Dakota homeland, city founded

Area that became Minneapolis pictured c. 1820–1860

About a half dozen^{[lower-alpha 1]} Native American nations inhabited Minnesota, and in modern times, two nations dominated:^[21] the Dakota (also known as the Sioux)^[22] and the Ojibwe (or Anishinaabe or Chippewa).^[23] Evidence says the Dakota were state residents in or before 1000 AD.^[19] Dakota are the only inhabitants who claimed no other land;^[24] they have no traditions of having immigrated and their site of creation is at nearby Bdóte.^{[25][lower-alpha 2]} The Ojibwe migrated west from the Atlantic states to northern Minnesota where they displaced many Dakota by the 17th century.^[27] In the Dakota language, the city's name is Bde Óta Othúŋwe ('Many Lakes Town').^{[lower-alpha 3]}

Around 1680, first French explorers and then the British arrived^[30] and traded in furs for nearly 150 years^[31] with the Dakota and Ojibwe as partners.^[32] After the US became a country, the fur trade declined, and US Americans gradually emerged as exploiters—desiring forests for timber and land for farms.^[33] Purchasing most of modern-day Minneapolis, Zebulon Pike made the 1805 Treaty of St. Peter with the Dakota.^{[lower-alpha 4]} Pike bought a 9-square-mile (23 km²) strip of land—coinciding with the sacred place of Dakota origin^[26]—on the Mississippi south of Saint Anthony Falls,^[37] with the agreement the US would build a military fort and trading post there and the Dakota would retain their land use rights.^[38] In 1819, the US Army built Fort Snelling^[39] to direct Native American trade away from British-Canadian traders, and to deter warring between the Dakota and Ojibwe in northern Minnesota.^[40] The fort attracted traders, settlers, and merchants, spurring growth in the surrounding region. Agents of the St. Peters Indian Agency at the fort enforced the US policy of assimilating Native Americans into European-American society, asking them to give up subsistence hunting and cultivate the land.^[41] Missionaries encouraged Native Americans to convert from their religion to Christianity.^[41]

Under pressure from US officials^[42] in a series of treaties, the Dakota ceded their land—which they consider to be living (a relative, and not property)^[43]—first to the east and then to the west of the Mississippi.^{[44][lower-alpha 5]} After Minnesota became a territory in 1849^[44] cession treaties unleashed formerly prohibited^[56] settlement and US manifest destiny.^[57] Dakota leaders twice refused to sign the next treaty until they were paid for the previous one.^[58] Historians have called Minnesota's leaders "thieves",^[59] and their actions "scams",^[60] "deceit, coercion, and broken promises".^[61] In the space of sixty years, the US had seized all of Dakota land. In the decades following these treaty signings, the US government rarely honored their terms.^[62] After closing in 1858, the University of Minnesota was revived using land taken from the Dakota people under the Morrill Land-Grant Acts in 1862.^[63][64]

Dakota non-combatants living in a concentration camp at Fort Snelling during the winter of 1862

At the beginning of the American Civil War, annuity payments owed in June 1862 to the Dakota by treaty were late, causing acute hunger among the Dakota.^{[65][lower-alpha 6]} Facing starvation^[67] a faction of the Dakota declared war in August and killed settlers.^[68] Serving without any prior military experience, US commander Henry Sibley had raw recruits,^[69] among them the only mounted troops were volunteers from Minneapolis and Saint Paul with no military experience.^[70] The war went on for six weeks in the Minnesota River valley.^[71] Some terrified settlers traveled 80 miles (130 km) from the massacre to Minneapolis for safety.^[72] After a US kangaroo court,^[73] 38 Dakota men died by hanging.^[71] The army marched 1,700 non-hostile Dakota men, women, children, and elders 150 miles (240 km) to a concentration camp at Fort Snelling.^[74] Minneapolitans reportedly threatened more than once to attack the camp.^[75] In 1863, the US "abrogated and annulled" all treaties with the Dakota.^[76] With Governor Alexander Ramsey calling for their extermination,^[77] most Dakota were exiled from Minnesota.^[78]

While the Dakota were being expelled, Franklin Steele laid claim to the east bank of Saint Anthony Falls,^[79] and John H. Stevens built a home on the west bank.^[80] Residents had divergent ideas on names for their community. In 1852, Charles Hoag proposed combining the Dakota word for 'water' (mni^{[lower-alpha 7]}) with the Greek word for 'city' (polis), yielding Minneapolis. In 1851 after a meeting of the Minnesota Territorial Legislature, leaders of east bank St. Anthony lost their bid to move the capital from Saint Paul.^[85] In a close vote, Saint Paul and Stillwater agreed to divide federal funding:^[85] Saint Paul would be the capital, while Stillwater would build the prison. The St. Anthony contingent eventually won the state university.^[85] In 1855 with a charter from the legislature, Steele and associates opened the first bridge across the Mississippi; the toll bridge cost pedestrians three cents ($0.94 in 2022).^[86] In 1856, the territorial legislature authorized Minneapolis as a town on the Mississippi's west bank.^[81] Minneapolis was incorporated as a city in 1867, and in 1872, it merged with St. Anthony.^[87]

Water power, lumber, and flour milling

Saint Anthony Falls c. 1850s

Minneapolis developed around Saint Anthony Falls, the only natural waterfall on the Mississippi, which was used as a source of energy.^[14] A 1989 Minnesota Archaeological Society analysis of the Minneapolis riverfront describes the use of water power in Minneapolis between 1880 and 1930 as "the greatest direct-drive waterpower center the world has ever seen".^[88] Minneapolis earned the nickname "Mill City."^[89][13] The city's two founding industries—lumber and flour milling—developed in the 19th century nearly concurrently. Flour milling overshadowed lumber for some decades; nevertheless, each came to prominence for about fifty years.^{[lower-alpha 8]} The city's first commercial sawmill was built in 1848, and the first gristmill in 1849.^{[91][lower-alpha 9]}

