Why Did He Do It?

Summary

Ghost of a Chance: "Why Did He Do It?" - Episode Summary

Released January 27, 2025 by The Minnesota Star Tribune

---

Introduction

In the gripping episode titled "Why Did He Do It?" from Ghost of a Chance, host Eric Roper delves deeper into the mysterious and troubling history of Harry and Clementine Robinson, a prominent black couple who lived in a 113-year-old Minneapolis house a century ago. This episode seeks to uncover the circumstances surrounding a violent incident that threatened to unravel the Robinsons' lives and, by extension, shed light on the broader history of race relations in Minneapolis during a period of intense racial upheaval.

The Shooting Incident

The episode kicks off with a recap of previous events where Harry Robinson, the proprietor of the Little Dixie Sandwich Shop, was accused in local newspapers of shooting Roy Mattis, a white man, without apparent reason. This accusation posed a significant threat to the Robinsons' reputation and financial stability.

Melissa Townsend notes at [00:02] that the Robinsons were integral to a budding black community in southwest Minneapolis, setting the stage for understanding the broader implications of the shooting.

Eric Roper introduces the incident with conviction:

"Mr. Harry Robinson has opened the Little Dixie Sandwich Shop. Mr. Robinson is a race man and has given freely of his work to the race." [00:26]

However, reports were murky and contradictory. An article stated:

"Man shot and seriously wounded in restaurant. Negro cook under arrest. Harold Robinson, a Negro, said by police to have been employed as a cook in the restaurant, was held at the 5th Precinct Police Station without charge." [00:34]

Realizing the inconsistencies, Eric decides to conduct his own investigation to uncover the truth behind these conflicting reports.

Investigative Efforts and Obstacles

Eric’s first step was to obtain court records related to the shooting. However, he encountered dead ends:

"I filed a request with the Hanneman county courts for any official court records. And I was hoping that maybe this would illuminate the rest of the story. But they didn't have any information about the shooting." [02:20]

Undeterred, Eric shifted his focus to newspaper archives, uncovering a pattern of violent incidents targeting chicken shacks in Minneapolis during the 1920s. Headlines such as "Armed bandit holds up Cafe Chicken Shack raided by lone man who gets $75" [03:03] hinted at a climate of fear and frequent confrontations, suggesting that Harry might have been protecting his business from similar attacks.

Exploring Motives and Context

Eric pondered various motives behind the shooting. One theory considered was racial animosity, especially given the active presence of the Ku Klux Klan in Minneapolis during the early 1920s.

Historian Kirsten Delegarde provides crucial context:

"You have Klan members in the schools, you have Klan members in City hall, you have Klan members in the police department. Open Klan members. People in Klan robes are riding in civic parades. It's completely open." [05:35]

Eric also explored the possibility of bootlegging, a rampant activity during Prohibition. He surmised that the Little Dixie Chicken Shack might have been a front for illegal alcohol sales, and Roy Mattis’s presence could have been related to territorial disputes or botched deals.

Uncovering Roy Mattis’s Background

Despite extensive research, initial searches revealed no criminal record for Roy Mattis until Eric discovered significant information:

"Roy Mattis was born in 1896. And so when he's 17, he has a kid with a woman named Hazel Morrell. They ended up getting married. And at the time of the shooting, he's a clerk at this lithography company." [11:36]

Further digging led Eric to a pivotal discovery in Stearns County records:

"Roy Mattis was a bootlegger. We have a record here of him getting convicted of selling moonshine whiskey in 1934." [12:35]

This revelation raised questions about Mattis's motives and activities at the time of the 1926 shooting. Eric contemplated whether Mattis was involved in illegal activities that night, possibly prompting the confrontation.

Financial Struggles and Foreclosure

Parallel to the traumatic shooting, the Robinsons began to face severe financial difficulties. Shortly after the 1926 incident, Harry and Clementine took out multiple loans to sustain their business and household:

"In just three years, those loans would add up to roughly $51,000 today." [16:51]

Despite Clementine's hard work as a masseuse, the Great Depression exacerbated their financial strain, leading to the eventual foreclosure of their home in 1931. This loss forced the Robinsons to leave a neighborhood they had painstakingly built and defended.

The Divorce Filing Revelation

A startling turn in the investigation came when Eric unearthed a civil court record indicating a divorce filing by Clementine Robinson against Harry in 1915, predating their joint acquisition of the house and business. This document revealed allegations of domestic abuse:

"The defendant, that's Harry, has a violent and uncontrollable temper and has at all times since said marriage been a constant user of intoxicating liquors to excess and has on frequent occasions come to his said home under the influence of liquor and there struck, beat, kicked and otherwise abused and mistreated the plaintiff, that's Clementine." [22:02]

This revelation introduced a complex layer to Harry Robinson’s character, challenging the narrative of him as solely a victimizer or a community leader.

