Welcome to Free the Deeds, a Minneapolis-wide public project that illuminates our common history and offers a path to repair.
Created by community artists, Free the Deeds is now an initiative of Longfellow Community Council. We invite every property that had a racial covenant on it to display a lawn sign in its front yard to inspire learning and conversation. You are also invited to increase access to home ownership for people historically prevented from buying homes through racist practices and policies by supporting African American Community Land Trust home buyers with down payment assistance funds.
Join us for a free event:
Be a part of erasing racial covenants and writing a new future for your block, your neighborhood, and our city of Minneapolis, one deed at a time.
Read stories of families impacted by redlining and think about the ways your actions can make change, one deed at a time.
We are inheritors of a history that wrote racism into the documents that were used to sell houses, one deed at a time.
Taking a Pulse
on Reparations
Survey
Free the Deeds is partnering with Center for Urban and Regional Affairs (CURA) to better understand how people interacting with Free the Deeds think about reparations. All responses will remain anonymous. We will create a summary of responses including a map to show the parts of the city where people who responded to these questions live. The responses will help us understand what programming and partnerships are needed to advance reparations efforts in Minneapolis.
The Free the Deeds team honors the Dakota people who lived on this land for centuries and continue to live here today. We recognize that the violent racism that fueled the attempted genocide and forced removal of Indigenous people from Minnesota is linked to the implementation of racial covenants throughout Minneapolis. We are committed to naming and ending the destructive legacy of white supremacy right now and into future generations.
We also honor the life work of Kevin Ehrman-Solberg, Co-founder of Mapping Prejudice who contributed so much to our community and made projects like this possible.