A lumber industry was built around forests in northern Minnesota, largely by lumbermen emigrating from Maine's depleting forests.^[94][95] Towns built in western Minnesota with lumber from Minneapolis sawmills shipped their wheat back to the city for milling.^[96] The region's waterways were used to transport logs well after railroads developed; the Mississippi River carried logs to St. Louis until the early 20th century.^[97] In 1871, of the thirteen mills sawing lumber in St. Anthony, eight ran on water power and five ran on steam power.^[98] Minneapolis supplied the materials for farmsteads and settlement of rapidly expanding cities on the prairies that lacked wood.^[99] White pine milled in Minneapolis built Miles City, Montana; Bismarck, North Dakota; Sioux Falls, South Dakota; Omaha, Nebraska; and Wichita, Kansas.^[100] Auxiliary businesses on the river's west bank in 1871 included woolen mills, iron works, a railroad machine shop, and mills for cotton, paper, sashes, and wood-planing.^[101] Due to the occupational hazards of milling, by the 1890s, six companies manufactured artificial limbs.^[102]

Growing use of steam power freed lumbermen and their sawmills from dependence on the falls.^[103] Lumber was the predominate Minneapolis industry in 1870,^[104] before flour milling overtook it in the 1880s.^[104] Lumbering reached a statewide peak in 1900 when its decline began.^[105] After depleting Minnesota's white pine,^[106] some lumbermen moved on to Douglas fir in the Pacific Northwest.^[107] Sawmills in the city including the Minneapolis Weyerhauser mill closed by 1919.^[108]

Loading flour, Pillsbury, 1939

Disasters struck the city in the late 19th century. Dug under the river at Nicollet Island, the Eastman tunnel leaked in 1869. Water sucked the 6 ft (1.8 m) tailrace into a 90 ft (27 m)-wide chasm.^[109] Community-led repairs failed and in 1870, several buildings and mills fell into the river.^[109] For years, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers struggled to close the gap with timber until their concrete dike held in 1876.^[109] In 1870, and again in 1887, fire destroyed the entire row of sawmills on the east bank.^[110] In 1878, an explosion of flour dust at the Washburn A mill killed eighteen people^[111] and demolished several mills.^[112] The explosion cost the city nearly one half of its capacity, but the mill was rebuilt the next year.^[113] In 1893, fire spread from Nicollet Island to Boom Island to northeast Minneapolis where wind stopped it at the stone Grain Belt Brewery. Twenty blocks were destroyed and two people died.^[114]

Cadwallader C. Washburn founded Washburn-Crosby, the company that became General Mills.^[115][116] He learned of and adopted three flour milling innovations:^[117] middlings purifiers blew out the husks that had colored flour;^[118] gradual reduction by steel and porcelain roller mills combined gluten with starch;^[118] and a ventilation system decreased the risk of explosion by reducing flour dust in the air.^[119] Washburn and partner John Crosby^[120] sent Austrian civil engineer William de la Barre to Hungary where he acquired some of these innovations through industrial espionage.^[118] De la Barre carefully calculated and managed the power at the falls and encouraged steam for auxiliary power.^[121] Charles Alfred Pillsbury and the C. A. Pillsbury Company across the river hired Washburn employees and began using the new methods.^[118]

The hard red spring wheat grown in Minnesota became valuable—$0.50 profit per barrel in 1871 ($12.21 in 2022) increased to $4.50 in 1874 ($116.00 in 2022)^[122]—and Minnesota "patent" flour was recognized at the time as the best in the world.^[118] By 1895, through the efforts of silent partner William Hood Dunwoody, Washburn-Crosby exported four million barrels of flour a year to the United Kingdom.^[123] When exports peaked in 1900, fourteen percent of America's grain was milled in Minneapolis^[118] and about one third of that was shipped overseas.^[124] Overall production peaked at 18.5 million barrels in 1916.^[125]

Decades of soil exhaustion, stem rust, and changes in freight tariffs combined to quash the city's flour industry.^[126] In the 1920s, Washburn-Crosby and Pillsbury developed new milling centers in Buffalo, New York, and Kansas City, Missouri, while maintaining their headquarters in Minneapolis.^[127] Under increasingly consolidated management, plants on the Minneapolis mill properties generated hydroelectricity with surplus water.^[128] Hydroelectricity became the equal of flour milling as a user of the falls's power.^[129] Northern States Power bought the united mill companies in 1923,^[130] and by the 1950s controlled over 53,000 horsepower at the falls.^[131] In 1971, the falls became a national historic district.^[132] Hitherto "the backside of the city",^[133] the riverfront caught the attention of a convoluted network of private and government interests who sometimes fought. They developed townhouses and high rises, and rebuilt and renovated lofts—often neglecting affordability—revitalizing mills on both banks.^[134] The upper St. Anthony lock and dam permanently closed in 2015,^[135] and the region's three locks were under federal disposition study as of 2023.^[136]

Mississippi riverfront and Saint Anthony Falls in 1915. At left, Pillsbury, power plants and the Stone Arch Bridge. Today the Minnesota Historical Society's Mill City Museum is in the Washburn "A" Mill, across the river just to the left of the falls. At center-left are Northwestern Consolidated mills. The tall building is Minneapolis City Hall. In the right foreground are Nicollet Island and the Hennepin Avenue Bridge.

