Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:06 The Northern San radio news show with your host Don house. And we've had a jaw dropping, uh, events happening, a tragic
Speaker 2 00:21 Killing him, George Floyd. And, uh, we're going to be looking at a little bit of some of the history or how Minnesota was founded. Is it baked into Minnesota or, or can we change it? Coronary Susu Jeffries on that? I want to tell you that Rico Miralis, uh, talked to him this morning. He does a lot of things here around cafe he's. Uh, he actually works at the place at 38th and Cedar cup foods, C U P cup foods. He says, they're very good people there that run it, and they're just relate to the neighborhood and everything else. But the whole thing about all of this that we've seen it all started with a $20 bill, one $20 bill that may or may not have been, uh, forged or whatever. But, uh, I said it sends a cascade of events. So Rico, um, told me he's going to have a, uh, a four minute promo for the show tomorrow, the catalyst that he's going to do with, um, Lydia Howard, that's going to be on the next show on caffeine, poetry, science, and wrestling. And tomorrow he's going to have a lot of, uh, material that he's been out there interviewing people as, uh, who are demonstrating out in the streets and a lot of other things. So that'll be at one o'clock tomorrow, uh, for his catalyst.
Speaker 2 02:17 Now I'd like to bring into KVI Susu, Jeffrey, who, uh, is mostly known as a poet, social activist on many, uh, many things, uh, over the years that she, and she's done some background, uh, uh, history on how the state of Minnesota, uh, very earliest years, even before it became a state. And we are talking this morning and thought it'd be, that'd be a good place to start off. So as soon as you're welcome back to sun news.
Speaker 3 03:00 Thanks, Don. Uh, yeah, I I'd like to talk about the beginning of racism in Minnesota, which actually according to, uh, Roxanne Dunbar or teas, the slave tools were the pre clan patrols, right? So they practiced going after people and killing them during slavery days. It didn't just start with African Americans. But, um, the, perhaps I think perhaps the, one of the most significant people from our state is Dred Scott, who wasn't actually from our state. He lived at Fort Snelling between 1830, six and 1840. And, uh, at that time, this area was a free territory where slavery was. So we were the Wisconsin territory then, and then the Minnesota territory and then the state of Minnesota, but it was a free territory. And his Dred Scott Case for freedom is based on the fact that if you go live in a free state, you're free. And so the court said, okay, and some of the courts said, no, it was sort of the pick of the judge, but, uh, Dred Scott lived here. He met, he met and married his wife here, Harriet. And he was married by the Indian agent Lawrence tolerber because native marriages African-American marriages were not recognized.
Speaker 3 04:45 And it's it's, it seems reasonable to relate African-American stuff to native American prohibitions because they went hand in hand,
Speaker 2 05:00 Well, or Dred Scott people have even a rudimentary knowledge of American history. This was a famous Supreme court case.
Speaker 3 05:15 It was one of the five most significant Supreme court cases in U S history. And I think the court was only 70 years old, but, um, he went back to, uh, Missouri after being at Fort Snelling. And before he was up for telling he was in the free Illinois territory and another Ford. So he went back to Missouri and his master was crazy doctor. And at one point he caught Dred and Harriet and their two little girls and he locked them in a barn, stripped Dred and Harriet and whipped him a horsewhip and spanked the little girls. I mean, cause it's crazy. He's crazy. And he locked him in his arm. He was deranged. And normally when slaves suffered this kind of outrageous abuse, they were, they were freed. Okay. It was just, okay, it was overwhelmed, shove it under the, under the rug and, and you can go.
Speaker 3 06:24 But, uh, the doctor's wife said no. So finally, you know, he saved and saved and saved his money and he, he wanted to purchase his freedom and she wouldn't let him. And so his resort was to go to the courts, but before he got into the courts, he was, he was born in Virginia in 1795 and he was a slave child. So he had a first name, Sam and he was asleep child and the blow, the BLW family. And they moved West to st. Louis because they weren't doing well economically. So here he was in st. Louis and he married a young woman. And I don't know what slave marriage has looked like jumping the berm, whatever it was. Anyway, he considered himself married. However, this young wife got sold down the river, which was like pure death, you know, go down to Louisiana, just pour yourself at sweat, yourself to death.
