Transcript of Falling Down the Rabbit Hole

Lemonada. It all started when a man named Eric Roper bought an old house in South Minneapolis. It was March of 2020.

We all know what's happening in March 2020. We're all going to be locked in our homes now for quite a while.

It was right at the beginning of the pandemic, and he was really curious about who lived there before him.

Because I'm interested in local history. I love going down history rabbit holes.

So he started googling At some point, I stumbled across a website, and this website had a map showing that there was a group of Black families who lived in and around my neighborhood in Southwest Minneapolis in the early 20th century.

Then by 1940, almost all of those families are gone. When I look closer at this map, I can see that one of these families lived in my house. Their names were Harry and Clementine Robinson.

They you are a Black couple who bought his home back in 1917. For a little perspective, that's just as the US was entering World War I. Now Eric is White, and he had never really thought about it before, but his neighborhood is pretty White, too. He started wondering What happened to this Black couple and all these Black families who disappeared from the map? Eric Roper is a reporter at the Minnesota Star Tribune newspaper, so he put his reporting skills to work to try and learn everything he could about Harry and Clementine Robinson.

So I quickly become obsessed with this, and it was the pandemic. I remember I would come downstairs, my husband would be making lunch, and I would say, This thing, you can't believe this other thing.

And then he struck gold. He found photos of them.

Let me pull them up here. In both cases, they are wearing some nice clothes.

Well, you can't see these photos, so let me just tell Clémentine appears to have a very light skin tone. She's wearing a large, elegant, sweeping, dark-colored hat.

I can't get over that hat. It's winged. It goes over her shoulders.

She's got a high-collared top that goes about halfway up her neck. Hairy skin is more of a darker tone. He also has a high cream collar. It's starched. He has a little tie. It's a very formal look.

They project, to me, a refinement.

Both of them are looking just beyond the camera. You know the way they do in old photos, chin up with a dead serious expression. Very regal in a Victorian way. Now, by this time, Eric had lived in the house for a couple of months. It's May 2020. And one afternoon, less than a mile away, a young Black woman, Darnilla Frazier, standing on the sidewalk in front of Cup Foods' convenience store uses her cell phone to videotape a white police officer.

Derek Chauvin.

Across the street, kneeling on the neck of a black man.

George Floyd for nearly 10 minutes.

For nearly 10 minutes.

Not that far from my house on 38th in Chicago.

Max.

Man, I can't breathe, my face. Just get up.

Over the next few days, the cell phone video circulates on social media, and South Minneapolis residents begin to gather in protest. What's his name? George Floyd. What's his name? George Floyd. What's his name? George Floyd.

And then unrest starts to erupt, and then-The whole world erupts.

I remember seeing protests in Paris and in Europe. When George Floyd was murdered, South Minneapolis became ground zero for a global racial reckoning. The only overdose that killed George Floyd was an overdose of excessive force and racism by the many of this police Department. Eric Roper was there in his little house just a few blocks away.

I remember sitting up late at night. Maybe it was two 2: 00 in the morning because the fires were getting closer. And I was watching live TV at 2: 00 and seeing, okay, how close is it getting? At what point do I have to react? Around that period, there was a lot of pressure for people to post on social media to make a statement in relation to racial justice. And I just felt very awkward, partly because I'm a journalist. I don't really make big statements. And also, I hadn't really grappled with this issue very much. I didn't know what to say.

As the dust started to settle, Eric began to think about the Robinsons again, and he thought- Maybe this Robinson's thing would add up to something that can contribute as we try to understand the many decades of events that led up to George Floyd's murder.

It wasn't clear to me that that would actually happen, but at least I was learning something.

At that point, nobody Nobody was thinking it would be a podcast for the Star Tribune. It was just Eric's passion project.

Eric's curiosity on the side.

But Eric started talking with people, lots of people. He'd go out for coffee, he'd tag along at community events, and he listened to people tell stories that he had never heard before.

I remember my father.

