This weekend is going to be gray and chilly. Good thing there will be lots of hot history around town to keep us happy.

On Saturday, go downtown to hear Phil Anderson explain the history of commercial bakeries in South Minneapolis. The retired MCAD historian has spent several years tracing the rise and fall of neighborhood bakeries in the Mill City, a story he narrated in the Summer 2014 issue of Minnesota History. At 1 pm on Saturday, Phil will give a talk he is calling: “100 Years of South Minneapolis Bakeries: Some Histories.”

On Sunday, head over to the University of Minnesota for “Telling Queer History.” The Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection in Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Studies–located in Andersen Library–will be hosting this event, which includes tours of its collection, which is one of the largest archival repositories in the world for GLBT thought, knowledge, and culture. The Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection in Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Studies began over thirty years ago as the personal collection of GLBT activist Jean-Nickolaus Tretter and was donated to the University of Minnesota in 2001. The first tour begins at 1:15. 

Please RSVP for tours to lvecoli@umn.edu if you’d like to attend. 

Yesterday the Star Tribune published an obituary for Frank Rog, who was remembered at his death for his long and dedicated leadership of the Roseville Park System. I never had the good fortune to meet Mr. Rog, who died at age 83. But I feel like we were at least acquainted, thanks to his spare, self-published autobiography, Let Me Be Frank, which details his early years in a neighborhood in Northeast Minneapolis that abutted the Mississippi River.

Rog is both cheerful and unflinching as he describes coming of age during the 1930s in this rough-and-tumble environment, the child of desperately poor Polish immigrants. He hated school because “I wasn’t good at anything except for gym,” he declared. “Each and every time I knew I had to give a speech or spell a word or take a test, I didn’t show up.” He haunted neighborhood pool halls and burlesque shows and the caves on Nicollet Island. But mostly he went to the river. “The river was our playground,” he remembered. “The river was where I loved to be more than anywhere–fishing, swimming and throwing stones. Everything you could ever want to do was right there on the Mississippi.”

This sounds idyllic at first. Yet it quickly becomes clear that there is a decidedly dark side to this river narrative, which casts Rog as a twentieth century Huck Finn at the headwaters of the great Mississippi.

Rog relied on his quick wits and natural athletic ability to survive danger and adventure on the great waterway. His brother “taught” him how to swim by leaving him on a pier of the Plymouth Avenue Bridge and telling him to swim back–fighting the current– to a sandbar at the third pier.  He “jumped, dived or” was “pushed off of every bridge from Hennepin Avenue all the way up to Lowry Avenue.” He explored sewer tunnels and careened down the water chute below the NSP plant. He almost went over the dam in a boat. Police fired shots at him on the Plymouth Avenue Bridge, after they discovered him using his brother’s gun to kill gulls.

All of his time on the river exposed him to things that most modern readers would agree no child should ever see. “It was terribly polluted,” he recounted. “We saw a lot of life on the river: things dumped, including bodies of all ages. . .and bums.” In his perpetual quest to make money he took terrible risks. He dove to the river bottom to dredge up “chips” or “slugs” that restaurants used in place of money;  gathered coal or grain scattered by the railroad tracks; climbed bridges to capture pigeons;  collected logs that sank to the bottom of the river.  He and his friends were always on the lookout for bodies, which they searched for money. “If there was money, we went to the Bijou Theater, had some candy (using chips for nickels in the vending machines) and watched a double feature cowboy movie.” He remembers that the most likely place to find corpses was “just west of the grates” for the power plant “by the Reddy Kilowatt sign.”

Rog recounts what seems to be overwhelming challenges. He endured perennial hunger and occasional gun shots. He  survived near drowning and other physical violence. He  suffered through the alcoholism and mental illness of family members.

But in what seems to be a miracle to me, he survived and even flourished. He was a gifted athlete, which won him the support of teachers and coaches. At a young age, he had the good fortune to meet a young woman who became his wife and lifelong partner. Somehow he graduated from high school, went to college and went on to become a community leader. He played a pivotal role in establishing the park system in Roseville, building a youth recreation program meant to provide safe environments in which children could develop physically and emotionally.

Rest in peace, Frank Rog.

