this recording of another black man who had the same type of job at the same company years later during World War II. His name is Albert Allen. In this recording, he described his first day on the job.
- [27:49]
Bill Greene
I can't help but laugh, thinking I didn't know what I was going to. It was a Shaw plant. And I walked in. Oh, it was a dirty, filthy thing. I think today about pollution. Oh, my gosh. What that plant was doing to individuals. But that time there's no one concerned. But just get those shells out. As I was walking down, I had all my nice little blue suits that I wore. And I had my. I'd been going to school and just as keen as I could be. And I was walking down with the foreman. I could see all these fellows sitting up on the shelves and all this dirt around. So I walked.
- [28:23]
Melissa Townsend
Eventually, Alan began work on the furnace.
- [28:25]
Bill Greene
Just like Harry, that furnace cockeyed hot. When you'd walk down this aisle, the average individual would come to the plant. He'd have to walk at least 50ft from it because they couldn't stand the heat. I ended up with a challenge by working right there at the door. Shows you how a body can make an adjustment.
- [28:41]
Eric Roper
You know, I've seen pictures of these guys and their clothes are torn and Dirty. And they're dipping these ammunition cells in hot oil, essentially. This is not pleasant work, but it's still an opportunity.
- [28:53]
Melissa Townsend
Harry Robinson was 37 years old, and this was the first job he had where he wasn't serving people. But historian Bill Greene said Harry was probably still working as a waiter. This work on the furnace in the munitions plant was probably his second job.
- [29:11]
Kirsten Delegarde
Most blacks who were of the middle class, basically the husbands, had one or two jobs because the jobs that they were normally able to get a hold of, paid menial wages. They were sometimes porters and janitors and waiters at the same time.
- [29:28]
Melissa Townsend
Bill said if Harry could bring in two incomes, it would free up Clementine to participate in social clubs.
- [29:35]
Kirsten Delegarde
The men, their status was their inability to allow their wives or to afford their wives to participate in club activity.
- [29:44]
Eric Roper
And that's exactly what I saw in the newspapers. It was like, whoa, there's a lot of social activity happening in the house. And it really starts right around this time, 1917, into the early 1920s. You can see them all over the Appeal newspaper. But other black newspapers that are publishing at that period.
- [30:02]
John Coleman
Mrs. Lagrinia Williams of Winnipeg is visiting Mrs. Ed hall of St. Paul. Mrs. Harry Robinson entertained her last. Mrs. Ida Sellers recently organized the Phillis Wheatley Literary art Club with Mrs. Clementine Robinson. Vice President. Mrs. C.H. robinson, West 39th street, entertained at dinner 16 guests on Christmas Day.
- [30:22]
Melissa Townsend
Clementine was also being celebrated for her work.
- [30:26]
John Coleman
Mrs. G.H. grenier of Moose Lake, Saskatchewan, who has taken her treatment, says, they are wonderful. Madame Robinson is the only one west of Chicago using the thermoelectric medium.
- [30:40]
Melissa Townsend
I want to give you a little space here to savor this moment. They made it. I mean, they still had to do some really tough jobs for a living. And there was probably no extra money lying around. But their life spread across the pages of the Appeal newspaper was the picture of middle class black excellence.
- [31:00]
Eric Roper
This is when I started to realize that something significant had happened in the house. They'd been sort of scraping by for years, working in jobs. The only jobs that are available to them, which are very limited and. And yet they've been able to get this far, which is sort of extraordinary.
- [31:19]
Melissa Townsend
But we know that the next year things would begin to change. The summer of 1919 is also known as red summer. Red as in the color of blood. It would go down in the history books as one of the most racially violent seasons in the 20th century. Historian Bill Greene gave us the details.
- [31:42]
Kirsten Delegarde
I believe there are as many as 40 cities that saw Race riots throughout the nation, mostly in the north and in the east and occasionally in the far west in California.
- [31:55]
Melissa Townsend
These cities included Chicago, Omaha, New York, Washington, D.C. among many others. And Bill told us this rioting included something not often seen before. Black people were arming themselves and fighting back. This was just after World War I had ended and black vets had returned to the United States with a new sense of entitlement. Edward Nichols was one of them. He was a black man who grew up in northern Minnesota. In this old recording, he talked about his time in France as part of the U.S. army. And then what happened when he came back to the States.
- [32:34]
Bill Greene
Well, when we arrived in France, I was a young man, 17 years old. Now here we were pleasant people, and we wanted to be friendly. And these people, they wanted to be friendly too. And we had money, and we'd buy their wine and fraternize with them. And they liked us very well. Things were pretty good. You could go in any theater or anything. But when I come back to France, I took my girl to the theater, and the girl in the ticket booth says, well, you can go in, but you have to sit down front the front three rows or go up in the balcony in what they call n heaven. And I resented very strongly. But these were things that happened while I was gone. Yeah, we had quite a bit of trouble there.
- [33:16]
Melissa Townsend
Bill Greene told us there was a widespread sense that people were fed up with this kind of discrimination, and they were fed up with having to be compliant and polite.
- [33:25]
Kirsten Delegarde
And it all sort of contributed to a sense of blacks drawing the line. And that caused a reaction. Blacks standing up created a sense among, you know, the white power elite. This is a real threat here.
