During a recent visit to Minneapolis, I attended the parks board’s bi-weekly meeting, which in any other city would likely have been a dull affair. I had been sitting there for hardly longer than 10 minutes when a group of young black men walked in, carrying signs that read “MPRB, Separate and Unequal” and “Hell No! To Jim Crow.” They didn’t say anything, but their presence was felt. The board was on edge after the last meeting, when police officers removed black protesters from the meeting for disorderly conduct, and issued citations to four of them.

The protesters have many complaints. For one thing, there is the issue of staffing. The local chapter of the NAACP has been a vocal critic of the parks board, arguing that workers of color face discrimination in hiring, promotions, and on-the-job disciplinary actions. Jayne Miller, Minneapolis’s parks superintendent, says she has listened to employee grievances and now trains staff in recognizing bias in the hiring process. She points out that the percentage of employees in the park system who are of color has risen to 25 percent, up from 21 percent when she started six years ago. However, the parks board was unable to say exactly how many held supervisory positions.

Then there’s the issue of park funding. The neighborhood parks that get the least money for certain types of recreational spending, such as lessons, supplies, and maintenance, are disproportionately in north Minneapolis, according to data provided to me by the parks board. Some of the city’s poorest communities are located there, with a large concentration of ethnic minorities. Four of the 12 neighborhood parks that received this stream of spending in north Minneapolis received less than $85,000 last year, and three got less than $25,000. Meanwhile, no neighborhood park listed in the city’s affluent southwest area received less than $150,000. To be fair, three of the northern parks did get some of the largest chunks of money from the board last year, but the variation in funding in north Minneapolis is quite stark, while it is consistently generous in southwest Minneapolis. On the other hand, the parks board does disproportionately spend more money on youth development programs, such as mentoring, at neighborhood parks in north Minneapolis. There were ten parks that received this stream of spending in north Minneapolis, compared with two in southwest Minneapolis.*

At the board meeting I attended, the public-comment period became heated as some black residents chastised commissioners for doing too little to address racial inequality. Nekima Levy-Pounds, a civil-rights attorney and the president of the local NAACP chapter, had some stinging words for commissioners about their actions the previous meeting. “If we were white residents from Southwest, there is no way you would have the police come in and arrest us like trash,” she said. Levy-Pounds told me she has been attending these meetings all summer, and scoffs at Minneapolis’s claim to having the best parks system in the country. “It’s the best parks system for white people,” she said.