By Elizabeth Duclos-Orsello

In 1917, as part of the St. Paul Winter Carnival, hundreds of men and women rode triumphantly over the mighty Mississippi from Minneapolis through St. Paul in decorated vehicles as part of a much-celebrated car parade. They wore the robes of the KKK and represented a Minneapolis auto dealer’s association. When they parked their cars and joined the revelries, police protected the vehicles.

The Carnival’s car parade was photographed, championed in the local white press and advertised, with the Klan robes described in playful, festive terms. The deployment of a terror-inducing spectacle was not a byproduct: It was the main feature. It was so successful that the winter carnival gained revenue, and the auto dealers gained customers. Many articles linked city leaders’ economic interests and the boost that the parade had offered.

Meanwhile, St. Paul’s African American press did not cover the parade at all. Doing so might have been too risky. After all, the parade’s cavalier racism suggests that this was part of the fabric of everyday life. It reminded Black residents of the Twin Cities that they were not safe, despite being in the “safe” North. And the white press’ coverage demonstrated a widespread absence of concern for what that terror would inflict on the cities’ Black residents, privileging instead the market, the private property of the white “night riders,” and the coffers and peace of the white establishment. These details, which I uncovered in my research for Modern Bonds, should give us pause.

But what lessons can we, in 2020, learn from St. Paul of 1917?

One is that although Minnesota and the Twin Cities are not usually the focus of national debate, they should be: The Black community in the Twin Cities has played a crucial role in the histories of civil rights over two centuries, despite being subject to generations of structural racism and terror in that same period.

Another is that we must not privilege property over people—which is what we are doing when we express concerns about why Black residents are “rioting.” That which is called “rioting” is the language of rebellion. The language of rebellion that is left when other forms—kneeling, marching, chanting—have been ignored or dismissed for generation after generation.

A third is that the ever-present threat of terror silences people. In 1917, The Appeal–a leading African American newspaper based in the Twin Cities—made no mention of the “car parade.” The Black residents of St. Paul or Minneapolis most assuredly knew and cared about it, but may well have been silenced by the specter of race-based violence. Even though the revelers presented their KKK attire as “costume,” it was part of a legacy that included the attempted lynchings of two black men in St. Paul in 1896, and the conspicuous rise of a new incarnation of the KKK in Minnesota in the 1910s. Just a few years later, in 1920, three black men were lynched in Duluth and in the 1920s the Klan began publishing its newspaper from a St. Paul office. In the decades since, Black residents of the Twin Cities and elsewhere have suffered in silence far too often, fearful of the retaliatory power and violence of the very organizations and people who are inflicting harm.

Now, in 2020, we are witnessing an eerie reminder that 1917 is not that long ago. White people’s expectation of Black silence in the face of terror persists. After generations of state-sanctioned terror and the systematic weakening of black bodies, black lives and black communities via policies related to housing, education, employment, incarceration, and more, Black Twin Cities residents are now outraged and calling for justice. Meeting their public displays of inter-generational grief and righteous anger with concerns and questions about “rioting” and property damage is asking for their silence and patience, asking for the victims of violence and terror to protect the systems that inflict that upon them.

A century ago Twin Cities residents put white supremacy on public display and celebrated it without public outcry from Black residents. Today, White supremacist history seems to be repeating itself and yet now, in the face of persistent terror and no recourse, there is public outcry and outrage from Black residents. In this moment we White people need to listen. We need to listen to the sounds of grief, and pain, and anger and frustration. We need to hear, the sobs, the shouts, the car horns, the cacophony of what pain-filled protest after generations of silencing sounds like. This is rebellion born of the failure of White America to listen, hear, learn, and engage in the anti-racist work needed for change. So today, we must listen and we must act. Now. 

Elizabeth Duclos-Orsello, Ph.D is a Professor of American Studies at Salem State University in Salem, MA. A former St. Paul resident and former employee at the Minnesota History Center and the University of Minnesota, she is the author of Modern Bonds: Redefining Community in Early Twentieth-Century St. Paul (U Mass Press, 2018).