Stories

Published December 9, 2015 by Kirsten Delegard In August, 1946, one year after World War II came to a close, hundreds of demonstrators converged on downtown Minneapolis to protest the man best known for promoting fascism in the United States. Gerald L.K. Smith has been forgotten today, having been long consigned to the proverbial “dustbin…

Published December 4, 2015 by Kirsten Delegard Early yesterday police cleared away the Black Lives Matter encampment at the Fourth Precinct station. This occupation–which following the police shooting death of Jamar Clark on November 15th–has focused the eyes of the city on this stretch of Plymouth Avenue North. Fifty years ago, this same block was…

Published November 20, 2015 by Kirsten Delegard It was the summer of 1922 on the near North Side of Minneapolis. After three nights of racial unrest, a group that called itself the National Equal Rights League issued a call for action. This ad-hoc committee asked the community to gather for a “Citizens Meeting For Public…

Published November 17, 2015 by Kirsten Delegard The nation was grappling with twin threats in June 1973, when a photographer named Donald Emmerich visited Minneapolis. The “urban crisis” had dovetailed with anxieties about the environment to make many Americans question the viability of city living. The newly created Environmental Protection Agency had hired a team…

Published November 4, 2015 by Kirsten Delegard Yesterday was election day. The polls were pretty quiet in Minneapolis. But this civic occasion gives us an opportunity to revisit a long-forgotten political campaign. This broadside was created by Jack Baker, a candidate for Second Ward Alderman in 1973. This leaflet casts Baker as a fairly conventional…

Published October 13, 2015 by Kirsten Delegard This week Minneapolis marked “indigenous people’s day,” a holiday conceived as a counter-celebration to Columbus Day.  This commemoration serves as a reminder that we live in the land of the Dakota, who were pushed out of the area in the formative years of the metropolis. When Permelia Atwater…

Published October 8, 2015 by Kirsten Delegard Sumner Library is celebrating its centennial this Saturday. You may shrug. But this really is a cause for jubilation. And a moment to contemplate the diverse history of one of Minnesota’s most interesting neighborhoods. This lovely little library on the city’s north side–built with funds provided by Andrew…

Published September 8, 2015 by Kirsten Delegard Labor Day means that summer is over. Sad as I am to say goodbye to warm weather and a relaxed schedule, I count myself lucky that I enjoyed lots of vacation time during this lovely time of year. Which makes me very different from working women in Minneapolis…

Published September 1, 2015 by Kirsten Delegard In August, 1936, Minneapolis lost a native son. “One arid afternoon, the people buried Floyd Olson under the trees by a lake,” journalist Eric Sevareid remembered. “When the news hawkers shouted the announcement from their corners, the noises of the street died down and their voices with the…

Published August 24, 2015 by Kirsten Delegard Students return to school in the Minneapolis Public Schools today. These two photos celebrate the start of a new academic year. At the top we have a 1925 scene from a “hobby fair” at Burroughs Elementary School, which was an opportunity for the children to share their hobbies…

Published December 9, 2015 by Kirsten Delegard Names matter. They serve as cultural signposts that articulate the social geography of a community. They declare who is remembered and who is revered. And this is why the body of water now known as Lake Calhoun needs a new name. Or in this case, an old name…

Published June 3, 2015 by Kirsten Delegard The Minneapolis Gateway District drew the eyes of the nation during the Great Depression. It started with the 1934 Truckers’ Strike, which pitted the Teamsters’ Union against a seemingly invincible employers’ association. Led by Trotskyites, who employed all kinds of novel organizing tactics, the truckers triumphed. But their…

Published May 14, 2015 by Kirsten Delegard In honor of bicycle week, Historyapolis is going to pay homage to those who laid the foundation for our thriving cycling culture in Minneapolis. In the 1890s, the United States was seized by what historians have called a “bicycle craze.” Minneapolitans were not immune to the seduction of…

Published March 31, 2015 by Kirsten Delegard Today is international Trans Day of Visibility. Please honor our friends, family and community members by helping to make LGBTQ history more visible. Follow your own muse. Or join one of the initiatives organized by the National Park Service. The NPS is calling on all Americans to assist…