Other industries develop

Minneapolis Star humorist Don Morrison wrote that the city doubled, tripled, then quadrupled its population every decade, and in 1922, the city's assessed property value was $266 million, "nearly 10 times the price paid for the entire midcontinent in the Louisiana Purchase."^[137] After the milling era waned, a "modern, major city"^[137] surfaced in 1900, attracted skilled workers,^[138] and depended on expertise from the university's Institute of Technology.^[139]

Seymour Cray and colleagues began work on the CDC 6600 (pictured) in downtown Minneapolis and completed the project in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin.^[140]

In 1886, businessman George D. Munsing found that itchy wool underwear could be covered in silk. His Minneapolis textile business—known then as Munsingwear, today as Perry Ellis^[141]—lasted a century and in 1923, was the world's largest manufacturer of underwear.^[142] In 1922, inventor David W. Onan founded Onan Corporation (bought by Cummins in 1986^[143]), that built and sold generators in Minneapolis.^[144] Onan brought electricity to midwestern markets before power lines covered the country, and supplied about half the generator sets the US military used during World War II.^[145] Frederick McKinley Jones invented mobile refrigeration in Minneapolis, and with his associate founded Thermo King in 1938.^[146] Medtronic, founded in a Minneapolis garage in 1949,^[147] and today domiciled in Ireland, as of 2022 usually appears in lists of the world's largest medical device makers.^[148]

Minnesota's computer industry was the largest and most varied in the US beginning in the 1950s, and in 1989 employed 68,000 people.^{[149][lower-alpha 10]} Minneapolis-Honeywell built a south Minneapolis campus where their experience regulating indoor temperature earned them contracts controlling military servomechanisms like the secret Norden bombsight and the C-1 autopilot.^[151] In the 1960s, the Honeywell 316 and DDP-516 were nodes in ARPANET, the internet's precursor.^[151] The Honeywell Project from 1968 until 1990 advocated for peaceful means to replace the company's military interests.^[151] General Mills built computers for NASA in northeast Minneapolis in the 1950s.^[152] In 1957, Control Data began in downtown Minneapolis, where in the CDC 1604 they replaced vacuum tubes with transistors. Later Control Data moved to the suburbs^{[lower-alpha 11]} and built the CDC 6600 and CDC 7600, the first supercomputers.^[154] A highly successful business until disbanded in 1990, Control Data opened a facility in economically depressed north Minneapolis in 1967, bringing jobs and good publicity.^[154] The University of Minnesota formed an educational computing group that placed three or four personal computers in every Minnesota school, and in 1991 the group's personnel released Gopher on a Macintosh SE/30 which ran until World Wide Web traffic surpassed Gopher traffic in 1994.^[155]

In the 1960s, developers and city leaders successfully contended with shopping attractions in suburbia^[156]—the pioneering Southdale Center^[157] and later the Mall of America.^[158] The new Minneapolis Skyway System and the Nicollet Mall brought with them a heyday for downtown.^[159]

Social tension

In many ways, the 20th century was a difficult time of bigotry and malfeasance, beginning with four decades of corruption.^[160] Known initially as a kindly physician, mayor Doc Ames made his brother police chief, ran the city into crime, and tried to leave town in 1902 according to historian Iric Nathanson.^[161] Lincoln Steffens published Ames's story in "The Shame of Minneapolis" in 1903.^[162] The Ku Klux Klan was a force in the city from 1921^[163] until 1923.^[164] The gangster Kid Cann engaged in bribery and intimidation between the 1920s and the 1940s.^[165] After Minnesota passed a eugenics law in 1925, the proprietors of Eitel Hospital sterilized people at Faribault State Hospital.^[166]

Battle between striking teamsters and police, 1934. The May (pictured) and subsequent July battles killed four men, two on each side.^[167]

The city was relatively unsegregated before 1910,^[168] with a Black population of less than one percent,^[169] when a developer wrote the first restrictive covenant based on race and ethnicity into a Minneapolis deed.^[170] Realtors adopted the practice, thousands of times preventing non-Whites from owning or leasing properties;^[171] this practice continued for four decades until the city became more and more racially divided.^[172] Though such language was prohibited by state law in 1953 and by the federal Fair Housing Act of 1968,^[173] restrictive covenants against minorities remained in many Minneapolis deeds as of the 2020s, and in 2021 the city gave residents a means to discharge them.^[174]

During the summer of 1934 and the financial downturn of the Great Depression, the Citizens' Alliance, an association of employers, refused to negotiate with teamsters. The truck drivers union executed strikes in May and July–August.^[175] Charles Rumford Walker explains in his book American City that Minneapolis teamsters succeeded in part due to the "military precision of the strike machine".^[176] The union victory ultimately led to 1935 and 1938 federal laws protecting workers' rights.^[177]

From the end of World War I in 1918 until 1950, antisemitism was commonplace in Minneapolis—Carey McWilliams called the city the anti-Semitic capital of the US.^[178] A hate group called the Silver Legion of America held meetings in the city from 1936 to 1938.^[179] In the 1940s, mayor Hubert Humphrey worked to rescue the city's reputation,^[180] and helped the city establish the country's first fair employment practices and a human-relations council that interceded on behalf of minorities.^[181] However, the lives of Black people had not been improved.^[168] In 1966 and 1967—years of significant turmoil across the US—suppressed anger among the Black population was released in two disturbances on Plymouth Avenue.^[182] A coalition reached a peaceful outcome but again failed to solve Black poverty and unemployment. Prince, who was bused to fourth grade in 1967, said in retrospect, "he believed that Minnesota at that time was no more enlightened than segregationist Alabama had been".^[183]

Between 1958 and 1963—in the largest urban renewal plan undertaken in America as of 2022^[184]—Minneapolis demolished "skid row". Gone were 35 acres (10 ha) with more than 200 buildings, or roughly 40 percent of downtown, including the Gateway District and its significant architecture, such as the Metropolitan Building.^[185] Efforts to save the building failed but encouraged interest in historic preservation.^[185]

In 1968, relocated Native Americans founded the American Indian Movement^[186] in Minneapolis,^[187] and its A.I.M. Survival School, later called Heart of the Earth,^[188] taught native traditions to children until closing in 2008.^[189] In a backlash of the "dominant" White voters, Charles Stenvig, a law-and-order candidate, became mayor in 1969, and governed for a decade until 1977.^[190][191] After their marriage license was denied in 1970, a same-sex Minneapolis couple appealed all the way to the US Supreme Court in Baker v. Nelson.^[192] They managed to get a license and marry in 1971,^[192] forty years before Minnesota legalized same-sex marriage in 2013, and Obergefell v. Hodges did so nationwide in 2015.^[193]