Understanding Domestic Abuse

To contextualize Clementine's actions and the domestic abuse allegations, the podcast consulted Dionne Trice, a marriage and family therapist specializing in domestic violence:

"Men who abuse have had experiences of traumatic abandonment and rejection... poverty, abandonment, social stressors, injustices, trauma that are unresolved and undealt with." [27:28]

These insights suggested that Harry's abusive behavior could stem from deep-seated trauma and societal pressures, highlighting the multifaceted nature of his character.

Historian Kirsten Delegarde added:

"Respectability is. I can't show my flaws. I can't reach out for help... I can't afford that." [30:11]

This underscores the societal expectations placed on black men during that era, contributing to the Robinsons' struggles both privately and publicly.

Reflection and Continued Puzzles

Despite the new information about Clementine's divorce filing, many questions remain unanswered. Eric grapples with reconciling the image of a community leader and business owner with someone who had a violent and abusive past. He reflects:

"I feel like I've turned over basically every rock that I can find at this point. And this does sort of haunt me on a day to day basis. And I cannot tell you what happened that night at the Chicken Shack." [14:51]

Conclusion and Ongoing Investigation

As the episode concludes, Eric acknowledges the unresolved mysteries surrounding the 1926 shooting and the Robinsons' subsequent downfall. The foreclosure and departure from their home marked not just a personal loss but also a step further into racial segregation in Minneapolis:

"By 1940, there were only three [black families in southwest Minneapolis]. Eight black families had left. And with them, the whole city took one more giant step toward racial segregation." [15:11]

Eric remains committed to uncovering more about the Robinsons' lives, hinting at future explorations into where they went after losing their home and how they navigated an increasingly segregated city.

---

Notable Quotes

• Eric Roper on the shooting:

  "Why would someone shoot Roy Mattis, who seems to have everything to lose by shooting Roy Mattis? Well, maybe Roy Mattis did something to him." [01:05]

• Melissa Townsend on the impact of the shooting:

  "It was important to Eric to find out what happened in the Little Dixie Chicken Shack the night of February 15, 1926." [01:33]

• Dionne Trice on domestic violence origins:

  "Men who abuse have had experiences of traumatic abandonment and rejection." [27:28]

• Nelson Peary (historical recording) on masculinity:

  "A man don't cry... You can't live like that. I don't guess I got it out of me yet." [29:29]

• Kirsten Delegarde on the Klan’s influence:

  "Open Klan members. People in Klan robes are riding in civic parades." [05:35]

Final Thoughts

"Why Did He Do It?" masterfully intertwines personal tragedy with historical context, offering listeners a nuanced exploration of Harry and Clementine Robinson's lives. Through meticulous research and empathetic storytelling, Eric Roper not only uncovers hidden facets of a family's past but also prompts a broader reflection on race, community, and resilience in early 20th-century Minneapolis.

Listeners are left contemplating the complexities of human behavior influenced by societal pressures and personal trauma, emphasizing that history often holds deeper, untold stories waiting to be discovered.

---

For more detailed insights and to follow Eric Roper's ongoing investigation, visit Ghost of a Chance on The Minnesota Star Tribune's website.

Transcript

[Melissa Townsend]

Lemonader. Previously on Ghost of a Chance.

[Kirsten Delegarde]

The Robinsons were part of this network of people who were all making a beachhead, making a life, making a black community. In Minneapolis.

[Melissa Townsend]

Eric found that during the 1920s, three more Black families moved into southwest Minneapolis. And Clementine was back. In the Appeal newspaper.

[Eric Roper]

Mr. Harry Robinson has opened the Little Dixie Sandwich Shop. Mr. Robinson is a race man and.

[Melissa Townsend]

Has given freely of his work to the race.

[Eric Roper]

So I'm looking around. I mean, little Dixie, Little Dixie Chicken Shack, all these different searches, and this leads me to a clip. Man shot and seriously wounded in restaurant. Negro cook under arrest. Harold Robinson, a Negro, said by police to have been employed as a cook in the restaurant, was held at the 5th Precinct Police Station without charge.

[Melissa Townsend]

There's a faulty police report that was used to write two faulty articles. So it's at this point that Eric decided he needed to do his own investigation.