Photo of boys swimming was taken in 1935 and is from the Minneapolis photo collection at the Hennepin County Library Special Collections.

 

This 1881 photo shows the first “class” of newsboys for the Minneapolis Journal.  These young workers–used by newspapers all over the country to hawk their product–were critical to the rise of the mass media in the late nineteenth century. “Newsies,” as they were called, had an iconic place in the American cultural imagination. Fixtures in the American urban landscape, they were often depicted as  Horatio Alger characters, scrappy little men getting their first taste of entrepreneurship. These rose-colored narratives cast them as young capitalists with one foot on the ladder to the American dream. According to this idea, corner sales prepared boys like these for more profitable ventures as soon as they were old enough to wear long pants.

Many famous Americans did begin their careers as newsboys. Here in Minneapolis, legendary sports columnist Sid Hartman loves to remind us how he got his start in the news business.

Yet rags to riches stories mask the more disturbing reality of these child laborers. In an era before child labor laws, many boys began hawking newspapers at an age when they should have been learning to read.  Many were recent immigrants who abandoned schooling to earn pennies that kept their families afloat. And a good number of these boys were on their own, using newspaper sales to eke out an existence on the streets, where they lived without adult supervision or assistance. They hustled each day to make enough for bread and perhaps to sleep. On unlucky days, they slept in doorways or parks, stealing smokes and booze to relieve the drudgery. Newsies became a cause celebre for child labor reformers like Lewis Hine, who put photography to the service of social justice in the early twentieth century. He took photographs that documented the plight of child laborers, publicizing these images in an effort to convince Americans that child labor was a social evil. Calculated to show the unvarnished reality of life on the street for these young boys, his images cultivated public outrage on this subject.

Newspaper publishers countered Hine and other reformers by continuing to spin the story of upward mobility. The Minneapolis Morning Tribune, for instance, published regular items about famous men who were once newsboys. It also featured the boys in countless articles that emphasized the benefits of their association with the newspaper industry, which provided them with mittens and required them to attend Sunday school. Each year it published glowing accounts of their annual picnics for the “lively street urchins,” occasions which gave them the opportunity to be “the guests of the Tribune” and fill their “brimming Cups of Happiness.” Industry leaders in Minneapolis were particularly proud of the “Newsboys Band,” they organized in 1897 for these youngsters. “Of 200 ‘newsies’ and street boys who were formerly members of this band,” Tribune executive Frank Thresher declared in 1912, “not one has fallen by the wayside. A record of them has been kept and all are following honest vocations in life. One is a bank teller, some are doctors and dentists, one is a surgeon in the United States navy and others are prosperous in commercial lines.”

Despite the claims of the newspaper industry, autobiographies reveal that the lives of newsboys were governed by violence. These young boys used their fists to defend their papers, their pennies and their corners. Ernie Fliegeltaub was of these “fighting newsboys.” His career as a newsie began at age 6, in 1910, the day after he arrived in Minneapolis from Romania. In News Alley downtown–where the boys gathered to pick up their copies of the Journal, the Tribune and the Daily News–he learned how to battle the other young workers for the bonus free copies given away by the newspapers each day. “You fought on your way to school and from school, as well as your right to be a ‘newsie,” remembered Ernie. The young immigrant did not become a doctor or a banker, as newspaper executives hoped. Instead, he won local fame as a professional boxer.

Image is from Hennepin County Special Collections and was digitized by citizen researcher Rita Yeada. Information for the text was drawn from Gretchen Tselos, “The 620 Club,” from the Twin Citian, reprinted in Downtown, David Anderson, ed  (Minneapolis: Nodin Press, 2000); “Newsboys Band Purposed; Old Members as Sponsors,” Minneapolis Morning Tribune, February 4, 1912; “Newsies at Play,” Minneapolis Tribune, July 8, 1898.

Today’s blogger is Heidi Heller, a senior history major at Augsburg College and an intern with the Historyapolis Project.

The Teamsters’ Strike–in July, 1934–is the best known labor conflict in the history of Minneapolis. This historic clash is now remembered as a turning point for labor relations in the city and the nation. Activists say that it was at this moment that Minneapolis became a union town.

