The Great Black Hope?

Samuels is uncharacteristically hesitant when asked if he wants to become mayor, a logical step for a political player who already works citywide. “Let’s say in four years R. T. decides to go for something else,” he says. “It would [then] depend on how successful I am at doing this. If a white boy like you is really beginning to say ‘Boy, that guy’s made a difference,’ then I feel like we can make that kind of difference everywhere in the city of Minneapolis.”

For now, it’s unclear what Samuels’s four years in office have added up to beyond good feelings and good press. On the North Side, a years-long crime surge did level off this summer, some long-planned commercial projects have opened, and local developers are pounding out new and rehabbed units—but just as more houses have been boarded up in a wave of housing-bust foreclosures.

With ample historical justification, folks like Reverend McAfee have a show-me attitude. “New businesses on Broadway, that don’t mean a whole hell of a lot to me, because we already got a bunch of white businesses that don’t hire the people in the neighborhood,” he says. “That don’t get me excited, I’m sorry. Because we know the connection between poverty and crime.”

Sondra Hollinger Samuels admits she’s leery of taking a wardwide fight citywide, but she sounds resigned to the possibility. “Here’s a pattern you see with Don: So many good people who see wrong choose to see nothing, but Don doesn’t. And he gets into trouble, over and over again.”

Don Samuels isn’t quite sure how to explain his relentlessness. “I’m always perplexed that injustice can continue and succeed,” he says. “To me, the world should stop if something unjust is happening and nothing should happen until it is fixed. I don’t know why I exactly feel that way—I have seen power used, from a strong father, to stop the ship right now and let’s fix this, so why shouldn’t we do this for injustice?”

David Brauer is a Minneapolis writer and media analyst for Minnesota Public Radio. He authored Nellie Stone Johnson: the Life of an Activist, about Minneapolis’s first black elected official, and manages the Minneapolis Issues civic affairs discussion list.