[Eric Roper]

Why would someone shoot Roy Mattis, who seems to have everything to lose by shooting Roy Mattis? Well, maybe Roy Mattis did something to him. 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 Ro Robinson. I'm Eric Roper.

[Melissa Townsend]

I'm Melissa Townsend.

[Eric Roper]

This is episode four.

[Melissa Townsend]

It's no small thing that two local newspapers reported that Harry Robinson, a black man, shot Roy Mattis, a white man, for no good reason. It puts Harry and Clementine's entire future at risk. It could ruin their standing in the community. It could destroy them financially. So it was important to Eric to find out what happened in the Little Dixie Chicken Shack the night of February 15, 1926. And how did it impact Harry and Clementine's lives? Eric assumed that the case against Harry probably went to court. So the first thing he did in his investigation was try and get his hands on the court records.

[Eric Roper]

I filed a request with the Hanneman county courts for any official court records. And I was hoping that maybe this would illuminate the rest of the story. But they didn't have any information about the shooting.

[Melissa Townsend]

Without those court records, Eric had to go a different route.

[Eric Roper]

If you think about, you know, a guy like Harry Robinson as running a night business in 1926, you're gonna meet a lot of interesting, potentially scary characters, maybe drunk characters in the middle of the night.

[Melissa Townsend]

So Eric started digging for any reason there might be trouble at a chicken shack in Minneapolis. And he came up with a few ideas about what might have led up to the shooting that night.

[Eric Roper]

My first instinct is to start looking in the newspaper records to get a sense of like, well, why are Chicken Shacks in the news? And I start to find a lot of clips about Chicken Shacks being robbed and bandits and, you know, hold ups and things. Like this one story I found, and the headline is, armed bandit holds up Cafe Chicken Shack raided by lone man who gets $75. And then there's another one. Two arrested believed to have robbed proprietor of Chicken Shack. And then this one Trick foils bandit Pair one is slain. Chicken Shack proprietors carry out rehearsed strategy. That clip is actually about these two Chicken Shack owners had this plan where one of them was going to throw a bottle across the room if there was a bandit so that the other one could go grab the gun and then shoot the bandit.

[Melissa Townsend]

The vibe of these clips is that chicken Shacks are being held up and sometimes owners fight back. And Eric wondered, could that have been what happened to Harry?

[Eric Roper]

So it's a cold night in Minneapolis, middle of February. Maybe there's snow on the ground. It's like the middle of the night. Perhaps Harry's alone, as he probably was accustomed to be. Pretty late at night at the Chicken Shack. And Roy Mattis walks in. And maybe Roy Mattis is there to rob the Chicken Shack. And then sort of in the aftermath of this, it doesn't get reported all this detail about that Roy was holding up the business. And maybe the police don't believe Harry. This all just gets lost.

[Melissa Townsend]

Maybe. But then Eric thought of another possibility.

[Eric Roper]

You know, Roy Mattis kind of lives in this area. And maybe he's one of these people that's annoyed that Harry still lives in this white neighborhood after all this time. And there's a potential maybe where he comes in and just makes some remark or maybe even more than a remark, something that's pretty aggressive. We know that there are reports of white people threatening and committing violence against black people in this p period. One article in particular in 1923 talks about these separate incidents of black men being randomly attacked on the streets. And the allegation in the black newspaper about that is that this is a coordinated effort by members of the Klan.

[Melissa Townsend]

Eric hadn't heard much about the Ku Klux Klan in Minneapolis before, but historian Kirsten Delegarde told us they were really active in the city in the first half of the 1920s.

[Kirsten Delegarde]

So you have Klan members in the schools, you have Klan members in City hall, you have Klan members in the police department. Open Klan members. People in Klan robes are riding in civic parades. It's Completely open.

[Eric Roper]

Eric even found allegations in the black newspaper that an alderman representing southwest Minneapolis was a member of the Klan. And across the river in St. Paul, there was a cross burning meant to intimidate a black family living there. That happened just about a year before the shooting.

So just to be clear, we have absolutely no idea if Roy Mattis was a part of the Klan. But at the time, we know that there are white people making threats and attacking black men, Klan or not. And maybe that's what Roy did, and then Harry shot him.

[Melissa Townsend]

Maybe that's what happened. But there's one other scenario that Eric wondered about. Bootlegging. Prohibition had gone into effect about six years earlier. Could Harry or Roy have been involved in some kind of bootlegging situation?

[Eric Roper]

In the era of Prohibition? We know that there's still booze everywhere. It's being imported. It's being manufactured both in the city, but also in the countryside, specifically in central Minnesota, there are farmers who have stills and things like that every. And there's also examples of chicken shacks that are front for bootlegging operations, which we know because there's a lot of articles about liquor raids on chicken shacks during this period.