But the Citizens’ Alliance–a notorious employers’ association known nationally for its ruthless suppression of labor organizers– did not capitulate in the wake of the Teamsters’ victory. And labor militancy intensified in the wake of the famous strike. The result was an intense period of labor unrest in Minneapolis, as workers and their employers struggled over the parameters of collective bargaining.

On this day in 1935–one year after the resolution of the Teamsters’ Strike–police and workers again clashed in the streets of Minneapolis. When dawn broke on September 12, two people were dead and 28 injured after a gun battle erupted between police and a crowd protesting the labor policies of the Flour City Ornamental Iron Company.

The Flour City Ornamental Iron Company had been a fixture in the working-class Seward neighborhood since 1901. The company had been non-union and owner, Walter Tetzlaff, an active member of the Citizen’s Alliance, worked hard to ensure it remained that way.

In 1935–no doubt emboldened by the Teamsters’ victory–workers decided to challenge Tetzlaff. They organized collectively, forming a union that demanded a wage hike, a 40-hour work week and other workplace protections like a grievance and seniority system.

Tetzlaff rejected these demands. Workers responded by calling a strike, drawing support from other iron workers around Minneapolis, who also walked off the job. The factory managed to remain open, at least at first. Some employees remained loyal to their boss, even filing a restraining order against Union Local 1313. In July of 1935, Tetzlaff took out an ad in the Minneapolis Journal that called union supporters an “organized mob.” But as the strike dragged on, the factory was besieged. A hostile crowd threatened workers as they entered the building. Flour City was forced to close its doors.

The factory re-opened on July 25, after police escorted strike breakers into the building. By that night, union supporters had again surrounded the facility. The strike breakers were stoned. The factory went dark again.

Tetzlaff remained defiant, working with the Citizens’ Alliance to violate city ordinances and sneak workers into the facility. When the factory re-opened on September 9^th –with a court order to house workers in the factory and under police protection–the union was ready. Protesters surrounded the building. The crowd threw rocks and shouted at the strike-breakers.

By the next night, September 10, the throng had swelled to 5000 people. The police used tear gas to drive protesters away. The next day, picketers were back in force. The police resorted again to tear gas, sending clouds of gas into the surrounding neighborhood and forcing bars and local businesses to close. But the protesters refused to leave. Police found themselves overwhelmed by wave after wave of union supporters.

The conflict came to a head just before midnight, when the crowd heard gun shots. A melee ensued. Hand-to-hand fighting broke out. Stones flew. Some protesters ran for cover, ducking down residential alleys and between houses.

Two hours later the battle was over. Two by-standers had been killed and 28 people had been injured. These casualties included a man who was shot in the arm as he sat on his back porch on 26^th Avenue, another shot in the leg as he walked up the steps of his home on E. 26^th Street and a woman who was hit in the face with a tear-gas bomb as she stepped off a streetcar. It was not clear who had done the shooting; police claimed that a group of picketers fired on them, union leaders denied the charges. Other claimed that Tetzlaff’s armed guards fired the shots.

Tetzlaff reached an agreement with strikers later in the month. The public largely forgot the battle in Seward. Flour City continued to operate until 1992.

Sources: William Millikan, A Union Against Unions: The Minneapolis Citizens Alliance and Its Fight Against Organized Labor, 1903-1947, Minnesota Historical Society, 2001.  Iric Nathanson, “The Other Bloody Labor Disturbance,” Hennepin History Magazine, Summer 1995. “Two Dead, 30 Hurt in All Night Riot,” Lawrence Journal-World, September 12, 1935. Drew Shonka, “The 1935 Flour City Ornamental Iron Works Strike,” libcom.org https://libcom.org/history/1935-flour-city-ornamental-iron-works-strike-drew-shonka. Images are from the Minneapolis Journal, July 24, 1935 and the Minnesota Historical Society.

This fall you have the opportunity to watch old-school alien films in a spooky old cemetery, thanks to one of the coolest history groups in town. In September and October, the Friends of the Pioneers and Soldiers cemetery is hosting an alien invasion film series. Proceeds will support ongoing efforts to restore the historic fence surrounding the city’s oldest cemetery, which is located at the intersection of Lake Street and Cedar Avenue. Series kicks off with the screening of “The Blob” on September 10th.