Speaker 3 07:31 So he ran away. And when you run away and st Louis, you, you slaves typically went to some Island and the Mississippi river, and they were followed by a little gang of white thugs who captured them and beat them up and returned them to the master for reward money. So when he ran away, he was Sam belonging to the blow family. And when he came back, he was Dred Scott and dread was, um, a name given to great people of great physical force. I mean, here, Dred Scott is short and he's skinny and he's tubercular, but dread was a name and Nat Turner's rebellion in South Hampton, South Hampton County, Virginia in 1831. So it was a, like a title of a powerhouse person. So he started this 11 year battle to win his freedom and he got to the Supreme court and it was sorta like today's Supreme court. He, it was found that he was a slave and therefore not a person who had any rights according to a white man law. And he had no right to bring a case into federal court in the United States. I mean, it's like the same story over and over. It's this treadmill of racism that we're on.
Speaker 2 09:03 This was, um, this, this took place, uh, before the civil war. And of course, when this country was formed, uh, slaves were, uh, counted as being three fifths of a person for, uh, for ways of counting up to see how many, uh, votes electoral votes like Touro college and representatives. But, um, it wasn't until after the civil war, which started in 1861 to 65, that, uh, there was some 13th, 14th and 15th amendments of the constitution, but go on from there.
Speaker 3 09:48 Okay. Well, so let's say a slave was three fifths of a person. He didn't, she didn't get any three fifths of a vote or at three fifths of a property. Right. And they were called property. And now we have institutions in America that are called people. I mean, it is just this bizarre, convoluted legal system we have that doesn't make sense. For example, why can't the cop who killed mr. Floyd be arrested on probable cause? Well, there's no reason why he can't be arrested. He could, it's just, uh huh. It hurts your heart to even think about this. I don't know. I mean, what
Speaker 2 10:41 It's exactly right. As even I said, mayor Frey has stated that I'm sure if there's anybody else, um, there would be already locked up and put in jail, uh, and uh, they would need a grand jury to bring a first degree murder. But, uh, uh, it'll be interesting to hear what the, uh, uh, police union, what the head of that says, because they've always defended, uh, police who have killed, killed people also often, um, in Ortiz, black people often. And they just said, well, it was in the line of duty. He was afraid for, uh,
Speaker 3 11:31 I was afraid for my life.
Speaker 2 11:32 But then in this case that there's not even a remote chance that would fly. Well. What about now? You've studied a lot of the, um, the tr the treaties as you.
Speaker 3 11:52 Yeah, the 1805 treaty, the native Americans. The pipe treaty. Yes. Okay. So in 1803, mr. Jefferson bought the Louisiana purchase. And a couple of years later, he sent some people out to discover what he had bought, what he had purchased. And the guy who was sent up the Mississippi river was zillion pike. And he, uh, was 20 something years old. He, uh, came up the river and, uh, so saw the confluence of the Mississippi and the Minnesota rivers. And he treated that is had treaty talks, treated with the Indians. At that time, there were seven different bands of Indians and he, two of them put an X on this so-called tree. The problem is the treaty is toilet paper, treaty paper, toilet paper. It's nothing. It doesn't define the land. The a hundred thousand acres that was purchased. There was no money exchanged. Uh, he brought like a couple of hundred dollars and 60 barrels of whiskey, old, 60 barrels of whiskey.
Speaker 3 13:11 Right. Okay. And he brought that up with him and passed it around to the native folks who were there. And the treaty was to build forks along the Mississippi. And the treaty said 10 miles on either side of the Mississippi, from the confluence of the Mississippi and what was called the st Peter's river. We now call it the Minnesota river or Minnesota river up to the falls now called Saint Anthony, which was called <inaudible> so many RA, which is now many haha is waterfall and the COTA. So, but that was all that was kind of vague. I mean, what, what are you talking about? So when we had our pretty rights case in 2001, with our famous Indian attorney, the late Larry Leventhal, um, he said that the police had no right to tell us that they, that we couldn't be at cold water because they didn't have, they didn't own cold water. Now the national park service guy, John Anson, he says, we own cold water, cold water is a 10,000 year old water source. How can you own it? I mean, it's just ludicrous, isn't it? It doesn't make sense. It's not logical. Uh, he said, we don't know. And since it said, we don't know if Indian people were cold water because they didn't write down their stories.