[Melissa Townsend]

So could Roy have been connected to the bootleggers in central Minnesota? And could Harry have been selling bootlegged liquor out of the chicken shack?

[Eric Roper]

Maybe that explains why Roy Mattis walks in. Either he is protecting some sort of territory that Harry has violated by selling, or maybe there's some deal that they have that's gone south. I mean, there's lots of scenarios you could go into there.

[Melissa Townsend]

Yes, lots of scenarios. But these were all still speculation. Eric needed more information to make any firm conclusions about what happened with Roy and Harry in the chicken shack that night.

[Eric Roper]

This is Eric roper. It is May 16, 2024, and I'm going through workhouse records.

These are for the city work.

[Melissa Townsend]

Eric went to a big warehouse where he could look at old files from the city of Minneapolis. These files tell you who was sent to the workhouse.

[Eric Roper]

I'm currently looking in 1926 because this is a key year when the shooting happened.

[Melissa Townsend]

Back in the 1920s, if you were convicted of a lower offense, something less than a felony, the city might send you to the workhouse. Eric wanted to see if Harry or Roy were ever sent to the workhouse to do time for the shooting.

[Eric Roper]

And there's these large books, and they're handwritten. Your eyes start to glaze over reading the names.

[Melissa Townsend]

He was sitting at a folding table, paging through these giant ledgers. Reading handwritten lists of people's names, their personal details and their crimes.

[Eric Roper]

And you know, the charges here, a lot of them it just says drunk. And then there'll be like a lot of sort of ditto marks because so many of these are for public drunkenness.

[Melissa Townsend]

So much for prohibition vagrancy.

[Eric Roper]

It's a common one on here.

So far, I'm not finding anything.

[Melissa Townsend]

By the end of the day, Eric had come up empty. In fact, after years of searching, he still can't find any record about the shooting or if anyone served time for it.

[Eric Roper]

You would imagine that there would be some record of this somewhere, whether it's in the workhouse, whether it's in the county jail, whether it's at the MPD index, whether it's in the Henneman county court system. All these places I've gone to now, I can't vouch for the completeness of any of these records, but I've found nothing.

So Eric decided to go in a different direction. Instead of looking for records about the shooting, he would look for any criminal record.

[Melissa Townsend]

He had done quite a bit of.

[Eric Roper]

Research at this point into Harry Robinson and he hadn't come up with anything. But what about Roy Mattis? Did Roy Mattis have a criminal record? Eric started digging and he found some things. That's after the break.

[Cologuard Ad Voice]

This message is brought to you by Cologuard, a non invasive colon cancer screening test. Currently, colon cancer is the second leading cause of cancer related deaths in the US and it's on the rise in people under the age of 50. But when caught at early stages, colon cancer is survivable in 90% of people. So screening and early detection are key to reducing overall colon cancer deaths. And a great one of a kind way to feel more in control of your colon cancer screening is through the Cologuard test, a prescription based test with none of the prep that's required of a colonoscopy. The Cologuard test is the only FDA approved non invasive option that looks for both altered DNA and blood in your stool which can indicate the presence of abnormal cells. This test offers convenience and ease of use and is delivered right to your door. Plus more affordable. Most insured patients pay $0 and if you do need a colonoscopy as a follow up, if you receive a positive Cologuard test, most insurance plans will cover it. So if you're 45 or older and at average risk, ask your healthcare provider about screening for colon cancer with the Cologuard test. You can also request a Cologuard prescription [e-mail] podcast. The Cologuard test is intended to screen adults 45 and older at average risk for colorectal cancer. Do not use a cologuard test if you have had adenomas, have inflammatory bowel disease and certain hereditary syndromes or or personal or family history of colorectal cancer. The cologuard test is not a replacement for colonoscopy in high risk patients. Cologuard test performance in adults ages 45 to 49 is estimated based on a large clinical study of patients 50 and older. False positives and false negatives can occur. Cologuard is available by prescription only.

[Eric Roper]

So Eric had gone down a new rabbit hole trying to figure out if Roy Mattis had a criminal record. And here's what he found out.

So Roy Mattis was born in 1896. And so when he's 17, he has a kid with a woman named Hazel Morrell. They ended up getting married. And at the time of the shooting, he's a clerk at this lithography company. And his father is like a vp, sort of an executive at this company.

[Melissa Townsend]

At first, that's the kind of information Eric could find about Roy Mattis, details about his personal life. He couldn't find a criminal record, or at least that's what he thought.

