An apology is powerful.

But in the same way that I think things like land acknowledgements are powerful,

if you don't have policies and investments to back them up, then they're simply words.

You're listening to Unlocking the Gates, Episode 3.

My name is Lee Hawkins.

I'm a journalist and author of the book I am nobody slave, how uncovering my family's history set me free.

I investigated 400 years of my black family's history,

how enslavement and Jim Crow apartheid in my father's home state of Alabama, the great migration to St. Paul, and our later move to the suburbs shaped us.

Community and collaboration are at the heart of this story.

I've shared deeply personal accounts.

We've explored historical records, and everyone we've spoken to

has generously offered their memories and perspectives.

Jackie Berry is a board member at Minneapolis area

realtors. She's been working to address the racial wealth gap in real estate. And she says,

We need to do better. We have currently, I think it's around 76% of white family's own homes, and it's somewhere around 25, 26% for black families.

If we're talking about Minnesota in comparison to other states, we are one of the worst with that housing disparity gap.

And so it's interesting because while we make progress and we bring in new programs or implement new policies to help with this gap, we're still not seeing too big of a movement quite yet.

Jackie says there's a clear reason for this.

Racial covenants had a direct correlation with the wealth gap that we have here today.

If you think about a family being excluded from home ownership, that means now they don't have

the equity within their home to help make other moves for their family, whether it's putting

money towards education or helping someone else purchase a home or reducing debt in other

...