MNopedia

Hiawatha and Minnehaha statue, created by sculpture Jacob Fjelde, before its 1912 placement at Minnehaha Park. Image: Minnesota Historical Society Photograph Collection.

Jacob Fjelde's sculpture Hiawatha and Minnehaha has stood in Minnehaha Park in Minneapolis since the early twentieth century. A popular fixture of the park in the twenty-first century, its placement there was originally controversial. Photo: Charles J. Hibbard, Minnesota Historical Society Collections

Summer reading program at Hosmer Library, Minneapolis, 1990. Image: Minnesota Historical Society Photograph Collection.

Rural one-room schoolhouse, students, and teacher, ca. 1910. Photograph by John Runk, Minnesota Historical Society Photograph Collection

Bookmobiles funded and managed by the Minnesota State Department of Education, ca. 1960. Image: Minnesota Historical Society.

Report card issued to eight-grade student Rosalie [sic] Weiss by the Gordon School in St. Paul for the 1918–1919 school year. Image: Minnesota Historical Society.

Desk used in School District 43 in Watonwan between 1889 and 1919. Image: © Minnesota Historical Society All rights reserved.

The founders of the United States—anxious about the fragile republican experiment they’d embarked on—knew that the nation needed an educated citizenry. This is the story of public education in Minnesota.

Minnesota's Ratification of the 19th Amendment, September 8, 1919. Committee Papers, 1919–1920; Records of the US House of Representatives, Record Group 233; National Archives Building, Washington, DC. Public domain. Holding location: National Archives and Records Administration.

Suffrage cartoon by A. T. Reid from the Minneapolis Tribune, showing the tally of suffrage states by political parties as of July 16, 1920. The man represents southern Democrats who had a reputation for being anti-suffrage. Image: Minnesota Historical Society Newspaper Collection.

Minnesota’s suffragists worked tirelessly to win the vote beginning in the late 1850s, when Mary Colburn delivered what is believed to be the state’s first women’s rights speech. After a long struggle, the dream of equal suffrage took a big leap forward on September 8, 1919, when the state legislature voted to ratify the woman suffrage amendment, making Minnesota the fifteenth state to do so. Image: Minnesota Historical Society Photograph Collection.

From their state's admission to the Union until the mid-1860s, a majority of Minnesotans advocated the abolition of slavery in the South. African American suffrage, however, did not enjoy the same support. Minnesota's African American citizens paid taxes, fought in wars, and fostered their communities. But they could not vote, hold political office, or serve on juries. This continued until 1868, when an amendment to the state's constitution approved suffrage for all non-white men.

The 1909 Casiville Bullard House in St. Paul is a rare example of a house built and owned by an African American skilled laborer in the early twentieth century in Minnesota. It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1997 in recognition of its significance.

From their state's admission to the Union until the mid-1860s, a majority of Minnesotans advocated the abolition of slavery in the South. African American suffrage, however, did not enjoy the same support. Minnesota's African American citizens paid taxes, fought in wars, and fostered their communities. But they could not vote, hold political office, or serve on juries. This continued until 1868, when an amendment to the state's constitution approved suffrage for all non-white men.

In 1910 there were over sixty orphanages and homes for the aged operated by and for African Americans in the United States. Minnesota had one of them: St. Paul's Crispus Attucks Home. The home was named for the African American patriot killed in the Boston Massacre of 1770. It served the community for six decades, beginning in 1906 during the Jim Crow era and ending in 1966 at the peak of the civil rights movement.

Pearson Candy Company, 411 Broadway, St. Paul, 1955. Image: Minnesota Historical Society Photograph Collection.