The Historyapolis Project began with the recognition of a community need. In our state’s largest city we do not have a clearinghouse where people can go to find the full story of the past. No complete history of the city has been written since 1940, when Minneapolis: The Story of a City was issued as a joint effort of the Works Progress Administration and the Departments of Education for the city and the state.
Today, Minneapolis identifies itself as a progressive metropolis. Residents boast about their superlative quality of life. We are proud of our physical fitness, superlative arts, world-class parks, innovative non-profit sector and tolerance for sexual diversity. This strong civic culture leaves many Minneapolitans with the impression that their city has always embraced civic innovation and social justice.
This perception obscures a more complicated past. For the first half of the twentieth century, the city was notorious for its civic dysfunction and bitter divisions. It was controlled by brutal gangsters and a formidable employers’ association. Challenges to this power structure were met with violence, most notably in 1934, when the first of three journalists was gunned down and a labor dispute turned downtown into a battlefield. That summer, Teamsters fought the city’s business elite for the right to organize a union. Though they were met with blackjacks and riot guns, strikers managed to stop all commercial transport in the city and garnered widespread popular support. Their victory marked a watershed. It broke the grip of the conservative Citizens’ Alliance and inspired labor activists across the nation. Its revolutionary spirit was still palpable two years later, in 1936, when a reporter from Fortune magazine visited. Writing from the depths of the Great Depression, he concluded that “the revolution may come” from the Gateway District of Minneapolis.
The Teamsters’ strike triggered a period of soul searching for community leaders. Long battered by charges of corruption, intolerance and political polarization, the city received another jolt in 1946, when it was named the “capital of anti-Semitism of the United States” by journalist Carey McWilliams. The article provided a rallying point for change, uniting business and political leaders who sought to re-fashion the city’s reputation. Under the leadership of Hubert Humphrey and his cadre of young Democratic Farmer-Labor Party activists, hundreds of citizens investigated discriminatory attitudes and practices and demanded that the city embrace new ideas about race and democracy. Humphrey used this campaign to cultivate the city’s national reputation for civic tolerance, making Minneapolis the epicenter of a new kind of liberalism. By 1950, Minneapolis had claimed its modern identity as a “progressive” metropolis.
While few Minneapolitans know much about their city’s mid-century transformation, new research has begun to illuminate the legacies of “old” Minneapolis. The Historyapolis Project will build on these efforts, creating a set of digital and print resources that will be intended to incite as well as inform.