Immigration helped to curb the city's mid-20th century population decline. But because of a few radicalized persons, the city's large Somali population was targeted with discrimination after 9/11, when its hawalas or banks were closed.^[194]

On May 25, 2020, 17-year-old Darnella Frazier recorded the murder of George Floyd;^[195] her video contradicted the police department's initial statement.^[196] Floyd, an African American man, suffocated when Derek Chauvin, a White Minneapolis police officer, knelt on his neck and back for more than nine minutes. While Floyd was neither the first nor the last Black man killed by Minneapolis police,^[197][198] his murder sparked international rebellions and mass protests.^[199] Reporting on the local insurgency, The New York Times said that "over three nights, a five-mile stretch of Minneapolis sustained extraordinary damage"^[200]—destruction included a police station that demonstrators overran and set on fire.^[201] The Twin Cities experienced ongoing unrest over racial injustice from 2020 to 2022.^[202]

Structural racism

Minneapolis has a history of structural racism^[203] and has racial disparities in nearly every aspect of society.^[204] Some historians and commentators have said White Minneapolitans used discrimination based on race against the city's non-White residents. As White settlers displaced the indigenous population during the 19th century, they claimed the city's land,^[205] and Kirsten Delegard of Mapping Prejudice explains that today's disparities evolved from control of the land.^[168] Discrimination increased when flour milling moved to the East Coast and the economy declined.^[206] The I-35W highway built in 1959 under the Interstate Highway System^[207] cut through Black and Mexican neighborhoods.^[208]

The foundation laid by racial covenants on residential segregation, property value, homeownership, wealth, housing security, access to green spaces, trees and parks, and health equity shapes the lives of people in 2022.^[209] The city wrote in a decennial plan that racially discriminatory federal housing policies starting in the 1930s "prevented access to mortgages in areas with Jews, African-Americans and other minorities", and "left a lasting effect on the physical characteristics of the city and the financial well-being of its residents."^[210]

Discussing a Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis report on how systemic racism compromises education in Minnesota,^[211] Professor Keith Mayes says, "So the housing disparities created the educational disparities that we still live with today."^[212] Professor Samuel Myers Jr. says of redlining, "Policing policies evolved that substituted explicit racial profiling with scientific management of racially disparate arrests. ... racially discriminatory policies became institutionalized and 'baked in' to the fabric of Minnesota life."^{[213][lower-alpha 12]} In 2020, government efforts to address these disparities include declaring racism a public health emergency,^[215] and zoning changes passed by the 2018 Minneapolis City Council 2040 plan.^[216]

Neighborhoods

Cyclists on Midtown Greenway in Midtown Phillips, one of the 83 neighborhoods of Minneapolis

Minneapolis has 83 neighborhoods and 70 neighborhood organizations.^[230] In some cases, two or more neighborhoods act together under one organization.^[231]

Around 1990, the city set up the Neighborhood Revitalization Program (NRP), in which every one of the city's eighty-some neighborhoods participated.^[232] Funded for 20 years through 2011, with $400 million tax increment financing (TIF),^[232] the program caught the eye of UN-Habitat who considered it an example of best practices. Residents had a direct connection to government in NRP, whereby they proposed ideas appropriate for their area, and NRP reviewed the plans and provided implementation funds.^{[232] [233]} The city's Neighborhood and Community Relations department took NRP's place in 2011^[234] and is funded only by city revenue.^[235] In 2023, two neighborhood organizations merged and others contemplated similar moves so they could combine reduced resources.^[235] In his 2024 proposed budget, the mayor suggested an increase in base funding for neighborhood organizations.^[236]

In 2018, Minneapolis City Council approved the Minneapolis 2040 Comprehensive Plan, which resulted in a city-wide end to single-family zoning.^[237] Slate reported that Minneapolis was believed to be the first major city in the US to make citywide such a revision in housing possibilities.^[238] At the time, 70 percent of residential land was zoned for detached, single-family homes,^[239] though many of those areas had "nonconforming" buildings with more housing units.^[240] City leaders sought to increase the supply of housing so more neighborhoods would be affordable and to decrease the effects single-family zoning had caused on racial disparities and segregation.^[241] The Brookings Institution called it "a relatively rare example of success for the YIMBY agenda".^[242] In 2023, a district court judge ruled that the plan violated the Minnesota Environmental Rights Act and that the city must abandon it.^[243] The city reverted to its 2030 plan.^[244]

Climate

Minneapolis experiences a hot-summer humid continental climate (Dfa in the Köppen climate classification),^[245] that is typical of southern parts of the Upper Midwest; it is situated in USDA plant hardiness zone 4b, although small enclaves of the city are classified as zone 5a.^{[246][247][248]} Minneapolis has cold, snowy winters and hot, humid summers, as is typical in a continental climate. The difference between average temperatures in the coldest winter month and the warmest summer month is 58.1 °F (32.3 °C).