[Eric Roper]

I had found a clip in St. Cloud from 1934. And St. Cloud is far north of the Twin Cities. And it was a guy named Lewis Mattis, which is Roy's father's name. And he's getting arrested for selling illegal liquor. And I'm like, well, doesn't seem like Roy. And I kind of put that aside for a very long time. And then as I got more and more desperate to figure this out, I was thinking like, well, Roy's middle name is Lewis. Let's check it out. And I went through all these, like, Stearns county ledgers.

[Melissa Townsend]

Eric knew a lot of illegal distilleries were located out in rural Stearns County, Minnesota at the time. So he went to look at the conviction records to see if Lewis Mattis could actually have been Roy Mattis. And he was here at the history.

[Eric Roper]

Center going through boxes and just discovered that Roy Mattis was a bootlegger. We have a record here of him getting convicted of selling moonshine whiskey in 1934. Just a big, big discovery.

[Melissa Townsend]

Eight years after the shooting in Harry's Chicken Shack, Roy Mattis was arrested for bootlegging. Could that mean that he was bootlegging during the time of the shooting. If it was just that one instance, it might not be that convincing. But it wasn't just that one instance.

[Eric Roper]

While I was looking for that bootlegging arrest, I also found he was arrested a couple months after that for just being drunk. And then if we Fast forward to 1945, he's in downtown Minneapolis, seemingly drunk. Cause he's like falling down and he's trying to get into parked cars downtown. Cops pick him up and they find he has all these war bonds in his pocket. And that's all in the papers. So based on what I know about Roy later in his life, he is a complicated character to say the least.

[Melissa Townsend]

It's tough to speculate about what was happening for Roy Mattis nearly a hundred years ago. We would want to do to him what was done to Harry. We wouldn't want to make false or incomplete accusations. That said, there's reasonable evidence to suggest that Harry did not, as the news article had stated, shoot Roy Mattis for no good reason. Based on all the information that Eric has collected. Maybe Harry had a gun because other Chicken Shacks were being robbed or because of Klan violence or because he was bootlegging. And Roy Mattis has a criminal record. He might have been involved in some kind of illegal activity when he came into the Chicken Shack. But we can't find any evidence of that. And we can't find any evidence if either of them served time for the shooting.

[Eric Roper]

I feel like I've turned over basically every rock that I can find at this point. And this does sort of haunt me on a day to day basis. And I cannot tell you what happened that night at the Chicken Shack. I am still looking though, so maybe one day we'll have more clarity.

[Melissa Townsend]

That may be as far as Eric has been able to take the investigation into the shooting. But he knows a lot more about what happened to Harry. After that was all said and done, he and Clementine began to have financial trouble.

[Eric Roper]

They're, they're really bobbing above water. But bar.

[Melissa Townsend]

The shooting happened in February 1926, Eric found that the next month Harry and Clementine took out a loan for $500. That'd be $9,000 today.

[Eric Roper]

Could there have been legal bills associated with.

[Melissa Townsend]

There could be legal bills. Eric went back to historians Penny Peterson and Kirsten Delegarde. He asked them to make sense of what was happening with the Robinson's finances. And Kirsten started wondering, how much does.

[Kirsten Delegarde]

A lawyer's fee cost and how much does it cost to maybe pay off some people in the police department And Then of course, like, what happens to your business when there's a shooting in the business? Like what? You have to think that this was a difficult, you know. And he was like, okay, we just need to get through this. People will forget about it or I'll get through. But then it coincides with the collapse of the economy in Minneapolis.

[Melissa Townsend]

They all agreed this was terrible timing. The city was on the cusp of the Great Depression. Money was getting tight for nearly everyone. And it looked like the Robinsons financial situation was becoming dire.

[Eric Roper]

After that first loan for $500, they take out another loan for $300, then another loan for $1,500. Then six months later, another loan for $500.

[Melissa Townsend]

Harry and Clementine took out four loans in just three years. Today, those loans would add up to roughly $51,000. Historian Penny Peterson.

[Penny Peterson]

I mean this bing, bing, bing, bing. There's times when their house is paid off, but then they have to borrow again, and then money is getting increasingly tight.

[Eric Roper]

Meanwhile, we know that they're still working hard. I mean, it looks like clementine has left St. Barnabas and Dr. Farr. And we can see from some of the newspaper she is seemingly working on her own. There's one article from 1927 that describes her as one of the best known masseuses in the city and notes that she has, quote, built up a large clientele among the leading white citizens.

[Melissa Townsend]

But it looks like that hard work wasn't enough.

