Author Archive
The Alley Newspaper is Bound for the Future With Your Help!
By Susan Gust and Harvey Winje The Alley Newspaper is Bound for the Future. Bound into 17 volumes, no less, spanning all of its 33 years! It will be printed on paper much better than the newsprint on which it is printed each month, allowing the many photos, stories and articles to be able to be viewed and used by others well into the future. Once it is reprinted it will be kept in the Special Collections Section of the Main Downtown Minneapolis Library on Hennepin Avenue. This is great news! No pun intended. What would be even better news would be to raise enough money for a duplicate set of those 17 volumes to be housed at the Franklin Branch Library in the Phillips Community. These volumes would be more readily available to community residents and students. If you or a friend, neighbor, or relative have ever appeared in The Alley or submitted a Letter to the Editor, a photo, or written an article, it will become immortalized”“or least be around a long, long time! Please [...]
SEARCHING CHAPTER 7: A New Start
By Patrick Cabello Hansel We can”'t say that Angel didn”'t know where to start this leg of his journey. He”'d been starting his whole life. Fits and starts. False starts. Start and stop, start and stop. Angel”'s problem was finishing. He”'d managed to graduate from Roosevelt””barely””and he vaguely remembered the platitudes the locally famous person of color had shared at the graduation ceremony: Believe in your dreams. Reach for the stars. Stay in touch. Good words, he thought, but he”'d spent the six months since then pretty much wandering through life, without a plan, That morning, in Mother Light”'s house, as he tenderly pulled on his jacket and bent over to tie his shoes, he spotted the webbed ornament in the window. “That”'s a dream catcher, right?” he said to Ana, who was waiting at the door. She smiled, nodded yes, then pointed to her eyes, to her heart, to her lips and then to Angel. He shook his [...]
“Bring a shawl and get a baby” from a 1908-09 Baby Farm 3341 Nicollet Avenue
By Sue Hunter Weir Between June 24, 1908 and September 6, 1909, 27 infants died at the same address--3341 Nicollet Avenue South. These babies (13 girls, 13 boys, and one whose gender was not recorded) were under the care of “Doctor” Hans Oftedal. As the quote marks suggest, Hans Oftedal was not a licensed physician; he was the proprietor of one of several “baby farms” operating in Minneapolis at the time. Baby farms were essentially unlicensed boarding houses for infants whose parents were too poor to care for them. The parents surrendered their children to baby farm operators and paid a fee for the care that they believed their children would receive. In some cases, the parents intended to come back and reclaim their children, but in other cases they expected their children to be adopted by families who could provide for them. Adoption was unregulated at that time, and Minneapolis had the dubious distinction of being the baby-trafficking capitol of the [...]
