‘History’ Archives
Monthly Update: Phillips Community Oral History Project. Oct. ’25
By PHILLIPS COMMUNITY ORAL HISTORY PROJECT PARTNERS courtesy Phillips Community Oral History Project Welcome back to the Phillips Community Oral History Project monthly update! This regular Column is an important part of the Project’s outreach to the Phillips Community. It is a space where we will share key progress milestones and keep the project accountable to the people of Phillips. After a long planning period and the official launch in September, the Phillips Community Oral History Project is now well underway. We have several updates, but the most exciting of these is that interviews have begun! As of mid-September, the Project has interviewed ten people. Of those, three were planned in advance, including Steve Sandberg, Rico Morales, and Becky Gazca. Seven additional interviews were conducted across three pop-up interview events at Franklin Library. Look out for more pop-up events around Phillips; Community members are encouraged to attend and tell their Phillips [...]
Review: Let Me Tell You About Al Flowers
Dwight Hobbes’ Let Me Tell You About Al Flowers (ETO/Even The Odds Press) is an interesting and insightful read. Brother Al has been through some experiences that eventually led up to his transformation to a path of truth and justice. As most transformations do, the pain, the suffering and the witnessing of human tragedy and the injustice brought upon himself, his family and community finally allowed the ancestors’ spirits to burst out of him. Since this awakening Al has been on a mission to rebuild the Black community. Often being a thorn in the sides of Black and White people in the struggle for justice, Brother Flowers can have an intrusive and blusterous way of engaging the status quo. This book is a story of the transformation of a kid from the projects of Chicago to his migration to Minnesota in the 70s to a leading activist for social, economic and political justice in the Black community in Minneapolis. Hobbes’ (dwighthobbes.weebly.com), author of Something I Said and [...]
Winston: A Woman’s Fight for Freedom in Minnesota
By the HENNEPIN HISTORY MUSEUM Dr. Lehman. Photo: Jeff Yapuncich On Saturday, October 11, the Hennepin History Museum will celebrate the opening of Winston: A Woman’s Fight for Freedom in Minnesota, an exhibit about the little-known story of Eliza Winston, the first and only enslaved person to successfully fight for their freedom in a Minnesota courtroom. Winston presents the biography of a courageous African American woman and the short time she spent in Minnesota. Her story not only sheds new light on local history, but transcends it, establishing significance within national history. De facto slavery was widely accepted in antebellum Minnesota. For years, Southern enslavers forced their captives to accompany them to the free state for business and pleasure. This ended in 1860 when Eliza Winston bravely fought for liberation. Her emancipation became local lore and national propaganda, so much so that she was largely excluded from her own narrative, one that reveals a [...]
