Hey, everybody, it's Kai.

Today we're bringing you the first episode of a new series called Unlocking the Gates

from Marketplace with support from APM Studios.

Marketplace Special Correspondent Lee Hawkins tells the story of how the Minnesota suburb he grew up in

went from a place where black families had no access to the housing market

to one where many black families found economic opportunity and how it all started with a

secret business deal. Here you go.

This is the house that I grew up in, and, you know, we're standing here on a sidewalk looking over the house.

But back when I lived here, there was no sidewalk.

And the house was white.

Everything was white on white.

And I mean white, you know, white in the greenest grass.

My parents moved my two sisters and me in

in 1975 when I was just four years old.

Maplewood, a suburb of 25,000 people at the time,

was more than 90% white.

As I rode my bike through the woods and trails, I had questions. How and why did

these black families manage to settle here, surrounded by restrictions designed to keep them out?

The answer began with the couple who lived in the big house behind ours, James and Francis Hughes.

You're listening to Unlocking the Gates, Episode 1. My name is Lee Hawkins. I'm a journalist and

author of the book, Am Nobody Slade,

how uncovering my family's history set me free.

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