The Minneapolis area experiences a full range of precipitation and related weather events, including snow, sleet, ice, rain, thunderstorms, and fog. The highest recorded temperature is 108 °F (42 °C) in July 1936 while the lowest is −41 °F (−41 °C) in January 1888.^[249] The snowiest winter on record was 1983–1984, when 98.6 in (250 cm) of snow fell.^[250] The least-snowy winter was 1930–1931, when 14.2 inches (36 cm) fell.^[250] According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the annual average for sunshine duration is 58 percent.^[251]

Cityscape

The Minneapolis skyline seen from the Prospect Park Water Tower

Census and estimates

By population in 2023, Minneapolis is the state's largest city^[303] and in 2015, it became the country's 46th largest city.^[304] According to the 2020 US census, the population of Minneapolis was 429,954.^[305] Hispanic and Latinos comprised 44,513 (10.4 percent).^[306] For those who were not Hispanic or Latino, 249,581 people (58.0 percent) were White alone (62.7 percent White alone or in combination), 81,088 (18.9 percent) were Black or African American alone (21.3 percent Black alone or in combination), 24,929 (5.8 percent) were Asian alone, 7,433 (1.2 percent) were American Indian and Alaska Native alone, 25,387 (0.6 percent) some other race alone, and 34,463 (5.2 percent) were multiracial.^[305]

The most common ancestries in Minneapolis according to the 2021 American Community Survey (ACS) were German (22.9 percent), Irish (10.8 percent), Norwegian (8.9 percent), Subsaharan African (6.7 percent), and Swedish (6.1 percent).^[307] Among those five years and older, 81.2 percent spoke only English at home, while 7.1 percent spoke Spanish and 11.7 percent spoke other languages, including large numbers of Somali and Hmong speakers.^[307] About 13.7 percent of the population was born abroad, with 53.2 percent of them being naturalized US citizens. Most immigrants arrived from Africa (40.6 percent), Asia (24.6 percent), and Latin America (25.2 percent), with 34.6 percent of all foreign-born residents having arrived in 2010 or earlier.^[307]

The 2021 ACS reported that the median household income in Minneapolis was $69,397. It was $97,670 for families, $123,693 for married couples, and $54,083 for non-family households.^[308][309] The median gross rent in Minneapolis was $1,225, and 92.7 percent of housing units in Minneapolis were occupied. Housing units in the city built in 1939 or earlier comprised 43.7 percent.^[310] About 15.0 percent of residents lived in poverty.^[311] The percentage of residents who had obtained a bachelor's degree or higher was 53.6 percent, and 92.1 percent had at least a high school diploma.^[312] US veterans made up 3.2 percent of the population.^[307]

In Minneapolis, African Americans comprised approximately 20% of the population as of 2020.^[305] Annual income for a Black family was less than half of that earned by a White family, and Blacks owned homes at a rate one-third that of White families.^[313] In 2018, the median income for a Black family was $36,000, which was $47,000 less than a White family's median income. This income gap was one of the largest in the country, with Black Minneapolitans earning only about 44% of what White Minneapolitans earned annually.^[313]

Religion

Christ Church Lutheran is one of the city's four National Historic Landmarks.^[314]

The indigenous Dakota people believed in the Great Spirit, and were surprised that not all European settlers were religious.^[315]

Twin Cities residents are 70 percent Christian according to the most recent Pew Research Center religious survey in 2014.^[316] Settlers who arrived in Minneapolis from New England were for the most part Protestants, Quakers, and Universalists.^[315] The oldest continuously used church, Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church, was built in 1856 by Universalists and soon afterward was acquired by a French Catholic congregation.^[317] St. Mary's Orthodox Cathedral was founded in 1887;^[318] it opened a missionary school and in 1905 created a Russian Orthodox seminary.^[319] Edwin Hawley Hewitt designed St. Mark's Episcopal Cathedral and Hennepin Avenue United Methodist Church, both of which are located south of downtown.^[320] The Basilica of Saint Mary, the first basilica in the US and co-cathedral of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis, was named by Pope Pius XI in 1926.^[315] The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association was headquartered in Minneapolis from the 1950s until 2001.^[321] Christ Church Lutheran in the Longfellow neighborhood was the final work in the career of Eliel Saarinen, and has an education building designed by his son Eero.^[322]

Aligning with a national trend, the metro area's next largest group after Christians is the 23 percent non-religious population.^[316] At the same time, more than 50 denominations and religions are present in Minneapolis, representing most of the world's religions.^[315] Temple Israel was built in 1928 by the city's first Jewish congregation, Shaarai Tov, which was formed in 1878.^[272] By 1959, a Temple of Islam was located in north Minneapolis.^[323] In 1971, a reported 150 persons attended classes at a Hindu temple near the university.^[323] In 1972, a relief agency resettled the first Shi'a Muslim family from Uganda in the Twin Cities.^[324] Somalis who live in Minneapolis are primarily Sunni Muslim.^[325] In 2022, Minneapolis amended its noise ordinance to allow broadcasting the Muslim call to prayer five times per day.^[326] The city has about seven Buddhist centers and meditation centers.^[327]

Visual arts

The Minneapolis Institute of Art admission is free except for special exhibitions.^[342]

During the Gilded Age, the Walker Art Center began as a private art collection in the home of lumberman T. B. Walker who extended free admission to the public.^[343] Around 1940, the center's focus shifted to modern and contemporary art.^[344]

The Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) is located in south-central Minneapolis on the 10-acre (4 ha) former homestead of the Morrison family.^[345] The collection of more than 90,000 artworks spans six continents and about 5,000 years.^[346] Perhaps reflecting the ambitions of the founders, competition winner McKim, Mead & White designed a complex seven times the size of what opened in 1915.^[347]

Frank Gehry designed Weisman Art Museum, which opened in 1993, for the University of Minnesota.^[348] A 2011 addition by Gehry doubled the size of the galleries.^[349] The Museum of Russian Art opened in a restored church in 2005, and hosts a collection of 20th-century Russian art and special events.^[350] Northeast Minneapolis Arts District hosts 400 independent artists, a center at the Northrup-King Building, and recurring annual events.^[351]

Theater and performing arts

The Guthrie Theater originated as an alternative to Broadway.^[352]

Minneapolis has hosted theatrical performances since the end of the American Civil War.^[353] Early theaters included Pence Opera House, the Academy of Music, Grand Opera House, Lyceum, and later the Metropolitan Opera House, which opened in 1894.^[354] Fifteen of the fifty-five Twin Cities theater companies counted in 2015 by Peg Guilfoyle had a physical site in Minneapolis. About half the remainder performed in variable spaces throughout the metropolitan area.^[355]