I remember the hate mail. Sherido Moseley Mitchell was at one of the community meetings. She's a Black woman who grew up in Minneapolis in the 1960s.

This This is in Minnesota. I remember my father sleeping in the living room with a shotgun. I'm just saying there are multiple stories that you can reach out and get.

For more than four years, Eric has been searching for every detail he can find about the Robinsons and understanding how their story tells a hidden history of Minneapolis. And that's when this became an official Star Tribune project. And I came on board to help Eric turn his search into this podcast.

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 Robinson. I'm Eric Roper.

I'm Melissa Townsend.

This is episode one.

The first question Eric had was, who were Harry and Clementine? And the second question was, what brought them to Minnesota? To find out, Eric had to go all the way back to the beginning of their story. Most people have heard of the Great Migration, the wave of African Americans who moved north between roughly 1910 and 1970. People were escaping Jim Crow in the South and looking for a more stable life with better jobs, better schooling, better places to live. But many people don't know that well before this great migration, there were smaller waves of African Americans moving around the country, and some of them made their way to Minnesota. Not very many, but some. Eric found out that the Minnesota Historical Society had a whole collection of old interviews of people who were part of these operations. So we started listening.

It blew my mind just hearing these people talk. I mean, they passed away a long time ago, and they're telling us their experiences.

My name is Raymond Winfred Canon.

He heard Raymond Wynfred Canon. He said his family were free people in North Carolina, but they could see that the Civil War was coming, so they moved to Minnesota before it was even a state.

Do you know why he happened to choose Minnesota? They were going as far north as they could get.

I think that was the idea that they had in mind at that time.

As far north as they could get. Eric found another interview from a woman named Marval Cook.

Marval Cook's family moved to Minnesota around 1900.

My father felt that there were many opportunities there. The university was there, and he bought a piece of property there and built a beautiful house, which he grew up in. Eric close to the Mississippi River.

It was just lovely.

Marvelle's family moved because they thought there were opportunities in Minnesota. Eric searched high and low for a recording of Harry and Clementine Robinson, and he came up empty. So he really needed to figure out for himself, who were they and what brought them to Minnesota? He says part of his search started on a popular genealogy website.

So Ancestry. Com, obviously a very powerful database, and you have to start by building a family tree. So I have a whole house history family tree, and Clementine, she gets a profile. Okay, Now we're going to start building in between newspaper clips, census records, whatever we can find.

Luckily, Eric found a record of Clementine's brother. His name was Gideon Brown. And through him, he was able to locate Clementine's birthplace.

I found out that Clementine was born in this small rural town north of Kansas City, Missouri, called Mecca or Shady Grove.

Eric found there wasn't much online about this town, so he went there.

And so we are driving through farmland, rolling countryside. It's very beautiful out here, very beautiful day. And I can see that we're approaching the lake, which means that we're close to Mecca Cemetery.

Eric learned that in the 1970s, after many families had already left Mecca, the Army Corps of Engineers flooded the town to make a Lake, Smithville Lake. The town had shrunk to just a few residents, but still Well, some were very unhappy about their town being wiped out.

Let's go maybe over here. I feel like I can hear it more.

All that's left of Mecca is the Black Cemetery. Eric went there to see if he could find out more about Clementine's family. He met up with a woman named Gwen Green. Her great grandfather grew up alongside Clementine, here in the 1880s and '90s.

Do you see why they would call this Mecca? It's quiet, serene, calming.

I don't know. I just feel the spirits here.

Yeah, the fact that it's closed off, and it's very pleasant. Yeah.

After they left the cemetery, Gwen and Eric went somewhere where they could talk. Gwen had some records about Clementine's family. Yes, this is from 1885.

I was told they'd taken kids that were being abandoned.

If one of the parents died, then the Estes family would keep them for a while until they found a home for them to go to.

Clementine's mother, Laura, she was Laura Estes, so she came from that family.

