|
Letter to guidance counselors
Dear senior Guidance Counselor(s),
If you have lived in Minnesota for more than one year you have certainly heard about racial conditions at St. Cloud State University (SCSU) and St. Cloud, Minnesota (better know as "White Cloud"). Three years ago a Star Tribune reporter was investigating St. Cloud's history of blatant racism via computer search using key words, "St. Cloud" and "racism." The reporter canceled the search because it required too much paper for printing.
The objective of this letter is to warn parents, pastors, teachers, school counselors, coaches, high school and community college students that residency in St. Cloud can be hazardous for Black people. As Struther Martin said to Luke (Paul Newman), in the movie Cool Hand Luke, "What we have here is a failure to communicate. Luke, you've got to get your mind right." The St. Cloud community has been unwilling to effectively accommodate Blacks and SCSU has no intention of using its influence to impose better conditions for cultural diversity. St. Cloud simply refuses to get its mind right.
Following are a few examples of community conditions that rival southern style racism of the Jim Crow years despite "Minnesota nice."
(1) The first St. Cloud town site was established by southern racist, Sylvanus Lowry, who brought slaves and invaded local Native Americans in 1853 (ref. USWest telephone directory, Feb. 2001/2001: pg. 18). Young white males fire bombed the shop of Mr. Cromwell, St. Cloud's first free Black resident in 1869 (ref. Stearns County Historical Society). Local vigilantes and police created a live-here-at �your-own-risk environment for Blacks. Today, police harassment of Blacks is euphemistically called, "profiling."
(2) The first handful of permanent Black residents arrived (1959-1963) to work at the local veteran's hospital and prison. All endured harassment of various sorts, especially their children in local schools.
(3) St. Cloud Normal School, later St. Cloud State College and, now, St. Cloud State University opened its doors in 1869. The first Black students began enrolling in the late 1950s. In April of 1968, Black students peacefully sat-in the president's office. President Robert Wick described the event as "absurd" during a Minnesota Public Radio interview later. Black students simply requested that Black faculty, staff and administrators should be hired and more Black students recruited. Not until 1977 were the first Black faculty members ( Dr. Amde Hobte and Dr. Peter Nayenga) hired.
(4) One public measure of community resistance to diversity can be found in a St. Cloud Daily Times article that stated, "Minority recruitment unpopular" (ref. 15 April, 1985, pg. 1C). There were no Black administrators before Dr. Bernard Oliver, dean of the College of Education (1989) and Dr. Josephine Davis, vice president of Academic Affairs (1990). Oliver and Davis were terribly treated and received little or no administrative support. Davis had death threats. Her son was harassed more by St. Cloud police than those in rural Georgia where we grew up. As a direct result, Black faculty and staff members organized the Color Caucus as an attempt to show support for Oliver and Davis (much to the horror of whites).
(5) "Racial abuses not reported" was the title of an article by staff reporter, Bob Keyes (ref. SCSU Chronicle, 3 February 1987). "College not dealing with abuse of minorities," was the headline of another tragically revealing newspaper article (ref. SCSU Chronicle, 12 May 1987).
(6) During a university sanctioned gathering at the SCSU Cultural Center, police invaded, beat and maced several Black students for absolutely no reason (16 October 1988). Efforts by those same students to file formal complaints at the police department the next day were rejected. Few people know that St. Cloud has a "no counter complaint" policy. The following week at a campus meeting attended by some 40 students, staff, faculty and administrators, the police chief said, "My officers were in no mood to take complaints." One Black student sued the police chief and city (ref. SCSU Chronicle 2 November 1990). The lawyers were Doug Thomson and Brian Toder from St. Paul. When the settlement was published by the SCSU Chronicle ("Lawsuit settled by former SCS student," 1 May 1992), the St. Cloud city attorney sent a two page fax to the SCSU Chronicle editor saying, "The law suit was frivolous and without legal merit." It was another typically silly attempt to convince local whites that Blacks were not winning police brutality cases and being paid damages by white tax payer's money.
(7) The SCSU Chronicle published an article whose headline read, "Threatening letter from Ku Klux Klan [president] McDonald expresses deep concern" (ref. SCSU Chronicle, March 1990). The letter was an attempt by local racists to intimidate Black faculty members who organized a demonstration to protest police maltreatment of Black students and racist discrimination at the Lake George Beach Club. It is highly deceitful for a university to recruit students of color, accept their tuition then ignore the historically racist treatment by local police, lawyers, courts, landlords, businesses and white extremist groups. In the language of retail sales, those tactics are referred to as "bait and switch."