[Eric Roper]

I found an ad that Harry Robinson put in the Minneapolis Tribune, and It was dated March 1931. And he was selling the the business. In fact, he put in five ads that month. And they said, sandwich shop, first class, good business, reasonable, meaning he's going to offer some reasonable terms here.

[Melissa Townsend]

We knew Harry was renting the space, so Eric asked Penny Peterson, what was he selling?

[Penny Peterson]

He's selling your customer list, your recommendation, your recipes, you know, that's what you're selling, and maybe some of the equipment as well.

[Eric Roper]

If we think about the luncheon that had happened five years before and all these big names that come and this was a celebration. I mean, remember, the flowers were out. I mean, this was like a very beautiful affair. And now we've come to a place where that dream is starting to crumble for the Robinsons. But at least they still had Clementine's work and their house.

[Melissa Townsend]

But Penny had looked at the Robinsons financial records and she knew that their grip on the house was shaky.

[Penny Peterson]

I think the mortgage, they're just probably paying the interest on it. And it's Interest on interest. It's like student loans today. Gee, I only borrowed $20,000, but now I owe $50,000. How did that happen?

[Eric Roper]

Penny said they couldn't pay off those last two loans. So in 1931, they lose the house to foreclosure, and they have to leave this neighborhood that they had fought to live in for 14 years.

[Melissa Townsend]

This was when the Robinsons left their home in southwest Minneapolis.

[Eric Roper]

This is what I've been trying to figure out this entire time. You know, what happened to the Robinsons. And here it is. They had taken a number of risks to become homeowners and then business owners. But ultimately, a lot of things went wrong. There was the shooting, there was the media coverage, and then there's this Great Depression that's going to sweep over everything.

[Melissa Townsend]

In 1930, there were 11 black families who owned homes in Southwest Minneapolis. By 1940, there were only three. Eight black families had left. And with them, the whole city took one more giant step toward racial segregation. Harry and Clementine would need to start over. But before we get to that, we need to share an unexpected discovery. That's after the break.

[Eric Roper]

Just here in the microfilm room of the Minnesota History Center. Looking through microfilm indexes. The first index I pulled was after.

[Melissa Townsend]

Eric had basically pieced together this whole story of what happened to the Robinsons. He decided to look in one more corner of the Minnesota Historical Society. It's where they keep the files from the Hennepin county civil court, not the criminal court, where he had been before the civil court.

[Eric Roper]

Anybody who was suing anybody in Hennepin County. They're all indexed in here. This is pretty obscure record, searching at this point. I mean, we're going into the deep end of trying to find anything we can out there. Not expecting to find much, but he did find something.

The first thing I pull up and I see the plaintiff is Clementine Robinson, and the defendant is Harry Robinson. This is November 23, 1915.

So I'm just totally perplexed.

I don't know. So just kind of blew my mind here.

[Melissa Townsend]

When Eric was able to see the full file in person. He could see that Clementine was filing for divorce from Harry. But the file was dated 1915. That's before they bought the house and before they opened the Chicken Shack. And we knew that Clementine and Harry were together that whole time. So we both wondered what happened. Let's start with what Eric saw in the file.

[Eric Roper]

I remember having kind of a fairly physical reaction to seeing it.

[Melissa Townsend]

This is Clementine's account of domestic Abuse at the hands of Harry. It's graphic. I'm going to read part of it, but if you want to skip this part, you just need to fast forward 60 seconds and you'll be in the clear. The defendant, that's Harry, has a violent and uncontrollable temper and has at all times since said marriage been a constant user of intoxicating liquors to excess and has on frequent occasions come to his said home under the influence of liquor and there struck, beat, kicked and otherwise abused and mistreated the plaintiff, that's Clementine. On set occasions, the defendant swore at the plaintiff and called her vile names and has threatened on several occasions during said married life to take plaintiff's life if she made any complaint about him. The defendant, she says he has spent all of his evenings away from home, drinking and gambling, at which he has spent and lost his money. And but for her work and efforts, said parties would have had no home to live in, nor any money with which to pay rent, nor buy clothes and provisions. According to Clementine's divorce filing, the most recent attack was the final straw. She tells the court, Harry is working as a waiter making $80 a month and she wants a divorce and suitable alimony and attorney's fees.

[Eric Roper]

This is incredibly personal information. It took me a while to really process this document and I thought about it for a long time and if I was to sort of take anything away from it that wasn't just how sad it is is that this is a brave thing for Clementine to take this risk and to put this in writing.

