hood change and poverty.
Full Circle: Blockbusting
At first, Jews left metropolitan neighborhoods for the pull of the American Dream in the suburbs. Houses were new, the area was spacious, schools were considered higher quality.
But as realtors and redlining had their way with Black Americans, formerly Jewish neighborhoods like Near North deteriorated; a change that became associated with the Black community, rather than the policies that caused it.
For Jews in Near North, the move to the suburbs became more explicitly a move away from the city by the 1960s. There were stories of Jewish kids being beaten up by gangs in schools and on the streets. Property became visibly run-down. With poverty came concern about crime.
As more Black people moved into Near North, it was also assumed that property values for Jewish and white residents would drop and wipe out housing wealth — a self-fulfilling prophecy thanks to redlining policies.
Fear was in the air. And realtors knew that, with a touch of strategy, fear could drive many people to sell their homes for cheap all at once, kickstarting the cycle of contracts for deed.
The strategies used to spark sales fall, collectively, under the banner of blockbusting. Blockbusting ranged from hiring Black people to walk through a white neighborhood with a baby stroller, to well-placed ads, to staging break-ins to scare homeowners.
The practice is hard to trace (few realtors admit to it) but the result is clear: Mass sell-offs, dubbed panic selling, like the one that hit the Homewood neighborhood in Near North at the time of the Grant urban renewal project in 1964.
“Jews were not trying to be malicious by selling to blockbusters; they truly believed they were doing what was best for them and their families,” says Star-Lack, the Carleton historian. Because of redlining, “they had to move to the suburbs or face financial ruin.”
Blockbusting became easier in Near North, particularly once the frustrations of some disenfranchised Black North-Siders came to a boil. First in 1966, when a few shops on Plymouth Avenue were burned in protest, and then in 1967, when three days of civil unrest destroyed much of the commercial strip.
As the main artery of Near North, Plymouth Avenue was home to many Jewish-owned businesses that felt the heat — a detail that took on different weights across communities.
“Part of what the uprising was about was a statement about the inequality [in Near North],” said Belton, of the Twin Cities Urban League. “It wasn’t focused specifically on the Jewish community.”
But the image of burning Jewish shops didn’t lend itself to a conversation about civil rights and the systemic exploitation of Black people. Instead, the remaining Jews on Minneapolis’ North Side had had enough, and a new wave left for the suburbs.
“My generation, we were born during the Depression, we grew up during the Second World War…we finally found some peace in the 50s, and I’ll tell you, by the 60s, where it was happening on Plymouth Avenue, I think we were just kind of like, ‘oh shit,’ you know?” said Marilyn Chiat, a local Jewish historian who grew up on the North Side in the 1930s and 40s.
“I think we just didn’t have the energy,” she said. “We just wanted some peace.”
The Black community in Near North had the same wants, Belton said.
“The same fear about the uprising that impacted the Jewish community also impacted the Black community,” he said. “There were lots of Black people who also were fearful, who were uncertain, who wanted to leave.”
But blockbusting, aimed at Jews, points to the larger reality of Near North. The Black community was trapped.
“The ability to abandon is an economic privilege,” Belton said. Jews “were leaving people who were not able to leave.”
One of the few recorded cases of blockbusting in North Minneapolis, found by Star-Lack, happened shortly after the first Plymouth Avenue unrest in 1966. Morris Klugman, head of the realty Gail Company (and then-vice president of the Twin Cities B’nai B’rith Council), put an advertisement for his business in The American Jewish World, the 