Working for Peanuts: cartoonist Charles Schulz’s life in the Twin Cities
Born in Minneapolis, Schulz first published Li’l Folks, the predecessor to Peanuts, in the St. Paul Pioneer Press.
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 short, grand life of St. Paul’s Grand Opera House
Built as a replacement for the original St. Paul Opera House, the Grand Opera House included new interior design features, electric lighting, and safety enhancements.
A farmer and educator, Hannah Jensen Kempfer was the first woman elected to the state Legislature from rural Minnesota
After the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, Kempfer ran for a seat in the legislature representing House District 50. She had the support of suffragists as well as business leaders and local politicians.
Not asking for rights, demanding them: The National Woman’s Party in Minnesota’s more radical approach to suffrage
National Woman’s Party of Minnesota founder Sarah Tarleton Colvin called on women to abandon what she saw as the prevailing tactic of the day — gently guiding powerful men to support suffrage — and urged them instead to demand their rights.
Pioneering Black photographer and filmmaker Gordon Parks bought his first camera in Minnesota
In 1937, Parks was waiting tables on a train when he came across images of Depression-era migrant workers taken by Farm Security Administration (FSA) photographers. He was inspired to buy a camera at a pawn shop and became a self-taught photographer.
How wild rice has sustained the Ojibwe people
In the Ojibwe language, wild rice (Zizania palustris) is called manoomin, meaning “good berry,” “harvesting berry,” or “wondrous grain.”
Why the American Indian Movement started the Heart of the Earth Survival School
AIM had identified the urgent need for Indigenous children to be educated within their own communities.
When the Minneapolis Institute of Art opened it displayed 450 works of art. Today, its collection contains more than 89,000 objects
The Minneapolis Institute of Art opened in 1915, an outgrowth of the Minneapolis Society of Fine Arts.
St. Paul’s Charles Thompson Memorial Hall was the first social club for the deaf in the United States
Along with a large assembly hall, the building featured a bowling alley, a social hall, a maplewood dance floor, and a children’s play area.
The history of Minnesota’s only national park: Voyageurs
Forty percent of the area of Voyageurs is covered in lakes.
The complicated history of St. Paul’s Soldiers and Sailors Memorial
Crowning the monument is a statue of Josias R. King, who is widely regarded as the first US volunteer in the Civil War. King also participated in violent campaigns to punish Dakota people after the US-Dakota War of 1862, known as the Punitive Expeditions.
The Minnesota Eight’s attempts to destroy draft files during the Vietnam War were mostly unsuccessful
Around midnight on July 10, 1970, four teams of two or three people each broke into Selective Service offices in Little Falls, Alexandria, Winona, and Wabasha, intending to destroy as many military draft files as possible.
Throughout her life, Maude Kegg worked to preserve Ojibwe traditional culture — and interpret it for others
Kegg’s life was life guided by cultural traditions, continuous adaptation to a fast-changing world, and an inherent skill for interpreting her people’s culture and history.
Educator and conservationist Sigurd Olson was instrumental in protecting the Boundary Waters
Olson’s conservation efforts in the Quetico-Superior region aided in the establishment of Voyageurs National Park (the name is credited to Olson) and the designation of the BWCA as a wilderness area in 1978.
A brief history of Minnesota’s Mesabi Iron Range
Since the 1890s, the Mesabi has produced iron ore that boosted the national economy, contributed to the Allied victory in World War II, and cultivated a multiethnic regional culture in northeast Minnesota.
The Kensington Runestone: Minnesota’s most brilliant and durable hoax?
The Kensington Runestone has provoked a host of scholarly and popular articles and books. The Minnesota Historical Society library carries more than forty titles on the subject.
It only took two interventions by the U.S. Supreme Court for Minnesota to revamp its legislative districts
By the late 1950s, populations of House districts ranged from 7,290 residents to 107,246, and Senate districts from 16,878 to 153,455.
Around the turn of the century, blackface minstrel shows were a staple of prominent Minnesota theaters
Theaters such as the Orpheum, the Pence Opera House and the Academy of Music (Minneapolis) all hosted the performances.
In the space of a year foragers practically wiped out the ginseng supply in Minnesota’s Big Woods
The appeal of hunting ginseng came from the cash paid for it — hard currency was scarce after the financial crash of 1857.
A pay cut prompted the 1889 Twin Cities streetcar strike
On April 11, 1889, six hundred Minneapolis streetcar drivers walked off the job. Three hundred St. Paul drivers and other workers struck the following morning.
