A final car pull, 560 miles (that is, 900 kilometers) to reach Minneapolis, the final destination of the route that began in New Orleans and ends in the northern state of Minnesota. The end and the birth of the Mississippi River. To get from St. Louis (Missouri) you have to cross all of Iowa, an endless landscape of cornfields where the race to be president of the United States begins. It is one of those curiosities of American politics: the first caucuses , or elective assemblies to get the party's candidacy, are held in those small agricultural towns and, for a week a year, they become something similar to the center of the world.
Waterloo, Cedar Falls, Waverly, Nashua. City entrance signs appear along the road in a completely different landscape from winter. There is no more snow, candidates for the White House or hundreds of journalists following in their footsteps. This lonely, golden-toned sunset this summer is much more reminiscent of the images Clint Eastwood shot in that love movie, The Bridges of Madison , which also put that little piece of Iowa on the map.
The entry into Minnesota is almost midnight and, although it is August, the low temperature makes it clear that we have moved closer to Canada. Almost 2,500 kilometers from the start off the Louisiana coast, seven states covered in ten days. Jazz was born in New Orleans; the zydeco in the bayou; blues originated in the delta, while rock and roll originated in Memphis, ”writes Paul Schneider in his great book on the Mississippi, Old Man River, describing a route similar to the one in this series through black America.
CANADA
Minneapolis
Minnesota
saint Louis
Missouri
Memphis
Tennessee
Winfield
Alabama
Clarksdale
Mississippi
Birmingham
Alabama
Oxford
Mississippi
New Orleans
Louisiana
Gulf of mexico
500 km
MEXICO
THE COUNTRY
CANADA
Minneapolis
Minnesota
saint Louis
Missouri
Memphis
Tennessee
Winfield
Alabama
Clarksdale
Mississippi
Birmingham
Alabama
Oxford
Mississippi
New Orleans
Louisiana
Gulf of mexico
500 km
MEXICO
THE COUNTRY
CANADA
Minneapolis
Minnesota
saint Louis
Missouri
Memphis
Tennessee
Winfield
Alabama
Clarksdale
Mississippi
Birmingham
Alabama
Oxford
Mississippi
New Orleans
Louisiana
Gulf of mexico
500 km
MEXICO
THE COUNTRY
It's a shame Schneider doesn't follow the line to say that Minneapolis brought in Prince. It made sense to end the city tour of an artist dissident of race and gender stereotypes. One in which a couple of months ago the largest wave of mobilizations against racism in half a century was unleashed.
On the afternoon of May 25, George Floyd died under the knee of a white policeman, who pressed his neck to the ground for about nine minutes while the African-American claimed that he could not breathe. Four officers arrested him on suspicion of trying to buy tobacco at a neighborhood supermarket, Cup Foods, with a fake $ 20 bill. He was inside a car parked in front of the establishment, at 3759 Chicago Avenue.
The street where it happened has now become a holy place and the shop that called the police, a cursed place. "We did what we had to, we are not responsible for what happened next, they get angry with the wrong people," explains the owner, Mahmoud Abumayyaleh, a bit discouraged, inside the establishment. It is August 4, the second day the doors open, more than two months after the tragedy. They made an attempt in mid-June, but there were so many protests that they closed again. The protesters have returned to the store, although this time they have decided to move on.
Nothing will be the same for that business, which has been in the city for 31 years. The entire sidewalk and road, full of drawings, candles and flowers, have become a huge place of worship for the figure of Floyd, a 46-year-old man with a complicated life who has become a global icon in the fight against racism. In the morning the activists have disappeared; however, white couples and groups of friends who feel like tourists take pictures.
Food Cups looked like a small store from the outside, when it was boarded up in the heat of the riots in May, but as you enter you see a large supermarket, convenience store, tobacco sales and some basic electronics. They now have a spokesperson, Jamar Nelson, an African American. According to his account, the employee who made the call to the police that fateful May 25 has not been able to return to work and receives psychological help. "People have every right to be angry, but they are heading in the wrong direction, it is time for the store to open and people to get their jobs back," he insists.
