Posts Tagged ‘history’
# 198 Jack Ferman
Tales from the Cemetery by Susan Hunter Weir November 20, 2021, was a bittersweet day in the history of Minneapolis Pioneers and Soldiers Cemetery. It was a sad day because it was the day that his wife and daughters buried Jack Ferman. It was a sweet day because he was buried where he wanted to be—in his family’s plot near the cemetery’s Lake Street gates. Jack’s was our first burial in 22 years and the first in the 21st century. If you attended one of the movies that we’ve shown in the cemetery and bought some snacks, there’s a good chance that you bought them from Jack. He attended every Memorial Day program for at least the past 20 years and possibly before that. He was at all of our fundraising events, always present and always helping out. He was on the Board of Friends of the Cemetery. He wrote about his immigrant grandparents who are buried in the cemetery in an Alley story published in January 2016. He followed politics, both local and national, [...]
Phillips Neighborhood history book wins award
Top photograph by alley contributor Paula Williamson/ University of Minnesota Press by BEN HEATH As part of the 2022 Minnesota Book Awards, scholar David Hugill is the recipient of the Minnesota History award for his book Settler Colonial City. Hugill's book, published last year by the University of Minnesota Press is a critical look at some of the social forces in Phillips after WWII. Our present city and our neighborhoods are not neutral places where history is suspended, instead they are founded in settler-colonial relations, where white supremacy and non-white oppression are by design. The author lived and worked in Phillips as he completed his research. Hugill describes the neighborhood of Phillips in terms of “sites of articulation”, meaning places where the interactions between two or more social factors are especially visible. Minneapolis is the Settler Colonial City, and Phillips is where the record is rich in material. This a study of racism and inequity. It [...]
Tales from the Cemetery: Righting History
Bryan Tyner, Minneapolis’ first Black fire chief, pays tribute to Captain John Cheatham, Minneapolis’ first Black firefighter. By SUE HUNTER WEIR Something important happened in Minneapolis at 10 a.m. on Thursday, March 17, 2022. Street signs along the nine-block stretch of road between 34th Street and 43rd Street in South Minneapolis were replaced. What had been known as Dight Avenue became Cheatham Avenue. It’s the kind of change that causes some folks to rage about “cancel culture,” but others will see it for what it is—honoring John Cheatham, an honorable man whose contributions to the city’s history should have been recognized long ago. Charles F. Dight, a Socialist, served on the Minneapolis City Council from 1914 to 1918. He was one of three Socialists on the City Council at the time but the only one who lived in what was more or less a tree house that he built on 39th Avenue and Minnehaha Creek. He was described as a “conservative Socialist” [...]
