"Minneapolis: The Curious Twin": A Reexamination

Abstract

"Minneapolis: The Curious Twin"A Reexamination Laura Weber (bio) "One might even say, with a measure of justification, that Minneapolis is the capital of anti-Semitism in the United States." —Carey McWilliams, writing in Common Ground, 1946. In the seventy-five years since the publication of Carey McWilliams's article, "Minneapolis: The Curious Twin," the notion of Minneapolis as the capital of mid-twentieth-century American anti-Semitism has achieved meme status. From major overviews (including by this author) to History Day papers, it is hard to find a single account of Minnesota Jewish history that does not note the shocking (and quoteworthy) appellation penned by McWilliams.1 Minneapolis was indeed fertile ground for a variety of anti-Semitic activity in the decades before and after the 1946 publication of "Curious Twin" in the magazine Common Ground. The article provided a measure of comfort to Minneapolis Jewry for illuminating its troublesome situation. More importantly, it moved elected officials to action, whether out of genuine concern, political posturing, or perhaps a bit of both. Proving or disproving definitively a subjective claim such as whether one city or another was "the" capital of anti-Semitism in the mid-twentieth century is beyond the scope of this article, yet as repetition of this phrase—shorthand for a complex situation—shows no signs of abating in recent works, I became curious about "The Curious Twin."2 What was the article's genesis? Who was the author? What was its contemporary reception? Just as Carey McWilliams (1905–1980) aimed to demythologize the character and culture of California in his influential writings on his adopted home state, this essay [End Page 59] similarly aims to "demythologize" his characterization of Minneapolis as the U.S. capital of anti-Semitism.3 The Jewish Communities of St. Paul and Minneapolis The "Curious Twin" of the headline refers to McWilliams's observation that the adjacent cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul were markedly different when it came to attitudes towards their Jewish citizens. In both St. Paul and Minneapolis, the first Jews to arrive were small numbers of Germanspeaking people from the eastern and southern United States, originally from Central Europe. These Jews were followed, beginning in the 1880s, by a much larger wave of Yiddish-speaking, more religiously observant, eastern European Jews who were pushed to emigrate by poverty, prejudice, and pogroms. A crucial difference between the two cities is that the German Jews arrived some two decades earlier in St. Paul than Minneapolis, migrating in the 1850s, as did many others, to take advantage of commercial opportunities during Minnesota's territorial period. In both cities Jews established shops selling ready-made clothing and dry goods. But in St. Paul they arrived alongside other White settlers from the eastern United States, including a significant population of Germans, with whom the Jewish merchants shared many cultural traits. In 1856 (two years before statehood) the Jews of St. Paul established the first synagogue in Minnesota, Mount Zion Temple. The Minneapolis Jewish community still numbered fewer than two hundred in 1877; its first synagogue, Shaarai Tov (today Temple Israel), was founded in 1878. The Jewish population of Minnesota was about one thousand in 1880.4 Historian Mary Lethert Wingerd suggests a reason for the differences between the two communities. St. Paul Jewish merchants joined with other Euro-American settlers to provide capital needed to fuel the territorial economy. This was in marked contrast to Minneapolis, where a commercially self-sufficient Anglo-Saxon Protestant elite controlled both the primary industries (in particular, lumber and flour milling) and the social mores of the city. As a result, employment opportunities for Minneapolis Jews in these industries, as well as most others, were closed. By the 1920s, for the most part, Minneapolis Jews had to be self-employed, either as proprietors of their own businesses or as professionals.5 Anti-Semitism, racism, and anti-Catholicism were on the rise in the United States in the 1920s and continued their upward trajectories in the [End Page 60] 1930s. This was by no means confined to Minneapolis or Minnesota.6 One source indicates that by the end of the 1920s Jews were excluded from 90 percent of the...