Before the Civil War, Missouri was a slave state. Many of the people in the Black community there today are descendants of slaves, including Gwen's family. With Gwen's help and his own sleathing, Eric was able to piece together Clementine's family history, and he found out she was the first generation in her family born free in the United States.

As far as I can tell, and these records are notoriously difficult to find. Clementine's father was born in Kentucky, and I presume that he was enslaved there.

Something like 20% of the Black population of Kentucky leaves in the first year after the war. Most of are driven out by violence.

Eric and I reached out to an historian named Chris Phillips. He's done quite a bit of research into what happened in this region right after the Civil War ended.

We have lots of descriptions of the roads filled with Black people just trying to flee clan violence.

Eric found that by 1870, Clementine's father was living in Mecca, Missouri. He was a farmer and a Baptist Minister. Clementine's mother had a very different story.

Clementine's was probably born into slavery as a baby, but soon after that became free because her father, Clementine's grandfather, was freed in 1854, before emancipation.

Eric knows that Clementine's grandfather was freed because he actually found the will that freed him. It's written by the slave owner, Thomas Estes, and he is freeing Washington Estes. That's Clementine's grandfather.

My Negro man Washington, about 27 years old, I will to be free on the first day of April, AD, 1854.

Just five words that changed the lives of every generation after. I will to be free. Eric also pieced together Harry Robinson's family story, and he was also the first generation in his family, born free. But he was not raised in Missouri like Clementine.

Yeah, Yeah, he's from a small railroad town called Mitchell in Southern Indiana. Both his parents were enslaved in Kentucky, just like Clementine's father, and they were both freed by the 13th Amendment and then fled Kentucky and moved to Indiana.

Eric headed to Mitchell, Indiana, to learn more about Harry's life before he moved to Minnesota. There he met a man named Jeff Routh. Jeff Routh works at the Lawrence County Museum of History. Mitchell is in Lawrence County.

Immediately following Civil War.

Why would a family come to Mitchell in particular, do you think? Because this is a railroad town, right?

From what I've been able to learn, Mitchell was the first place north of Louisville, Kentucky, that a black person could get off the railroad and feel welcome. If you went to Washington County, which is the next county, southeast of here, they had basically the sundown laws. They could be there during the daylight, but if they were there at night, they were fair game.

I mean, think about those words fair game. This is a really dangerous landscape that Harry's family is walking into, and they're just trying to find the safest place to put down roots and make a life. But it's really difficult. And this, this is where Harry is born.

Jeff had found an old newspaper article describing Harry's father.

It says he was tall and well-built, a whitewasher by trade, a Baptist by religion, and Republican in politics. Industrius, good-natured and honest.

So at this point, even though Harry was in Indiana and Clementine was in Missouri, Eric could see that they had a lot in common.

It's weird how much they had in common. They claimed to both be born on the very same date, May second, 1881. They were both from large families. Clementine was one of eight teen children, and both their fathers were preachers, Baptist preachers.

Eric and I both wanted to know, what was it like to be part of that first generation of Black citizens born free in the United States?

You're not property in more. That's a very different disposition on life.

Brandon Jones is a therapist we talk to. He's based in Minneapolis, and he has a particular focus on intergenerational trauma.

You also have opportunity to experience some of what couldn't do before. You could read, you could go to school, you could travel without papers. Now, you might not have the same opportunity or access as a white family at that time may have had, but you had an opportunity. That had to be a different experience.

But at the same time, Brandon told us that the expectation was that Black people would, quote, unquote, know their place.

Stay out of trouble. Keep your head down. Don't make eye contact. Don't let anyone know that you are smarter than you are because you may be considered a danger because you're getting uppity or too lippy.

So Brandon told us there was this tension between knowing your place and standing your ground.

That's the tug of war that many Black people had to face during that time period of the Jim Crow era, trying to have a life where you can have some joy, but also having these social barriers and levels of racism that keeps you from fully experiencing this American dream, so to say.

How did Harry and Clementine manage this tug of war between the racism that was keeping them down and the freedom that was giving them wings? What does any of this have to do with Minnesota? That's after the break.

