Minneapolis: An Urban Biography

by Tom Weber

Overview

Newly updated with reflections on the city at the center of a global social uprising, this concise history of Minneapolis features stories that are familiar, surprising, and sure to change the way you see the City of Lakes.

Minneapolis is Minneapolis because of the water—because of the Mississippi River, and St. Anthony Falls, and the beautiful lakes that dot the city's neighborhoods. Energized by the power of a magnificent waterfall that was harnessed with stolen technology, it became a major, even global, city.

In this succinct and thought-provoking book, Tom Weber provides an urban biography of the City of Lakes. The confluence of the Mississippi and the Minnesota River is a sacred place for Dakota people, who have lived here for millennia. Since the city's beginnings in the 1850s, Minneapolis has experienced continual collapses and rebuilding. Some collapses were real, as when the Falls were nearly destroyed; some are metaphorical, as when corruption and the mob threatened to overtake the life of the city. Weber also explores the effects of the rebuilding and who was in charge: who was left in, and who was left out.

In this updated paperback edition, a new conclusion recounts the context for and the worldwide reaction to the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer in May of 2020. In the midst of a pandemic, the city was thrust into the global spotlight, and a spotlight was turned once again on the legacies of racism and inequality that brought Minneapolis to the breaking point.

Cities, like people, are always changing, and the history of that change is the city's biography. This book illuminates the unique character of Minneapolis, weaving in the hidden stories of place, politics, and identity that continue to shape its residents' lives.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781681342603
Publisher:	Minnesota Historical Society Press
Publication date:	11/01/2022
Edition description:	Revised ed.
Pages:	224
Sales rank:	177,740
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Tom Weber, an award-winning writer, journalist, and radio host, is the author of 100 Things to Do in the Twin Cities Before You Die.

Read an Excerpt

From the new chapter, "Saying Their Names"

In an instant, Minneapolis was the center of the world. Just as the “Shame of Minneapolis” magazine article brought national attention to the city in the early twentieth century, George Floyd brought an even wider reckoning in the twenty-first. Protests erupted across the country and the world, from Paris and London to Sydney and Hong Kong.

In Minneapolis, mourners gathered and occupied the intersection—38th and Chicago—where Floyd was killed. For many months afterward, community members and supporters maintained what became George Floyd Square as a healing space, creating memorials and holding gatherings while keeping the intersection closed to car traffic.

More protests rose up across the Twin Cities after Floyd’s murder. During one march that shut down the I-35W bridge over the Mississippi River, a semi-truck driver barreled through a crowd of protestors before stopping. Somehow, no one was injured.

Table of Contents

Prologue 1

1 Bdote 5

2 St Anthony Falls 23

3 Timber, Then Flour 33

4 Immigration and Corporate Growth 45

5 Rivals! 61

6 The Corrupt Doc and a Lost Reputation 67

7 Discrimination, Redlining, and the KKK 79

8 Battles 97

9 Urban Not-So-Renewal 123

10 Voices Heard 135

11 Refugee, Rebirth, and Reconciliation 153

12 Saying Their Names 165

Epilogue: What Next? 173

Author's Note 177

For Further Reading 179

Index 189

Editorial Reviews

"History is a mirror we hold up to today, and Tom Weber's engaging, urgently needed book tells the story of Minneapolis with fresh reflections of who we've been, who we are now, and where we are going."
R.T. Rybak, mayor of Minneapolis, 2002–14

"I was taught that to know who we are, we need to know WHERE we are. Too many books treat Indigenous presence as a prelude that ends when white people arrive. Tom Weber's book starts with the Indigenous and builds a complex, truer story of Bde Ota Otuŋwe (Minneapolis). This tapestry of people, strikes, championships, immigration, renewal, disasters, and triumphs provides a fascinating read about WHERE we are."
Mona Smith (Sisseton-Wahpeton Dakota), Allies: media/art

"Tom Weber provides a fresh, inclusive, and timely look at the people and events that continue to shape Minneapolis. Playing with chronology, he artfully melds often-told stories with lesser-known ones. This book helps us understand the paradox of a proud city with a sterling reputation that nevertheless struggles with basic issues of equity for its citizens."
John Crippen, executive director, Hennepin History Museum

"Tom Weber unmasks a history of duplicitous relationships and policies that formed the wretched underbelly beneath the glory of Minneapolis. He does what many choose not to do: look at and connect the decisions that continue to maintain shameful race-based inequality."
Al McFarlane, editor in chief, Insight News

From the Publisher