Minneapolis: Mary, Prince & George Floyd

Are We Gonna Make It After All?

Until last week, for many people who’ve never been there, Minneapolis conjured up two celebrated people who both put the city on the map in ways that could not be more different: Prince and Mary Tyler Moore. Through our silver screens we saw Minneapolis as a place dreams could come true as a single woman, a place where rockin’ funk could be born and both women and black Americans could sing “I don’t wanna stop, til I reach the top!”

Every week my parents eagerly looked forward to watching “The Mary Tyler Moore Show”, perhaps the favorite TV show for white middle class Americans in the 70s about a career woman striking out on her own. Set in downtown Minneapolis, the opening theme music and lyrics were infectious: “We’re gonna make it after all!” culminating in Mary’s exuberant beret toss against the high-rises while a disapproving housewife with a scarf over rollers looked on. Mary had escaped suburban drudgery!

It seemed like a time of possibility and change, at least for some of us on the “right side” of the tracks, and my Mom, who had lobbied Senators for the Civil Rights bill in Washington in the 60s, continued to be a mover & shaker with the local chapter of Fair Housing for people of color in Westchester County, New York. During those meetings in member’s living rooms, she crocheted a “Mary” beret and matching scarf for me in my favorite foreshadowing color: Purple. Even though as a child I thought Mary a little too shrill and not all that liberated when she whined “Mr. Grant!”, nevertheless her cheery demeanor became synonymous with Minneapolis for anyone from a distance. It sure looked cold there but that beret flying into high-rises said “the sky’s the limit!” no matter the barometer.

In the 80s Princes’ incendiary talent brought Minneapolis back onto the scene and this time people were brown AND they were hot AND they rode the groove in “Purple Rain”. I stalked the streets of Northampton, Massachusetts during college with my asymmetrical haircut listening to that album on repeat on my Walkman. Prince was a Minneapolis native son who deepened his roots when he built Paisley Park there, making the city his base camp and changing the music industry forever. His shocking demise from an accidental fentanyl overdose and exposure of his long-time painkiller addiction was a gut punch to his fans and let the air out of Minneapolis’ balloon.

Now Mary’s beret has come down to earth with a thud with the brutal murder of George Floyd over a $20 bill on that same TV under the merciless knee of a rogue white cop and his complicit fellow officers. In those 8 minutes 46 seconds, our long history of racist violence is televised for all to see, even for those who’d rather change the channel.

Minneapolis will never have the same resonance again for those of us who’ve never been there but who coasted at times on the media fantasy of life in America’s inner cities from afar. Instead our collective white shame about the racists among us who’s legacy of violence hasn’t stopped.

George’s brother said, “Please make it stop.” in the Congressional hearing. We must ALL engage with our communities and VOTE to change our Government, national and local, to one that will make sure that racist police officers are routed out from the ranks to protect the countless black men and women of America who endure daily the insufferable disease of racism.

And ultimately, we must illumine our own selves with the light of consciousness and dissolve anything inside us: silence, fear, “otherness” towards our fellow humans that prevents us from treating each other the way we wish to be treated ourselves.

There is no other way “to make it after all”.