[Melissa Townsend]

It's unexpected and terrible and disappointing. When Eric first found out, he called me and we were both stunned. And then we thought maybe we shouldn't talk about this on the podcast.

[Eric Roper]

I think one of the biggest reasons I was concerned about this document is that it feeds a really problematic stereotype about violent black men.

[Melissa Townsend]

We know that black men like Harry are over represented in media stories about violence and underrepresented as people in positive roles. So let me say this. In an old recording, Mar Vell Cook talked about her father. You might remember her from a previous episode. She was a black woman who grew up in Minneapolis in the early 1900s. Her father's name was Madison and she talks about him like he was one of the most caring and tender men on the planet. My father believed that children should be nurtured and we'd take long walks together.

[Eric Roper]

And he would tell me things.

[Melissa Townsend]

I learned all about the constellations and about love. In another old interview, Adina Gibbs Sounded just the same when she talked about her father, J.Q. adams. You might remember he was the publisher of the Appeal newspaper. How was your father as a family man when you were coming along? Wonderful. Some of the incidents. It's wonderful, just wonderful. Yes. He spent his money on his family, and he was very fond of my mother. I have often thought about how loving he was when he spoke to her or of her. There are no excuses for domestic violence, but there are explanations. And when it came to Harry and Clementine, we wanted to understand more about why he may have been violent. Say your name again.

[Dionne Trice]

Introduce yourself.

[Melissa Townsend]

So I called a therapist who might help.

[Dionne Trice]

Okay, well, my name is Dionne Trice. I am one of the marriage and family therapists over at the Family Development center over in St. Paul.

[Melissa Townsend]

Is it okay if I record this for the podcast?

[Dionne Trice]

Go right ahead.

[Melissa Townsend]

Dionne is a black therapist who has particular expertise with domestic violence. And one of the first things she told me was, you have to remember what it was like in the early 1900s.

[Dionne Trice]

We have to understand that you could beat and discipline a woman like you could a child.

[Melissa Townsend]

Wow.

[Dionne Trice]

That was a common experience, common thought process, to be able to hit a woman thinking it was your right to do so.

[Melissa Townsend]

But she said the level of violence described in the divorce filing was extreme. So I asked her if she could help me understand more about what leads to domestic violence. And she said there are some general observations. One, men who have been abused often end up abusing. Two, oftentimes, men who abuse have had experiences of traumatic abandonment and rejection. And when she said this, I thought about Harry's childhood. So I told her about it. Harry, when he was 8, his dad dies of accidental rat poisoning. And then when Harry becomes a high school senior, he's valedictorian of his class, and he gets a scholarship to law school. And they take it away when they.

[Dionne Trice]

Find out he's black.

[Melissa Townsend]

And so talk about abandonment and rejection. As I was saying all this, Dionne was nodding her head. Oh, yeah, this makes sense.

[Dionne Trice]

One of the ways that we would explain their cycle to the men is we would use a jack in a box. Jack in the box. You know, you get 15 cranks before it pops open. Right. But when you have poverty, abandonment, social stressors, injustices, trauma that are unresolved and undealt with. That's like taking a crank away every day. This is one of the things about mental health in African Americans. I'm speaking specifically about African descendants of slaves here. The pressures to assimilate or to bear this pressure of Being the middle class, the exception, that kind of stress that you're constantly under takes cranks away. So I don't get to wake up with. With 14 cranks, I only get to wake up with 7, 8. So then, of course, when I'm walking and I come home and I'm with my family or all the other daily things that get added, makes it far easier for me to lose it.

[Melissa Townsend]

Dionne told me Harry's alcoholism was probably a response to the same thing.

[Dionne Trice]

Especially if I don't have empathetic space in which I can be able to voice and say these things and be heard, be honored, respected, validated, and heard.

[Eric Roper]

We don't know if Harry had a space where he could talk and be heard about the pressure that he felt. But I found this old recording of a man named Nelson Peary. He was a black man who spent his younger years in Minneapolis. And in this interview, he talked about what he learned from his father about sharing emotions.

[Nelson Peary]

One of the things that my old man drove in to me that I think took hold of me, and that's. He used to always tell me, a man don't cry, and from that on went on where a man doesn't have any emotion, you know, and you can't live like that.

[Melissa Townsend]

That's the truth.

[Nelson Peary]

You can't live like that. I don't guess I got it out of me yet. I don't think I ever will get.

[Kirsten Delegarde]

It out of me yet.

[Melissa Townsend]

Men were not supposed to share their emotions. Before I said goodbye to Dion, I wanted to ask for her thoughts on Clementine. Why did she stay with Harry during the abuse? Why do you?

