The Grand Consensus: Minnesota’s Progressive Legacy – Civil Rights
By Iric Nathanson
Civil rights activist Josie Johnson
On an April morning in 1961, a young civil rights activist named Josie Johnson was sitting in the ornate reception room at the state Capitol waiting to meet with Governor Elmer L. Andersen. She had come there to urge Minnesota’s newly elected Republican governor to help rescue the fair housing bill, then bottled up in the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Johnson was hopeful that Andersen would be sympathetic because he had staked out a clear position in support of fair housing in his January 2 inaugural address. Andersen was a not a newcomer to the cause of civil rights. Earlier in his career, as a state senator representing a St. Paul district, he had been a staunch advocate for the state law banning job discrimination, enacted in 1955.
In the spring of 1961, as the legislative battle over fair housing in Minnesota was reaching a climax, a national civil rights movement was gaining momentum. Six years earlier, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. had risen to national prominence as the leader of the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott. That year, King, with several colleagues, established the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which would become a driving force in the movement. Later in 1961, a group of young activists known as freedom riders would begin their campaign to desegregate interstate buses and railroad stations in the South. Their brutal treatment at the hands of angry mobs would generate a wave of national outrage. Continue reading →
DFL Education Foundation
The Grand Consensus: Progress on Civil Rights
The Grand Consensus: Minnesota’s Progressive Legacy – Civil Rights
By Iric Nathanson
Civil rights activist Josie Johnson
On an April morning in 1961, a young civil rights activist named Josie Johnson was sitting in the ornate reception room at the state Capitol waiting to meet with Governor Elmer L. Andersen. She had come there to urge Minnesota’s newly elected Republican governor to help rescue the fair housing bill, then bottled up in the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Johnson was hopeful that Andersen would be sympathetic because he had staked out a clear position in support of fair housing in his January 2 inaugural address. Andersen was a not a newcomer to the cause of civil rights. Earlier in his career, as a state senator representing a St. Paul district, he had been a staunch advocate for the state law banning job discrimination, enacted in 1955.
In the spring of 1961, as the legislative battle over fair housing in Minnesota was reaching a climax, a national civil rights movement was gaining momentum. Six years earlier, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. had risen to national prominence as the leader of the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott. That year, King, with several colleagues, established the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which would become a driving force in the movement. Later in 1961, a group of young activists known as freedom riders would begin their campaign to desegregate interstate buses and railroad stations in the South. Their brutal treatment at the hands of angry mobs would generate a wave of national outrage. Continue reading →
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