(8) Dr. Howard Ehrlich of the National Institute Against Prejudice and Violence (Baltimore, Maryland) studied 250 campus/community environments around the country. Elrich concluded, "The St. Cloud study implicates a hostile community and a campus that is equally hostile. Levels of ethnoviolence here exceed those in any campus or community study that we have reviewed. There is at St. Cloud a different normative structure than at any of the other universities studied" (ref. Campus Ethnoviolence and the Policy Options; March 1990).
(9) On 16 October 1991, Black students threatened to leave SCSU based on campus and community racism. As a direct result, the president was fired. Police would commonly go to dorms and question Black students without university permission or Miranda warnings. After, five different SCSU presidents since 1991, a few improvements have been made at SCSU while police harassment of Blacks has increased exponentially. Police targeting of Blacks in St. Cloud rivals the racist antics of Birmingham's Eugene "Bull" Connor, Montgomery's Jim Clark, Philadelphia's Frank Rizzo, Minneapolis' Charlie Stenvig and Los Angeles' Daryl Gates.
(10) In 1992, both Black administrators resigned in disgust. Oliver was hired as dean at Washington State University (Pullman, Washington) and Davis was appointed president of York College (Queens, New York). Black faculty members have been repeatedly subjected to gross double standards that range from subtle and inconsequential to obvious and severe. SCSU has spent more money defending itself against discrimination law suits than all other colleges and universities in Minnesota combined.
(11) St. Cloud, like a few other overtly racist communities in this country, is unwilling to admit the seriousness of its racism. If the 27 to 1 ratio of Black males being arrested in Hennepin County appears excessive, the ratio of Blacks to whites arrested in St. Cloud is significantly higher. The police chief recently defended using the letter "N" to identify Blacks and "profiling" during last year's Emanuel Matthews case (predicted to be the first "profiling" case to go to the Minnesota Supreme Court).
(12) Recently, police chief Dennis O'Keefe told the St. Cloud chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) that, "90% of all arrestees are minorities." One might assume that 85-90% of the "minorities" arrested are Black. Since the total population of Blacks in St. Cloud is only 1,402 (or 2.4% of the total city population of 59,107, according to the 2000 census), either St. Cloud has the nation's most prolific Black criminals or police racism has been raised to new heights.
(13) There have been a series of attempts to expose racism in St. Cloud through various independent investigators. A Governor's Commission on racism held hearings at St. Cloud city hall on 11 January 1988. Bettye King was hired by St. Cloud mayor, Larry Meyer, to study and report on the racial climate in 1996. King's report was quickly shelved when she refused to ignore the obvious. Lester Collins of the Council of Black Minnesotans held several meetings with Black St. Cloud residents (at Salem Lutheran and St. John's Episcopal churches) beginning in 1997. Jesse Taylor, regional director of the Community Relations at the U.S. Department of Justice came to St. Cloud at the request of one Black community leader. Upon leaving St. Cloud, Taylor said, "I am hoping that St. Cloud city officials would wake up to the reality of racism" (ref. St. Cloud Times, 1 August 1998; front page). Last Spring WCCO-TV broadcast a segment on SCSU's anti Semitism, Israeli television covered complaints by Jewish students and faculty and CBS's 60 Minutes sent a reporter and camera crew to SCSU. Several people testified about racism at the State Capitol last December. Currently, there are three outside investigative groups studying the racial, ethnic and cultural climates at SCSU (i.e. Nichols and Associates from Washington, D.C.; Sue Rankin from Penn State University, the Jewish Community Relations Council and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission).
From a total faculty of 680, SCSU has only 23 who are Black. Among some 1,500 staff members, only eight are black. Two Black faculty members have been fired and several others not promoted as a result of obvious double standards. One faculty was fired in retaliation for organizing protests and whistle blowing about racist conditions. SCSU has never hired a Black head coach for a major team sport. As a result of racial epithets and a less than supportive environment there are very few black athletes.
In other words, since there are 20 plus degree granting colleges and universities in Minnesota, it may be prudent for Black students to consider schools other than St. Cloud State University until there is strong evidence that racial problems have been solved in town and on campus.
Please share the troubling contents of this letter with your students and their families. The last thing we need is having our children lured into what is too often a cultural, ethnic and physical ambush in St. Cloud. We strongly suggest that you verify our references and investigate our charges for yourselves.
Very sincerely yours,
Myrle B. Cooper; Assistant Professor, retired
Michael A. Davis; Associate Professor: office: (320) 255-3944
Tamrat Tademe; Associate Professor; office: (320) 255-4952
|
|
|
|
|
|