[Kirsten Delegarde]

Why do you.

[Dionne Trice]

It is heavy respectability in politics because, again, if I am in a predominantly white society, respectability is. I can't show my flaws. I can't reach out for help. If I don't live up to social norms, then I can be highly penalized for that. Are we going to become the laughingstock? Is he going to lose all social credibility? Am I going to lose social credibility? I can't afford that.

[Melissa Townsend]

You can imagine that's what Clementine was thinking for seven years as she endured this violence. But then in 1915, she filed for divorce. Eric did some digging, and he learned that a lot of women at the time were doing the same thing.

[Eric Roper]

In 1915, the number of divorces was actually skyrocketing where they lived in Hennepin County, Minnesota. Nearly 700 divorces were granted that year, and that's about 2.5 times the number from a decade earlier, which Far outpaced the growth of the population. According to some reports, in 1914, one out of every seven marriages ended in divorce.

[Melissa Townsend]

But somewhere around 1916, Harry and Clementine got back together.

[Eric Roper]

Harry and Clementine definitely separated, but it looks like they never got divorced.

[Melissa Townsend]

In the divorce filing from 1915 that Eric saw, there was no response from Harry, and there was also no final divorce decree. All we know is that in 1917, they bought a house together, and in 1925, they opened a business. Maybe that was a sign that he dealt with his demons and cleaned up his act. But how to find out? We called an expert.

[Eric Roper]

It's so interesting.

[Melissa Townsend]

Diane Stewart is an historian and an author, and she specializes in black love, marriage, and relationships.

[Eric Roper]

I actually am wondering. I'm thinking about her family. So she is definitely coming from a context where her family would be considered high black society. Her. Her sister's a nurse. Her brother is a doctor.

[Melissa Townsend]

They all lived in Kansas city, Missouri.

[Eric Roper]

I am wondering if there might have been family interventions. Is it possible that her brother intervened on her behalf and said, look, you know, we're going to take our sister back if you don't shape up. I just wonder, what would the family conversations have been?

[Melissa Townsend]

Or she says, maybe Harry came to his senses on his own.

[Eric Roper]

I'm wondering about that. Did he himself realize, okay, what am I doing? This is ridiculous. I'll never get someone as good as this who literally becomes, you know, a foundation for my own status, no matter what. I wonder if he did shape up and maybe through the help of religion. I'm so intrigued. I just don't know.

Man. I really struggled with this. I think when you're researching someone, it's really easy to root for them and to sort of come up with an idea of them in your head. And I think that I started to realize that Harry's clearly more complicated than I understood previously. But I really do think that by the time that Harry opened the restaurant, that he was in a different place in his life. And why do I think that? Well, first, let's just talk about who came to that luncheon in 1925, just months before the shooting. I mean, these are the black leaders of Minneapolis, and I don't think they would have been there if Harry was the same violent and irresponsible person that Clementine had described a decade earlier. And besides that, his life had changed dramatically from 10 years earlier. I mean, he had a successful wife and a house and a business. And again, he was supported by some of the most respected local black leaders.

[Melissa Townsend]

That makes sense to me too. But I wanted to ask Eric if this new information from the divorce filing changed his understanding of what might have happened at the Chicken Shack the night of the shooting. And he said he's as puzzled as ever about what happened that night in the Chicken Shack. But he also said he knows one thing for sure.

[Eric Roper]

I think that Harry was a man that cleaned himself up. I mean, he was finding a way for himself in this city after all these years. So when Roy Mattis walked into the Chicken Shack at that point, I think he had everything to lose.

[Melissa Townsend]

And he did lose nearly everything. By the end of 1931, Harry and Clementine had closed their business and lost their house. I picture them packing up to leave for the very last time. Their dishes are in boxes, the floors are bare, the walls are bare. But the question is, where were they going? The city had only gotten more segregated, so where could they land on their feet? That's next time.

[Eric Roper]

It's not fair.

[Cologuard Ad Voice]

It's not just it's not correct, but.

[Melissa Townsend]

It is what it is.

[Cologuard Ad Voice]

We just got to keep moving forward.

[Melissa Townsend]

Foreign this is Ghost of a Chance. Our website is startribune.com backslash 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 ghostofachanceartrebune.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 Star Tribune 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 Malakebu. Our contributing editors are Star Tribune Managing Editor Maria Reeve and Star Tribune Editor and 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 McCullum, James Schiffer, Nancy Yang, Casey Darnell, Laura Ewan, Tame Danger, and members of the local community who served as our advisors.