St. Paul’s history bridged vividly to the present
If there is an important local author—wait, scratch that. If there is an important author to read this year, it’s Melvin Whitfield Carter Jr. Carter is a St. Paul Police Department veteran of roughly 30 years, founder of Save Our Sons, Navy veteran and, through writing his autobiography, a historian of St. Paul’s Rondo neighborhood, which, beginning in 1956 through the mid-1960s, was eviscerated for construction of Interstate 94 through the city. (If Carter’s name sounds familiar, his son, Melvin Carter III, is currently mayor of St. Paul.)
This past summer I saw Mr. Carter (the elder) at the gym once or twice a week, and I asked him about his writing process, among other things in the book over the course of my reading. He remarked that Mark Twain once said that when he wrote, he wanted to transport people to the Mississippi River. “I wanted to transport people to Rondo,” Carter said.
He did that effectively. I’ve lived in St. Paul for 21 years, and found myself looking at street signs more closely as I walked, biked or drove on my daily routines, assembling in my imagination the map Carter wrote in his book of his old stomping ground.
Carter was born in the Rondo neighborhood, which was bordered by Rice Street and Lexington Avenue on the east and west, and Marshall and University avenues on the south and north borders, respectively. The one lane that remained of Rondo Avenue after the project has since been renamed Concordia Avenue, and is a service road for the highway. Estimates range from 500 to 650 families in the Rondo neighborhood were displaced for the project. There is a long history in the US of using “urban renewal”—in particular highway expansion—as a tool to remove minority and low income neighborhoods. Carter’s story is a personal journey through that, and its long-lasting impact.
Carter notes that in 1956 houses and businesses began being vacated for the project, and the mischief within the neighborhood began to increase. He jumped into it with zeal. He failed at school (second and third grade), and moved into a life of fistfights and bad decisions amid the omnipresence of discrimination.
It’s that discrimination that I, as a white male, can’t ever comprehend, no matter how enlightened I think I might be. This is not a book filled with rage, however, which makes it all the more powerful. It is a riveting tale, one that, outside its social importance, any book lover should read. Carter’s natural ability as a storyteller is clear, and he’s an extremely effective writer. You can tell he was a cop—the details are precise and without pretension. I opened the book during a plane ride, and stormed through the first 100 of its 265 pages, stopping only when the pilot announced to prepare for landing. I haven’t ripped through a book so fast in a long time.
The story rolls from Carter’s early street-tough years through high school at Central to his enlistment in the Navy (a path his father took) and deployment at a base in Morocco. And, again, through it all, is Carter’s growth as a man against his personal demons of insecurity and impulsiveness, and the discrimination within general society and the military. He takes advantage of situations to prove himself, including boxing matches against a racist Navy bruiser and then a Moroccan Olympic fighter. From there, the story brings him back to the US, where he plays trumpet in a band (his father, Melvin, was a jazz musician) and tries to find a career that would suit him.
On another occasion at the gym, I asked him how he was able to stay positive and “keep moving forward” despite the constant obstacles thrown up. Because, no matter what obstacles I have faced, I’ve never had my skin color be the reason somebody might block my professional path, physically assault me, or direct verbal hatred at me on a daily basis.
“My father was a dignified man—he didn’t even fart,” Carter said with a smile, adding that his father also never swore, and instead chose different adjectives when he was angry. “He didn’t allow the word ‘hate’ to be used in the house.”
It was his father’s example that kept him wanting to be better—to be a “dignified man.” “I got that from my father,” Carter said. “I got my energy form my mother.”
“Where you at in the book?” he asked. I told Carter I was at his trip to Chicago with friends after his Navy tenure.
“It gets rough,” he said. “Well, it is pretty rough, what you’ve read. But it gets rougher.”
That it does. Carter, while talking about the discrimination he faced, also is blunt about his own shortcomings—which makes the narrative all the more effective, and often funny through all the difficult moments. Carter doesn’t cut himself any slack, right through to the end of the book: One scene is with his mother, nearing the end of her life and napping at her nursing home, and Carter was in a moment of despair, and the reader might think understandably so, given what he’s endured. But his mother hilariously sets him straight with five words.
• • •
Fairly early in the book, a pattern emerges—while Carter does seem to find (or place) himself in trouble, he’s always stepping away from the serious threats that land many of his friends in jail, or worse, the morgue. He also seems to help diffuse bad situations, which gets noticed by two African American SPPD officer—one of them William Finney, who would later become Chief of Police. Finney and his partner gently (but consistently) harassed Carter to join the force, which he eventually did in 1975.
That decision led to decades more of dealing with overt and covert discrimination in that workplace that continued throughout his career. It’s clear by the tone and pace in the second half of the book that much in his police career remains raw for Carter. It was so bad at one point, Carter quit the force after serving nine years, even after being selected to the elite SWAT unit (again, Finney coaxed him back).
We should all thank Finney for that, because Carter’s effect on the department was pivotal, particularly with police relations to neighborhoods of color. Among those “impacts” was, in 1991, through his work as an officer and commitment to his neighborhood, Carter drew together a group to found Save Our Sons, a non-profit aimed at reaching youths that have been arrested, and, through mentoring, aims to restore them back to their families and communities.
It should come as no surprise, then, that family plays the most important role in Carter’s life. He weaves the first half with his siblings and mother (and his father, who was often away, nonetheless had a great impact) and close friends. The latter half fills the book with his children (two daughters and a son, all of whom have had professional and personal success) and wife, Toni (who serves as a Ramsey County Commissioner). They are his salvation. As are the friends that remain, like Big Head Benny and Fatso.
I could go on, but you should just buy the book.
Diesel Heart
By Melvin Whitfield Carter Jr.
Published: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2019
