The University of Minnesota Office of Public Engagement is proud to announce that the W.K. Kellogg Foundation Community Engagement Scholarship Awards has recognized Mapping Prejudice with the “Exemplary Project” Distinction, at the 2025 Engagement Scholarship Consortium (ESC) conference in Roanoke, Virginia on October 9, 2025.
Established in 2006 by the Engagement Scholarship Consortium (ESC), the W. K. Kellogg Foundation Community Engagement Scholarship Awards and C. Peter Magrath Community Engagement Scholarship Award recognizes four-year public universities that have made exemplary strides to become more closely and productively engaged with communities through their teaching/learning, discovery, and service activities.
Each year four regional nominees are competitively selected from an international call for nominations. In addition to the four recipients, the awards program recognizes a small number of nominees as “Exemplary Projects” for their outstanding accomplishments. This year Mapping Prejudice, a University of Minnesota Libraries based research project, was selected to receive this honor.
Since 2016, the project team has worked with more than 12,500 people across the country to document racial covenants, which are clauses that were embedded in property records to keep people who were not White from buying or occupying parcels of land. The team uses primary historical sources to inspire people to think collectively about the impact of legally-mandated racist restrictions.
“Mapping Prejudice emerged from long standing community questions about how and why structural racism was baked into the built environment of Minnesota,” said Dr. Kirsten Delegard, one of the co-founders of Mapping Prejudice. “We work closely with leaders of community organizations and local governments, who have pushed us to continue this work. This collaboration has taught us why co-creative data generation is so powerful. Our volunteers connect the past and present and use our maps to explore why racial disparities in housing are so difficult to eradicate.”
Mapping Prejudice weaves together new digital technologies into a public history practice that invites people to work collectively to consider the impact of these racist restrictions. The project has transformed how scholars, policymakers, and community members think about structural barriers to opportunity. By making historical data accessible and participatory, Mapping Prejudice empowers communities to pursue data-driven, community-led efforts toward equity and sustainability.
“Mapping Prejudice has established our library as a resource for a wide range of people working to understand this history and its current-day implications. They come here for maps, data, technical support and advice on how to approach this kind of community-powered work,” said Lisa German, University Librarian and Dean of the Libraries at the University of Minnesota. “We are so proud of the project and the way it helps community members address contemporary challenges.”
“Mapping Prejudice exemplifies the University of Minnesota’s commitment to public engagement by bringing together internal and external resources to create community-driven change,” said Laurie Van Egeren, Vice Provost for Public Engagement at the University of Minnesota. “We're really pleased the judges saw its unique strengths and are noting it as exemplary.”
Visit Mapping Prejudice to explore the interactive map of racial covenants, and learn more about its work in Minnesota and across the nation.