In his social history of American regional theater, Joseph Zeigler calls the Guthrie Theater the "granddaddy" of regional theater.^[356] Tyrone Guthrie founded the Guthrie in 1963 with an inventive thrust stage—a collaboration by Guthrie, designer Tanya Moiseiwitsch, and architect Ralph Rapson^[357]—jutting into the seats and surrounded by the audience on three sides.^[358] French architect Jean Nouvel designed a new Guthrie that opened in 2006 overlooking the Mississippi River.^[358] The design team reproduced the thrust stage with some alterations, and they added a proscenium stage and an experimental stage.^[358]

Minneapolis purchased and renovated the Orpheum, State, and Pantages Theatres, vaudeville and film houses on Hennepin Avenue that are now used for concerts and plays.^[359] Another renovated theater, the Shubert, joined with the Hennepin Center for the Arts to become the Cowles Center for Dance and the Performing Arts, which represents more than 20 performing arts groups.^[360]

Music

Prince studied at the Minnesota Dance Theatre^[361] through the Minneapolis Public Schools.^[362]

Minnesota Orchestra plays classical and popular music at Orchestra Hall under Thomas Søndergård, the music director effective with the 2023–2024 season.^[363] The orchestra won a 2014 Grammy for their recording of Symphonies Nos. 1 & 4 by Sibelius,^[364] and a 2004 Grammy for composer Dominick Argento with their recording of Casa Guidi.^[365] Minneapolis's opera companies include Minnesota Opera,^[366] the Gilbert & Sullivan Very Light Opera Company,^[367] and Really Spicy Opera.^[368]

Singer and multi-instrumentalist Prince was a child prodigy,^[369] born in Minneapolis and an area resident for most of his life.^[370] Minneapolis became what Pitchfork called the "center of music in the '80s" thanks to the nightclub First Avenue and musicians like Prince, Hüsker Dü, and The Replacements.^[371] The city hosts several other concert venues including the Cedar and the Dakota,^[372] and Live Nation books the Armory and the Uptown Theater.^[373] Hip hop acts such as Atmosphere featured the city and Minnesota in their lyrics.^[374][375]

Charity

Philanthropy and charitable giving have been part of the Minneapolis community since the 1800s.^[376] According to AmeriCorps, in 2017, Minneapolis–Saint Paul, with 46.3 percent of the population volunteering, had the highest proportion of volunteers among US cities.^[377] Catholic Charities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul is one of the largest non-profit organizations in the state, and a provider of several social services.^[378]

A decades-old NGO with a $75 million annual budget located in Minneapolis,^[379] Alight helps millions of refugees in Africa and Asia with water, shelter, and economic support.^[380]

Historical museums

Black Lives Matter mural (2020) organized by the Minnesota African American Heritage Museum and Gallery^[381]

Exhibits at Mill City Museum feature the city's history of flour milling.^[382] The Bakken, formerly known as the Bakken Library and Museum of Electricity in Life,^[383] shifted focus in 2016 from electricity and magnetism to invention and innovation, and in 2020 opened a new entrance on Bde Maka Ska.^[384] Hennepin History Museum is housed in a former mansion.^[385] Minnehaha Depot was built in 1875.^[386]

The American Swedish Institute occupies a former mansion on Park Avenue.^[387] The American Indian Cultural Corridor, about eight blocks on Franklin Avenue, houses All My Relatives Gallery.^[388] The Minnesota African American Heritage Museum and Gallery was founded in 2018.^[389] In 2013, the Somali Museum of Minnesota opened on Lake Street.^[390]

Literary arts

The nonprofit literary presses Coffee House Press, Milkweed Editions, and Graywolf Press are based in Minneapolis.^[391] The University of Minnesota Press publishes books, journals, and the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory.^[392] The Open Book facility houses Milkweed, the Minnesota Center for Book Arts, and The Loft Literary Center.^[393] Other Minneapolis publishers are 1517 Media,^[394] Button Poetry,^[395] and Lerner Publishing Group.^[396]

Cuisine

After the flight to the suburbs began in the 1950s, streetcar service ended citywide.^[397] One of the largest urban food deserts in the US developed on the north side of Minneapolis, where as of mid-2017, 70,000 people had access to only two grocery stores.^[398] When Aldi closed in 2023, the area again became a food desert with two full-service grocers.^[399] The nonprofit Appetite for Change sought to improve the diet of residents, competing against an influx of fast-food stores,^[400] and by 2017 it administered ten gardens, sold produce in the mid-year months at West Broadway Farmers Market, supplied its restaurants, and gave away boxes of fresh produce.^[401]

Minneapolis-based individuals who have won the food industry James Beard Foundation Award include chef Gavin Kaysen,^[402] writer Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl,^[403] television personality Andrew Zimmern,^[404] and chef Sean Sherman,^[405] whose restaurant Owamni received James Beard's 2022 best new restaurant award.^[406]

Conceived in Minneapolis as a malted milkshake in candy form, the Milky Way bar of nougat, caramel, and chocolate was made in the North Loop neighborhood during the 1920s.^[407] Both purported originators of the Jucy Lucy burger—the 5-8 Club and Matt's Bar—have served it since the 1950s.^[408] East African cuisine arrived in Minneapolis with the wave of migrants from Somalia that started in the 1990s.^[409] The Herbivorous Butcher opened in 2016; the shop offers natural alternatives to meat that were described by CBS News as "meat-free meat" from the "first vegan 'butcher' shop in the United States".^[410]

Annual events

Each January and February, a series of events called The Great Northern is held in Minneapolis.^[411] The series includes the annual U.S. Pond Hockey Championships on Lake Nokomis;^[412] and the City of Lakes Loppet, a 13-mile (21-kilometer) or 26-mile (42-kilometer) cross-country ski race that is part of the American ski marathon series.^[413]

