St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter plans to announce on Monday that the city is joining the Just Deeds Coalition, which will help property owners remove racial covenants from their deeds.
The mayor will make the announcement at 11:30 a.m. at Mitchell Hamline Law School. The school’s Center for the Study of Black Life and the Law is partnering with the city to join the coalition.
Carter will be joined by St. Paul City Attorney Lyndsey Olson; Mikeya Griffin of the Rondo Community Land Trust; Maria Cisneros of the Just Deeds Project; Anthony Niedwiecki, the Mitchell Hamline School of Law president and dean; and Dr. Anansi Wilson, director of the Center for the Study of Black Life and the Law at Mitchell Hamline.
According to the Just Deeds website, “white-only” covenants in Minnesota restricted families from owning homes in many neighborhoods until the 1968 federal Fair Housing Act made the covenants illegal. The coalition provides free legal and title services to property owners to remove these covenants, and 404 have been changed so far. St. Paul will join 18 other cities, including Falcon Heights, Roseville and Minneapolis, in the coalition.
