East Lake Oral History Research
The goal of this project is to record the history of Latino businesses on East Lake Street. We aim to determine the specific factors that caused East Lake Street to transform from being a center of violence and drug trafficking to a more vibrant multicultural area with many thriving businesses. In 1995, a New York Times story called Minneapolis “Murderapolis” after a record 97 murders that year, and the center of this crime was around Lake Street in South Minneapolis. Mercado Central was the first business to come into the area in 1999 and began its transformation. After that, many more Latino businesses opened on Lake Street, as well as businesses of other nationalities and ethnicities.
Although this area still faces many problems today, it has undergone many positive changes since the influx of these businesses into the area, including greatly reduced crime and poverty. We aim to study the process of this transformation and understand how and why it occurred. This will serve to both give a voice to Latinos/as, who have been and still are not often included in discussions of history in Minnesota, as well as provide historical evidence of the successful transformation of a community.