Step 1. Look up your property on this Mapping Prejudice Tool to see if a covenant was found on your deed.
Step 2. If it was, and you live in Minneapolis, click on the Minneapolis button below. If you live in Hennepin county outside of Minneapolis, click on Just Deeds button below. These buttons will send you to where you can fill out a form to receive free support to have your covenant discharged from your deed.
Step 3. Purchase a lawn sign and receive a free artist print and pick it up at Longfellow Community Council's Office.
Step 4. Display your lawn sign to offer people the chance to see and feel the history of this discriminatory lending practice.
Step 5. If you discover that your home did not have a racial covenant, we still encourage you to donate and receive an artist print and interact with this project’s resources with your family and community.
Step 6. Whether your home had a covenant or not, you can still fill out THIS FORM to become a supporter of the African American Community Land Trust and practice reparations through financially contributing the AACLT down payment assistance fund.
-
Watch the 15 minute Geography of Inequality Ted Talk to familiarize yourself with racial covenants in Minneapolis.
-
Familiarize yourself with the resources throughout this website to help answer people's questions.
-
Develop your own way of talking about why the history of racial covenants matters and how they shaped the race-based inequities in home ownership that we see to this day.
-
Look on the map above to see where there are concentrated areas of racial covenants. Tell us where you are door knocking on this google doc, making sure someone else hasn't already knocked on that block's doors.
-
Print out the sheets below to either leave in people's door if they are not home or give to people to help them learn more about "Free the Deeds"
-
Contact us at info@longfellow.org with any other questions!
-
Free the Deeds worked with the Center for Urban and Regional Affairs (CURA) out of the University of Minnesota to create the survey "Taking a Pulse on Reparations"
-
CURA will be analyzing the data and creating a map that highlights who responded and what responses were throughout Minneapolis.
-
We will share the results of the survey with the newly elected City Council members and Mayor to help build a case for passing reparations legislation in Minneapolis OR to use to develop more educational efforts around why reparations matter.
-
Please help spread the word through email or social media to your Minneapolis community, encouraging them to take the anonymous survey
-
People can access the survey using THIS LINK
-
Contact us at info@longfellow.org with any other questions!
-
Free the Deeds is a tool for you to use to have critical, nuanced, and urgent conversations in your community. We invite your participation, your creativity, and your engagement.
-
Print out the poster below and hang it up in the neighborhoods that have high concentrations of racial covenants.
-
Organize a block event and use the tools throughout this website to engage all ages in learning and discussing the history of institutionalized racism.
-
Bring up the history of racial covenants in your child's school, at your neighborhood association, at your church, in your book club.
-
Keep learning, talking, and teaching!
-
Organize and advocate for reparations like the AREA 1946 group in Armatage.
-
Contact us at info@longfellow.org with your ideas!