Seven years ago, Twin Cities Public Television (TPT) producer Dan Bergin began to assemble the pieces of what would eventually become “North Star: Minnesota’s Black Pioneers,” a two-part documentary series that chronicled little-known aspects of Minnesota’s African-American history.

Released in 2004, the program relates the stories of a dozen African-American Minnesotans, and chronicles their roles in the state’s historical journey. On Wednesday, Feb. 25, the Minnesota Channel will rebroadcast both episodes of “North Star” (8 p.m. to 10 p.m.) as part of TPT’s Black History Month programming lineup.

Twin Cities filmmaker Matt Ehling recently spoke with Bergin about the process of creating “North Star,” and the stories that the program conveys. Here is an excerpt:

MinnPost: Let’s start by talking about the piece itself. Give me a summary of the piece, and talk about what you were hoping to cover as you were producing it.

Dan Bergin: “North Star:  Minnesota’s Black Pioneers” is a two-hour history documentary that is kind of an anthology of different stories from over the two centuries of the black experience in Minnesota. The two parts are grouped by theme. The first hour we saw as being about making a home, and these were primarily stories about arrival and settling in Minnesota for African-Americans of various times. And then the second hour was about making change. So that really was more about people who were activists, who really made a difference.

MP: Is it accurate to say that this was the first time some of these stories had been told in the television medium?

DB: I think that’s right. There have been some other, smaller media projects -- at least here in Minnesota -- that looked at parts of the black experience. You’ll find some other interesting regional black histories throughout the PBS system. We hadn’t done that yet, though. So when we moved into production, the time was right to undertake this kind of project. At that time -- 2002, 2003 -- there was a convergence of research and writing on the black experience in Minnesota. ... Subsequently, I worked with a lot of those writers and researchers, who ended up being some of the voices and storytellers in the documentary itself.

MP: Tell me about what drew you to the individual stories you selected.  It’s kind of a daunting task for something this large - which covers so much time and so much cultural experience - to try to find individual stories that are representative of the bigger story you’re trying to tell.

DB: We certainly wanted to talk about origins, so several stories speak to the beginnings of black communities, and the black experience. We knew we wanted to answer the question, “Who was the first African-American born in Minnesota?” And that’s fur trader George Bonga. His story goes back over 200 years. We also looked at the arrival of attorney Frederick McGhee, decades later. He had been recruited here specifically because the African-American community in Minnesota wanted to have an African-American attorney, and didn’t at that point. This was post-reconstruction. So that’s a beginning story, as well - the rise of a professional class, and the political power that followed.

While most of the stories are celebrations of people, we also wanted to acknowledge challenges and struggles like the lynchings in Duluth, as well. That was the one story that wasn’t a profile - it was an event. It was such an important event -- and a dark spot on Minnesota history -- that it motivated a number of the state’s African-American leaders, including Roy Wilkins.

MP: Tell me about, say, two of the stories that you found to be particularly compelling or revelatory.

DB: I love the story of attorney Lena Smith. She came from south Minneapolis. Her story is woven into the streets and sidewalks and neighborhoods where I grew up, and live now. She was really doing what Thurgood Marshall and other civil-rights lawyers were doing 20 years later. She was looking for test cases. She did eventually become a leader with the NAACP here in town, and they would pick legal fights. Lena herself -- and some other NAACP lawyers -- went to the old Pantages Theater, and challenged some of the segregation that was occurring in the Twin Cities at the time.

And then there’s a story about photographer Harry Shepherd. As a filmmaker I was definitely drawn to that. I wanted to include a story about the arts, and so the story of -- likely -- the state’s first black photographer, decades before Gordon Parks, is a fun short story that we included as well.

MP: Talk a little bit about your research -- the process of your research.

DB: It emerged out of some of the work we’d already been doing, and Brendan Henehan, the executive producer on the project -- the producer of “Almanac” -- had done some interesting research on his own, and had created a tool that was really an informal index of African-American newspapers - some of them going back to the 1870s. And so he had created this unique tool. ... Minnesota had a disproportionate number of black newspapers for a relatively small population. And so it’s a great window into the world of those times. It’s the news of the day. It kind of carries a voice from the times, and we quote it frequently ... “it” being the black press.  So that was one approach.

One of the other key pieces of research was David Taylor, who’s interviewed in the documentary. As a grad student at the University of Minnesota in the early ‘70s, he had initiated an oral history project that others were involved with. Basically, they interviewed a lot of elders, some of them from St. Paul and Minneapolis, to talk about their experiences.  So these voices of elders, recorded in the 1970s, bring us back to the turn of the century. That was an invaluable tool. ...

I mentioned that there was some publishing, and certainly a lot of research, on these stories. In the case of Lena Smith, it was Ann Juergens, a law professor at Hamline [University], who came across the history of this black female lawyer who seemed kind of enigmatic. So Ann was, in a sense, her biographer. And as the primary interview, she was really Lena’s storyteller in my program.

MP: The film has been out in the public for five years now, and I’m curious if the research still goes on for you - just by virtue of having it out on the air. Are you getting contacted by people who see a story, and then come to you with additional information about a particular individual that you chronicled?

DB: There was one nice contact.  I mentioned George Bonga. ... I’ve actually been contacted by a descendant of Bonga. She had seen the billboards that we had up promoting the show five years ago, and was very excited to see her ancestor. She reached out and made contact. And that’s the power of local history. ...

MP: One thing that concerns me is that you and I both work in a medium that is subject to disappear over the course of time, and yet it contains so much valuable historical information. Your show in particular has much historical value. What steps have either you or the station taken to preserve its raw materials? ... Have you had those sorts of conversations yet?

DB: Well, we haven’t. My documentary, like any documentary film of this kind, is an oral history. ... One of the things about making “North Star” was the urgency.  And we made that case, actually, in order to raise the resources to do it. We were at a time where our elders were aging, and we were losing them, and the story needed to be told for those reasons.

All the oral-history interviews that I conducted on video are stored away at Twin Cities Public Television.  And there’s some content there -- as you can imagine -- a lot of content that didn’t make it into “North Star.” ... I would love for it to be archived. That’s the kind of thing that in this fifth year anniversary I think we need to think about. How can we further make this an educational tool? And that means more than just the finished program.

 “North Star.” Feb. 25 at 8 p.m. on the Minnesota Channel. 

Matt Ehling is a St. Paul-based TV producer, documentary filmmaker and writer. He served as the cinematographer on Dan Bergin’s 2005 film, “The Death of Tommy Grimes.” Ehling’s programs have aired on a variety of PBS affiliates, including TPT.