The annual MayDay Parade is held in south Minneapolis in May.^[414] Other events include Art-A-Whirl^[415] in May; Twin Cities Pride,^[416] the Stone Arch Bridge Festival,^[417] and Twin Cities Juneteenth^[418] in June; Minnehaha Falls Art Fair and Loring Park Art Festival in July;^[419] the Minneapolis Aquatennial,^[420] the Minnesota Fringe Festival,^[421] the Uptown Art Fair, Powderhorn Art Fair, and Downtown Mpls Street Art Festival in August;^[419] the Minneapolis Monarch Festival in September that celebrates the monarch butterfly's 2,300-mile (3,700 km) migration;^[422] and in October, the Twin Cities Marathon which is a Boston Marathon qualifier.^[423]

Libraries

In 2008, the Minneapolis Public Library merged with the Hennepin County Library. Fifteen of the system's 41 branches serve Minneapolis.^[424] The downtown Central Library, designed by César Pelli, opened in 2006.^[425] Seven special collections hold resources for researchers.^[426]

Primary and secondary

Volunteer missionaries,^[499] the Pond brothers received permission from the US Indian agency^[500] at Fort Snelling in 1834 to teach new farming techniques and a new religion to Chief Cloud Man and his community on the east shore of Bde Maka Ska.^[315] That year, J. D. Stevens and the Ponds built an Indian mission near Lake Harriet, which was the first educational institution in Minneapolis.^[315] When more settlers moved to the area, by 1874, ten school buildings served nearly 4,000 students. The city of Minneapolis joined with St. Anthony and by 1922, together they enrolled 70,000 students.^[501]

Dual language science outreach at Emerson, one of nine^[502] magnet elementary schools

Minneapolis Public Schools served 28,689 K–12 students as of October 2022,^[503] in more than fifty schools, divided between community and magnet.^[504] As of 2023, enrollment was declining about 1.5 percent per year, and approximately 60 percent of school age children attended district schools.^[503] Many students enrolled in alternatives such as charter schools, of which the city has thirty as of 2023.^[505] By state law, charter schools are open to all students and are tuition free.^[506] In 2022, about 1200 at-risk students attended district Contract Alternative Schools.^[507]

The public school district adopted a comprehensive district design beginning with the 2020–2021 school year to address academics, equity, financial sustainability, and to end disadvantages for students of color and students from low-income neighborhoods. The design changed student placement, changed the boundaries for almost all schools, moved magnet schools to central locations and narrowed the magnet types, standardized many start times to improve bus service, and gave every student a community elementary and middle school in their neighborhood. Students may attend a community school by request and be accepted to the school in their neighborhood. Students entered a lottery to be enrolled in a magnet school.^[504] Eight high schools had school-based clinics with a doctor, nurses, a mental health counselor, and a registered dietitian.^[508] School district demographics differed from the city's. White students made up 41 percent, Black students 35 percent, Hispanic 14 percent, and 5 percent each were Asian and Native American.^[509] English-language learners were about 17 percent,^[509] in a district that spoke 100 languages at home.^[510] About 15 percent were special education students.^[509] As of fall 2023, every Minneapolis public school student receives one free breakfast and one free lunch each school day.^[511] In 2022, the district's graduation rate was 77 percent, an improvement of three percent over the previous year.^[512]

Colleges and universities

University of Minnesota teaching art museum, teaching hospital, and student union (left to right)

The University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus is headquartered in Minneapolis.^[513] With more than 50,000 students in 2023, it is the sixth largest campus in the US by enrollment.^[514] College rankings for 2023 place the school in the range of 44th^[515] (2022) to 185th for academics worldwide.^[514][513] QS found a decline in rank over a decade.^[513] Shanghai found excellence in ecology, business management, library & information science, and biotechnology.^[515] Among the 2,000 schools U.S. News & World Report compared in its 2022–2023 best global universities rankings, the University of Minnesota was 57th.^[516] The state's land-grant university,^[517] the school has unusual autonomy that has existed in Minnesota since 1858, when the state constitution included the provision: regents are in control, independent of city government.^[518]

Augsburg University, Minneapolis College of Art and Design, and North Central University are private four-year colleges; the first two offer master's programs.^[519] The public two-year Minneapolis Community and Technical College^[520] and the private Dunwoody College of Technology^[521] provide career training and associate degrees and the latter offers a bachelor's program. Saint Mary's University of Minnesota has a Twin Cities campus for its graduate and professional programs.^[522] Opening a new Minneapolis site in 2023, Red Lake Nation College is a federally recognized tribal college site that teaches Ojibwe culture.^[523] The large, principally online universities Capella University^[524] and Walden University^[525] are both headquartered in the city. The public four-year Metropolitan State University^[526] and the private four-year University of St. Thomas^[527] are post-secondary institutions based elsewhere that have campuses in Minneapolis.

The city has more than twenty-five licensed career schools. These institutions offer short term training, some diplomas, and certificates in a wide variety of fields including business, yoga, pilates, portfolio development, CompTIA certification, floral design, cosmetology, construction, healthcare, information technology, and for those who wish to become a personal trainer, ophthalmic technician, or phlebotomy technician.^[528]

Transportation

A Metro Blue Line train traveling from the Lake Street/Midtown station

The 2020 census found that the average commute to work for the Minneapolis population was 22 minutes.^[551] The most common means of transportation to work was driving alone (45 percent), the least common was bicycling (1.7 percent), and others were carpooling (6.5 percent), taking public transit (5.6 percent), and walking (4.8 percent).^[551]

A division of the Metropolitan Council, Metro operates public transportation in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul metropolitan area.^[552] The system has two light rail lines, one commuter rail line, about six bus rapid transit (BRT) lines,^[553] and about 90 bus lines with over 8,000 stops.^[554] As of 2021, riders of Metro Transit system-wide were 44 percent persons of color.^[555] Bus ridership in the Twin Cities was 91.6 million in 2019, a three-percent decline over the previous year and part of a national trend in falling local bus ridership, while commuter rides were down, and ridership on light rail and BRTs remained steady or grew slightly.^[556]