Published March 10, 2015 by Kirsten Delegard Between 1970 and 1990, local businessman Ferris Alexander confounded city leaders, enraged neighborhood activists and infuriated feminist anti-pornography activists in Minneapolis. Alexander built a chain of movie houses and bookstores that specialized in pornographic materials, profiting from a burgeoning desire for semi-public sexual explorations. For two decades he…

Published March 9, 2015 by Kirsten Delegard Planners and policymaker have recently condemned Floyd Olson Memorial Highway for being hostile to foot traffic and bikers. This photo shows the old Sixth Avenue North on this day in 1936, before it was widened and renamed for the radical governor who died that same year. Much to…

Published March 4, 2015 by Kirsten Delegard Historyapolis blogger Tamatha Perlman uses a fateful walk down Nicollet Avenue to bring us back to the Minneapolis of 1877. Click here for the story of young Kate Noonan.    

Published February 11, 2015 by Kirsten Delegard Minneapolitans love to imagine that their community was never fettered by Jim Crow restrictions. Longtime civil rights leader Anthony Brutus Cassius liked to complicate this idyllic vision. In the 1970s, when Minneapolis enjoyed national renown as a model metropolis, he would tell newcomers that the city was Janus-faced…

Published February 10, 2015 by Kirsten Delegard Yesterday I wrote the history of the Nicollet Hotel site and how city planners have tried different strategies over the years to bring the “right” mix of people to this section of downtown. This history is relevant in light of news that city planners have endorsed a proposal…

Published December 30, 2015 by Anna Romskog Historyapolis intern Anna Romskog prepared this retrospective timeline of our work in 2014. Enjoy!

Published December 24, 2015 by Kirsten Delegard This scene shows the city’s Christmas tree in Gateway Park in 1937. This romantic image is a far cry from the iconic photographs taken on the same spot earlier that year. Russell Lee, a photographer working for the Farm Services Administration, created this and other images of the…

Published December 22, 2015 by Kirsten Delegard Ernest A. Kjorlie captured these Christmas shoppers in front of Dayton’s Department Store in 1937. At 1:35 pm, the weather looks gray instead of snowy. Perhaps as a result, the shoppers look determined rather than festive. But it could have been the economic context. Minneapolis was still mired…

Published December 19, 2015 by Kirsten Delegard This piece by local author John Rosengren revisits the circumstances surrounding the 1923 death of African-American football player Jack Trice. Trice–who played for Iowa–died after sustaining injuries in a game against the Gophers. Almost 100 years after this tragedy, the question remains: was Trice murdered? And if so,…

Published December, 2014 by Kirsten Delegard Click here to read our latest column in the Southwest Journal. Enjoy!

Published December 17, 2014 by Kirsten Delegard This week, Minneapolitans are celebrating two festivals of light. This Saturday, Scandinavians observed Santa Lucia Day. This holiday features a girl–and in recent years increasingly a boy–who portrays Lucia, the saint credited with bringing hope and salvation to the starving masses at a time of crisis in the…

Published December 16, 2014 by Kirsten Delegard As our last two posts have illuminated, Minneapolis was seen as a bastion for civil rights in the 1940s and 1950s. Yet today the city is known for its racial disparities. A new study just ranked Minnesota the second worst place in the nation for African Americans. How…

Published December 15, 2014 by Heidi Heller Today’s blogger is Heidi Heller, a senior history major at Augsburg and an intern with the Historyapolis Project.  Tucked among Mayor Arthur Naftalin’s files in the Tower Archives at Minneapolis City Hall is a letter written in 1962. Addressed to members of the Commission on Human Relations–which was…

Published December 14, 2014 by Kirsten Delegard The civil rights movement fundamentally reshaped life in Minneapolis. By the 1950s, the city had cultivated a national image as a paragon of racial liberalism. Perhaps because of this image many Minneapolitans saw the civil rights movement as something that was going on somewhere else. They believed that…