Penumbra Theatre: one of the premier legacy Black theaters in the United States
The theater company is one of the few founded during the Black Arts Movement that survived into the twenty-first century.
MNopedia
Each week, MinnPost brings you a highlight of our state’s past from MNopedia, an encyclopedia of Minnesota history written by experts and produced by the Minnesota Historical Society.
This content is shared with MinnPost by MNopedia, the digital encyclopedia created by the Minnesota Historical Society and supported by the Legacy Amendment’s Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund.
The Highland Park Water Tower was designed by the nation’s first Black city architect
The plaque at the west entrance lists Frank X. Tewes, who supervised Clarence “Cap” Wigington, as the tower’s architect. Wigington’s initials on project drawings, however, provide evidence that he was its designer.
Over the rainbow: queer and trans history in Minnesota
Before settler-colonists came to present-day Minnesota, Indigenous people understood variations in gender and sexuality in the contexts of their own languages and lifeways.
Prince Albert Honeycutt, Minnesota’s first Black firefighter
Born into slavery in 1852, Honeycutt set a course for himself that led from Civil War battlefields in Tennessee to freedom in the North.
How Gooseberry Falls became a ‘destination park’
One of Minnesota’s most popular nature areas, Gooseberry Falls was the first of eight state parks developed along Lake Superior’s North Shore.
The wreck of the Hesper
On May 3, 1905, as she forged through a northeaster en route to Duluth, the crew lost its bearings and the ship was thrown against a reef near present-day Silver Bay.
Dorsey William Willis and the Brownsville Texas Riot
On Nov. 6, 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt dishonorably discharged 167 Black infantrymen from their battalion at Fort Brown, Texas when they refused to falsely confess to participation in a Brownsville, Texas, riot three months earlier.
The New England Greek Revival architecture of Folsom House
Its owner, W. H. C. Folsom, designed it to be both modest and a showcase of his well-established wealth.
The storied connection between the Ukrainian community and Northeast Minneapolis
Wards 1 and 3 in Northeast Minneapolis have been the center of the Twin Cities’ Ukrainian community since the late nineteenth century.
The deaths of fishermen on Lake Superior led to the opening of Grand Marais’ North Superior Coast Guard Station
In 1918, Grand Marais was considered the center of the North Shore fishing industry, with 126 official licensed fishermen and an annual yield of 4,283,684 pounds of fish.
The European-American women who lived at Fort Snelling
Women and girls made up around 20 percent of the fort’s population from the time of the first census in 1849 until at least 1900.
St. Paul’s Nina Clifford: the ‘richest woman of the underworld’
Clifford was relatively upfront about the operations at 147 Washington Street, since she operated her brothel within the St. Paul’s vice districts.
The many scientific pursuits of University of Minnesota grad Laura Linton
Linton helped discover a new mineral, improved the process for manufacturing asphalt and later supervised the women’s ward at the Rochester state hospital.
The U.S.-Dakota war of 1862 lasted just six weeks, but its effects are still felt today
The war devastated people throughout south-central Minnesota.
Bertha Berglin Moller: one of Minnesota’s most passionate and fiery woman suffragists
Following passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, Moller continued her activism by advocating for the Equal Rights Amendment and women’s labor rights.
Attorney Samuel H. Morgan was the organizing force behind some of Minnesota’s most popular state and regional parks
In the 1950s, Minnesota communities — like others across the United States — began to expand beyond the boundaries of city centers into newly formed suburbs. Suburban sprawl led to a widespread interest in preserving open spaces.
For forty years, Walker, Minnesota’s International Eelpout Festival celebrated the state’s ugliest fish
In January 1980, an estimated 800 people turned out on frozen Leech Lake for the first International Eelpout Festival to compete for the trophy awarded for the largest eelpout caught.
Hired as senior architectural draftsman in St. Paul in 1915, Clarence Wigington became the nation’s first Black municipal architect
Wigington’s works include the Hamline and Minnehaha playground buildings, Harriet Island Pavilion and the Highland Park Water Tower.
‘As a liar he is a phenomenon’: Alonzo J. Whiteman’s journey from Duluth businessman to career criminal
Born to a wealthy family, Whiteman would go on to earn renown as a forger and con man.
Brian Coyle was the first openly gay person to be elected to the Minneapolis City Council
One of Coyle’s biggest achievements was the 1991 passage of Minneapolis’s Domestic Partners Ordinance, which allowed same-sex and different-sex couples to register as domestic partners.