- [33:43]
Eric Roper
The riots of 1919 did not spread to Minneapolis, but people in the city definitely knew about them. I found an article in the Appeal newspaper, and it was reprinted from a Chicago newspaper called the Chicago Herald and examiner.
- [33:56]
Melissa Townsend
It was dated September 27, 1919. That would be the fall after Red Summer.
- [34:02]
Eric Roper
Because our time of rioting is over. Some people think the sky is clear again. No idea could be more foolish. So long as we have discrimination, unfair treatment, a feeling of brooding injustice between the white men and colored men, we shall have a burning fuse on its way to high explosive in Minnesota.
- [34:23]
Melissa Townsend
That high explosive came the next year in 1920. That's when a mob of white residents in Duluth lynched three black men.
- [34:33]
Eric Roper
This was front page national news across the country, including the front page of the New York Times, because it was a triple lynching in a northern city at a Time when a lot of people were sort of wagging their fingers at the south saying, okay, you guys gotta cut out this lynching. And in a priority prominent black newspaper in New York, the New York Age, James Weldon Johnson, who was a leader of the naacp, he said, the truth about this incident is Minnesota has turned out to be as bad as any southern state could be. Which is a very sort of damning accusation about Minnesota at the time.
- [35:08]
Melissa Townsend
Edward Nichols, that soldier who had come back from France, was in Duluth the night after the lynching. He talked about it in that old recording.
- [35:17]
Bill Greene
The next night after the mob, the white people said they were going to run all the n out of town. And we decided that we'd just barcade ourselves in our house. And I was the only one who had a gun. I had a.45 Colt automatic that I brought back from the war. In the night, the sheriff and there were some quite a few concerned white people about our welfare, wanted to make a relationship with us. But we decided to go it on our own.
- [35:46]
Melissa Townsend
And then there was a knock at the door.
- [35:48]
Bill Greene
So I put on my raincoat and they had these pockets that go through the army raincoat. And I put the.45 Colt automatic down in there and cocked the trigger back. And I went to the door and there was a white lad out there and said, what you want? He said he had a telegram from Western Union, but if he'd have stabbed his foot out and murdered him, you know, we're that tense. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [36:16]
Melissa Townsend
When it came to Harry and Clementine, we already knew that many of the white residents in southwest Minneapolis didn't want their black neighbors. But red summer had emboldened these neighbors to escalate the situation.
- [36:29]
Eric Roper
I found this article in the Minneapolis Tribune from November 16, 1920. And this really is like the bombshell story that puts a fine point on how intense the neighborhood tensions are at that time.
- [36:41]
John Coleman
The headline, Negro question causes Protest. Residents of 13th Ward object to members of race as neighbors.
- [36:48]
Eric Roper
And I should say that southwest Minneapolis includes the 13th Ward.
- [36:52]
John Coleman
It goes on protesting against the presence of Negroes or persons of Negro blood as residents of the 13th Ward. 200 men and women held a meeting at 43rd and Pillsbury Avenue last night in the South Central Community Club rooms.
- [37:08]
Melissa Townsend
Eric says this meeting in November of 1920 had a clear objective.
- [37:13]
Eric Roper
So these folks are saying we want to get rid of this handful of black families who live in southwest Minneapolis.
- [37:19]
Melissa Townsend
After Eric read this, he realized the meeting was just five blocks from the Robinsons house. What's now his house.
- [37:28]
Eric Roper
And this isn't sort of just some random assortment of people. This group was very influential at the time. There were two leaders of the club. One was a man named James McMullen and the other one was a man named Ewan Cameron. Ewan Cameron, around this period would get elected to the State house. And James McMullen, who is the chairman of the meeting, he is a real estate agent. And this is sort of just along the lines of what Kirsten said, that real estate agents play a really important role here of sort of driving this segregation.
- [38:00]
Melissa Townsend
I can only imagine what it felt like to be singled out like that and targeted by 200 of your neighbors. It's chilling. So what can Harry and Clementine do that's next time?
- [38:24]
Kirsten Delegarde
The notion of walking on ice is very real here. You have to be careful where you step. You have to be very careful with sudden moves that you might make that could result in cracked ice underfoot.
- [38:38]
Melissa Townsend
This is Ghost of a Chance. Our website is startribune.com ghostofachance there you can see pictures and documents from the podcast and you can also sign up to receive news about discussion guides and events. Our email is ghostofachancetartribune.com get in touch if you have a question or feedback or a tip related to the Robinson story. We'd also love to know if this story motivated you to do something in your community, so let us know. You can help pay for this incredible story and others like it with a subscription to the Minnesota Star Tribune. Go to our website startribune.com ghost of a chance is reported by Eric Roper and written and produced by me, Melissa Townsend. Our executive producer is Jenny Pinkley. Our editor is Mary Jo Webster. Fact checking by Eric Roper and Mary Jo Webster. Sound design by Marcel Malakeboo. Our contributing editors are Star Tribune Managing Editor Maria Reeve and Star Tribune Editor and Senior Senior Vice President Suki Dardarian. Legal review from Randy Lebedoff. The art for our show comes from Anna Boone and Brock Kaplan. Special thanks to Kendall Harkness, Zoe Jackson, Laura McCollum, James Schiffer, Nancy Yang, Casey Darnell, Laurie Ewan, Tame Danger and members of the local community who served as our advisors.