Speaker 3 14:53 And then the national park service came in and clearcut 27 acres on top of the Mississippi bluff. And now you never clear cut around the spring because Springs need shade. I can't, I mean, it's, it doesn't make any sense just like we can't arrest this guy who killed this. Mr. Lloyd Floyd, we can't arrest him because, well, I guess, cause he's white and he has a gun.
Speaker 2 15:29 Well, he's a member of the Minneapolis police department
Speaker 3 15:33 19 years. Yup. Yeah. I, um, I think that it's easier to see the history of racism in Minnesota when you start with native native Americans, because there were, you know, that the priests plan was formed when they went after Indian people and you heard of the terrible massacres among it was just part of American history.
Speaker 2 16:06 Well, I, I've only learned it took me a long time before I actually started to get the full story of lot the 1862 Dakota American war and why and what was behind it. It was kind of a hidden in history. And here I w I read all this history, but not enough on Minnesota, but why don't you go into, uh, what led up to this war?
Speaker 3 16:34 Well, when we had our treaty rights case in 20 2001, one of the things that occurred to me was that, of course, after a year and a half of worrying and planning and they dropped our charges, our charges were disobeying, illegal order, Leary limits all said the order, wasn't legal because you don't own the land. But anyway, uh, this was the third time Larry Levinthal told us that the 1805 pike so-called pike, Dakota treaty had been brought up in federal court. And every time it had been like dismissed. And you think like, why would that be? Well, maybe it's because they don't want to give Minneapolis st. Paul and Bloomington back to the Dakota Dakota, Oh, Yachty, the Dakota people, because it doesn't legally belong to anybody, but the Dakota people. And it's hard for us to understand, but if you're going to be legal, let's be logical and let's follow the law, but, you know, it's a convoluted to convoluted road.
Speaker 2 17:45 So, so what led up to this war of course, was that there was giving up all this land. They had 10 miles on each side of the Minnesota river where we now call the Minnesota river. And, uh, but, uh, Indian agents, uh, white men are, um, would withhold food for them. And they were really starving. And that, uh, uh, it was a consternation. And why don't you say what happened? What happened after that?
Speaker 3 18:21 You know, when people are hungry, you, you will kill for food. I mean, you have to eat to eat or die, or in the case of mr. Floyd breathe or die. So there was all this food in these warehouses and some arrogant warehouse guy said, well, let them eat grass. Well, he got killed and they stuffed grass in his mouth. So in the Dakota uprising, which lasted about, I don't know, three months, six months, and it was during the civil war. So it was 1862, uh, 644 white people were killed. And we don't know how many Indian people were killed because they weren't counted. Oh, dear more Expendables. It just, it is so hurtful to recount this history. And yet there it is. It's there for everyone to read and understand. And yet we seem to, it's so easy to forget.
Speaker 2 19:30 Well, it's, um, it's, uh, uh, started history is taken awhile ago. I think it was, was it when the governor Mark Dayton that there was a, some apology. And finally, I think it was for what happened then, but there was, um, and, um, more recently we've had a change of the name of the Lake Calhoun to th the, um, codename the day Mark.
Speaker 3 19:58 So Dave, it's not Micah Scott, it's that in Dakota syllables on the second, the emphasis on the second syllable. So it's a good day, my sky, my sky.
Speaker 2 20:11 And there were that there was a lot of young, well, relatively young, um, Dakota women who brought this about putting pressure on it. And, and the powers that be said went along with it. And it's only been certain areas where it's been fought, but it seems that all the core challenges have now been exhausted, or we just have a 15 more seconds. Do you have any final? Uh,
Speaker 3 20:44 Yeah. Yeah. I want to say that I've lived in different States. I moved around a lot. I'm part Roma, gypsy. And when I got to the state, I was hit in the face with anti-Indian racism. I never experienced racism. Like I experienced when I walked in here, I was just struck by it.
Speaker 1 21:05 I'll see you soon
Speaker 3 21:06 Researching.
Speaker 1 21:07 And you'd been working against it and trying to deal with it as have many of the rest of us. This has been the urban Sam radio news show, thanks to Sue Jeffrey for coming on and giving, giving us some history next week, I'll be back down Olsen, Northern sound, radio news show.