Previous deliveries
- At the wheel of black America | 1. New Orleans
- At the wheel of black America | 2. Birmingham (Alabama)
- At the wheel of black America | 3. From Alabama to Mississippi
- At the wheel of black America | 4. Clarksdale (Mississippi)
- At the wheel of black America | 5. Memphis (Tennessee)
- At the wheel of black America | 6. St. Louis (Missouri)
Minneapolis was filled with journalists those days of fires and looting. They hadn't come so much and from so many different countries since Prince's death. Some wrote articles wondering what the artist would have thought of all this. Prince Rogers Nelson was born in 1958 in the north of the city into a family of black musicians. His father, John L. Nelson, was a jazz composer from Louisiana and his mother, Mattie Della Shaw, a singer. However, many media referred to him for years as "biracial", in large part due to the character in the film Purple rain (1984), who was inspired by himself, even if it was fiction, and had a mixed couple as parents .
In 1981 music critic Robert Palmer wrote: "Prince transcends racial stereotypes because, as he once said, 'I never grew up in a particular culture.' One suspects that as time goes on, more and more American pop reflects that biracial orientation. " Prince seemed more like a permanent boil, always troubled, from his famous name change in the 90s on account of the brawl with his record company at the time (Warner) - "the artist formerly known as Prince" - to his divo extravagances. The myth was finally cemented with his death, on April 21, 2016, from an overdose of fentanyl, an opiate that can be up to 50 times more lethal than heroin. They found him in the elevator at Paisley Park, a concert and recording venue complex 30 minutes from Minneapolis, where he lived.
From the outside, it looks like a large funeral home or the headquarters of a company on a polygon. It is an antiGraceland. Sober, almost nondescript, with the unmistakable symbol of the artist on the door as the only sign of identity. Instead of the red T-shirts from Elvis Presley's Memphis mansion-museum, the security guards wear black suits and purple ties. Because of the pandemic, and also in contrast to Graceland, there are hardly any visitors.
It is hard to imagine a star of his height ending his life within those walls. Prince was well loved in Minneapolis in large part because of that, because unlike Bob Dylan, also from Minnesota, he never left that freezing land. He did not move to New York or California, as the script for characters like his seems to mark. It was untamable even for that. Shortly before he died, he had become a regular at Electric Fetus, a music store founded in turbulent 1968 by some friends who wanted to spur the city's countercultural nerve, scheduling performances, lectures.
His heir and current head, Bob Fuchs, 39, speaks wistfully of what appeared to be "a lasting relationship." "We had ongoing projects, he liked what we did, he came to support often, he also bought records, and people respected his privacy a lot, he was shy," he says. The last thing he took home was something from Stevie Wonder, Santana, Chambers Brothers. In the store, focused on vinyl, his discography occupies an entire display. “The so-called Minneapolis sound he created is real. As a musical city, Minneapolis is one of the best kept secrets, people only think of New York, Nashville… ”, points out Fuchs.
In the famous First Avenue club, a mural of stars remembers the artists who have passed through there. In gold, Prince is highlighted and, nearby, one of many with the motto Black Lives Matter (Black lives matter), which sprouted everywhere after Floyd's death. On Lake Street, the one that suffered the most damage, the rubble had disappeared and the lots remained. The police station that they burned, bricked up, seemed to be undergoing rehabilitation. Minneapolis is a prosperous city and the destroyed will soon be rebuilt. His story, however, has changed forever.
Before going to the airport, I went to take one last look at the brown riverbed of the Mississippi. The locals speak of its murky waters with strange pride. Jonathan Raban described it very well in Old Glory, his travel book. “People see in this upheaval an embodiment of their interiority. They boast to strangers of their perversity, their appetite for causing trouble and destruction, floods and drowning, there is a note in their voices that says: 'I have it inside of me, I know what it feels like.'