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When Eric was in Missouri with Gwen Green, she told him that Clementine wouldn't have had much of a future if she had stayed in that small town. I think that they wanted to make something of their self. If they stayed in Mecca, there's nothing there for them. But domestic work or farming, I think that they wanted to venture out and see what was out there. And so he went off to figure out when Clémentine left. And he told me for this, he needed to use both the census and old city directories. And I said, What's a city directory?

Yeah, they don't exist anymore. City directories are a lot like phone books, except that they list your occupation and they list your address, a lot of which have also been digitized now, so we can do searches is for people, addresses, and other things.

This is where Eric found Clementine, in official documents from 1900.

She's living in Kansas City, and she's a domestic servant, also described as a nurse girl, and We can see that in the city directory, she's got different addresses almost every year.

Clementine had flown the nest by the time she was 19 years old. She had moved about 30 miles away to find new opportunities. But Eric found Harry's path to leaving his hometown was a little more complicated. The urge to uproot may have come from a tragic accident that happened when he was just a boy.

The historians in Lawrence County helped me locate this article in the Indianapolis Journal newspaper from 1890. When Harry was about nine years old, he and his entire family became essentially poisoned by accident after rat poison sifted it off a shelf into their dinner, and Harry's father died.

It was a tragedy, but Eric found it wasn't rare.

The poison powder that the Robinsons had accidentally eaten was called rough on Rats, Like other rat poisons of the era, it was made with arsenic. Arseneic has no distinguishing taste, so it becomes notorious for accidental poisonings in this era. In another case in Indiana around this time, a man died making gravy. Turns out he had mistakenly mixed in rat poison, thinking that it was flour.

Harry's father died on February fourth, 1890. We asked that therapist, Brandon Jones, how did he think that would have affected Harry.

You see a parent lose their life, it's going to leave an imprint on you, no matter how old you are or the parent is. To die from something that's preventable, like rat poison, that can be pretty dramatic for Harry.

Brandon says sometimes something this dramatic can sink a young person. It can bring on depression and anxiety, but other times it can have a different effect.

It probably motivated him to do as much as he can because you don't know how long you have to live in this world, which is not uncommon for a lot of Black men to think.

In other words, Harry may have gotten the message that life is short. Use your gifts, shoot your shot.

I found all these newspaper clippings from the local newspapers in Mitchell, Indiana, from Harry's high school years, and this is right before the turn of the century, in 1899, 1900, and he's a local superstar. Throughout Harry's senior year, it's noting that he's a leader in the class, like he's among the top of the class. And then it culminates with him being the top of the class, getting the top honors of the class, the valedictorian. And so this gets him a special thing. This means that he actually receives a scholarship to a law school.

Eric learned that at the time, the Nashville College of Law was offering scholarships to promising students in communities around the country. So as valedictorian in Mitchell, Indiana, Harry won that scholarship. People in Mitchell, Indiana are still proud of Harry. Marla Jones works alongside Jeff Routh at the Lawrence County Museum of History. Again, Mitchell is in Lawrence County.

He was exhaling in every way, and that very much impresses me that time or situation wouldn't hold that boy down, that he was going to do big things. It shows he has a lot of moxie.

In 1900, Harry Robinson was on his way to becoming a lawyer. It was a huge accomplishment. But Harry never went to law school. Eric found an announcement in the local newspaper dated three weeks after Harry's graduation ceremony.

It's a picture of Harry. It's on the top of the front page of the paper, and it says Harry Robinson, the Mitchell colored boy who won the scholarship offered by the Nashville, Tennessee law School, and was turned down on account of his color.

On account of his color. The law school did not accept Black students. Marla Jones.

The elation turned to disappointment must have been palpable. I mean, I can't imagine.

Harry Robinson was a 19-year-old young Black man from a small town in Indiana. Eric wondered, what did this tell him about the world? It says, Come here. Resma Minicom is another therapist we talk to. He's a best-selling author based in Minneapolis.