The Metro Blue Line light rail line connects the Mall of America and Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport in Bloomington to downtown, and the Green Line travels from downtown through the University of Minnesota campus to downtown Saint Paul. Hundreds of homeless people nightly sought shelter on Green Line trains until overnight service was cut back in 2019.^[557] In 2020, a rise in crime on the light rail system led to discussion in the state legislature on how to best address the problem.^[558] A Blue Line extension to the northwest suburbs re-entered the planning stages for a new route alignment in 2020.^[559] A Green Line extension is planned to connect downtown with the southwestern suburbs.^{[lower-alpha 16]} BRT lines are 25 percent faster than regular bus lines because riders pay before boarding, stops are limited, and sometimes they employ signal prioritization.^[561] The newest BRT line, the D Line, runs along one of Minnesota's most used bus lines, the 18-mile (29 km) route 5, where a quarter of households do not have access to a car.^[561] The 40-mile (64 km) Northstar Commuter rail runs from Big Lake, Minnesota, to downtown Minneapolis. Commuter rides decreased during the COVID-19 pandemic, and as of 2023, service cut back to four from 12 daily trips.^[562]

Evie Carshare, owned by Minneapolis and Saint Paul since 2022, is a fleet of 145 electric cars available for one-way trips in a 35-square-mile (91 km²) area of the Twin Cities.^[563]

A cyclist in winter

Minneapolis has 16 miles (26 km) of on-street protected bikeways, 98 miles (158 km) of bike lanes and 101 miles (163 km) of off-street bikeways and trails.^[564] Off-street facilities include the Grand Rounds National Scenic Byway, Midtown Greenway, Little Earth Trail, Hiawatha LRT Trail, Kenilworth Trail, and Cedar Lake Trail.^[565] Replacing Nice Ride in 2023, for part of the year Lime, Spin and Veo had bicycles and scooters for rent with an app.^[566]

In 2007, the Interstate 35W bridge over the Mississippi, which was overloaded with 300 short tons (270,000 kg) of repair materials, collapsed, killing 13 people and injuring 145. The bridge was rebuilt in 14 months.^[567]

The Minneapolis Skyway System, 9.5 miles (15.3 km) of enclosed pedestrian bridges called skyways, links 80 city blocks downtown with access to second-floor restaurants, retailers, government, sports facilities, doctor's offices and other businesses that are open on weekdays.^[568]

Fifteen commercial passenger airlines serve Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport (MSP).^[569] MSP is the headquarters of Sun Country Airlines.^[570] After it merged with Northwest Airlines in 2009, Delta Air Lines flew 80% of the airport's traffic,^[571] and MSP was Delta's second-largest US hub.^[572]

Services and utilities

Downtown Improvement District ambassador

Xcel Energy supplies electricity,^[573] and CenterPoint Energy provides gas.^[573] The water supply is managed by four watershed districts that correspond with the Mississippi and three streams that are river tributaries.^[574]

The city has 19 fire stations.^[575] Requests for non-emergency information or service requests can be made through Minneapolis 311. The call center operates in English, Spanish, Hmong, and Somali, and offers 220 language options.^[576] Email, TTY, text, voice, and a mobile app can access the center.^[577]

The Minneapolis Department of Public Works is responsible for services including snow plowing, solid waste removal, traffic and parking, water treatment, transportation planning and maintenance, and fleet services for the city.^[578] Among its engineering functions, the department was increasing the capacity of a 4,200-foot (1,300 m) storm water tunnel system 80 feet (24 m) under Washington to Chicago Avenues, and had completed 97 percent of the excavation phase and 41 percent of the lining phase as of August 2023.^[579] Designed for downtown's concrete landscape, the system will drain runoff into the Mississippi in case of a 100-year storm.^[580]

Downtown Improvement District ambassadors, who are identified by their blue-and-green-yellow fluorescent jackets, daily patrol a 120-block area of downtown to greet and assist visitors, remove trash, monitor property, and call police when they are needed. The ambassador program is a public-private partnership that is paid for by a special downtown tax district.^[581]

Health care

Hennepin County Medical Center has the state's busiest emergency room.^[582]

Abbott Northwestern Hospital, Children's Minnesota, Hennepin Healthcare, M Health Fairview University of Minnesota Masonic Children's Hospital, M Health Fairview University of Minnesota Medical Center, M Health Fairview University of Minnesota Medical Center, Minneapolis VA Medical Center, and Phillips Eye Institute serve the city.^[583]

Cardiac surgery was developed at the university's Variety Club Heart Hospital,^[584] where by 1957, more than 200 patients—most of whom were children—had survived open-heart operations.^[585] Working with surgeon C. Walton Lillehei, Medtronic began to build portable and implantable cardiac pacemakers about this time.^[586]

Hennepin Healthcare, a public teaching hospital and Level I trauma center,^[587] opened in 1887 as City Hospital, and has been known as Minneapolis General Hospital, Hennepin County General Hospital, and Hennepin County Medical Center or HCMC.^[588]

In 2021, opioid overdoses killed 197 people in Minneapolis.^[589] For the state in 2021, Black persons were three times and Native American persons were ten times more likely to die from an opioid overdose than White persons.^[590] The mayor's proposed 2024 budget adds funds for the Turning Point treatment center, that provides care specifically for African Americans.^[591] The Red Lake Band of Chippewa is building a culturally sensitive treatment center for opioid and fentanyl addiction. Minneapolis transferred two city-owned properties to the Red Lake Nation for the facility.^[592][593]

The Mashkiki Waakaa'igan Pharmacy—funded by the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa—dispenses free prescription drugs and culturally sensitive care to members of any federally recognized tribes living in Hennepin and Ramsey counties, regardless of insurance status.^[594]