This is how you make it. Come here.

You may be able, from your hard work, be able to achieve some things.

But when you get there, you find out that you can't have access to the things that you thought you could have access to, and you've played the game the way that they said you should play the game.

And it's still not enough.

That summer, Harry left Mitchell, Indiana. It looks like he moved around the Midwest for a while. And then in 1907, he landed in Kansas City, Missouri. That's where he met a young woman named Clementine Brown.

She's living in this boarding house at 1107 Harrison Street. Who else is living in this boarding house? Harry Robinson.

Eric likes to imagine the scene where they struck up their first conversation.

In my imagination, they're both working hard jobs, and you're coming home and you're taking a load off. You get to know people. They clearly made a connection. If they were actually born on the same date, I'm thinking that's the connection. Like, Oh, actually, hello. We were both born on the same day. I mean, if I was and I met someone who had my same birth date, I'd at least have a conversation with them. Oh, my God, we have the same birthday. Oh, we were born the same year. Then it's just like love ever after after that. They're soulmates, right? Theoretically.

Theoretically. But racial tension was ratcheting up in Kansas City. Historian Chris Phillips.

It becomes the Confederate capital of Missouri at about that point. Meaning that all of these ex-confederates rise through the system. They come political leaders. They create their own cemeteries. They glorify the lost cause. If you're a Black in Kansas City at that moment before the great migration, it's a really tenuous place to be and moment to be there.

So Harry and Clementine hatched a plan to move to Minnesota. Maybe Harry planned to enroll at the University of Minnesota. There were some Black students there at the time. Eric found that Clementine seemed to have her own plan.

She had been a domestic servant her whole working life, and so she makes this stop on her way to the Twin Cities in Chicago. It looks like she enrolled in the Molar School of Dermatology. It's a course that lasts a few weeks. You would learn in this course about hairdressing, facial massage, electrolysis, all sorts of things, but they're all in realm of hair care and beauty.

Historian Tiffany Gill has written about Black women in the beauty industry in the early 1900s. We called her to get an idea of what Clementine was doing here.

She really is at the very first wave of Black women entering into formal beauty work. There were not many Black women owned beauty colleges that she would have been able to attend. She went to the Molar School, which was a way of teaching Black women, along with White women, the trade of beauty work.

So what I take away from this is that she's not just moving out of Kansas City, but she's trying to move up in the world. And maybe there's this impression that Minnesota is a barrier-free place. I mean, it's all the way, almost as far north as you can get.

What would Harry and Clementine find in Minnesota? That's next time. One more thing before we go. When Eric was in Missouri learning about Clementine's history, he met a man named Bob Harris. He was a respected elder, and he had a literal suitcase full of history of the town that's now underwater. When he sat down to talk with Eric, he was inspired to talk about his grandparents and their favorite songs. To Eric, one of those songs really spoke to the journey that he was My grandfather's song was for him. He'll understand it by and by.

Do you know that? By and by, when the morning comes, all the saints of God's gathering home. We will tell the story how we've overcome, and we'll understand it better by and by.

See, you don't understand a lot of things now, but later on you will. Bob Harris died on May ninth, 2024. It was just a few months after he and Eric spoke. He was 81 years old. This is Ghost of a Chance. Our website is startribune. Com/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 ghostofachance@star-tribune. 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, startribune. Com. 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 Joe Webster. Fact-checking by Eric Roper and Mary Joe Webster. Sound design by Marcel Malakev Boo. Our contributing editors are Star Tribune Managing Editor Maria Reeve and Star Tribune Editor and Senior Vice President Sook Yee Dardarian.

Legal review from Randy Labidoff. The art for our show comes from Anna Boon and Brock Kaplin.. Special thanks to Kendall Harkness, Zoe Jackson, Laura McCollum, James Schiffer, Nancy Yang, Casey Darnell, Laura Yuin, Taine Danger, and members of the local community who served as our advisors.