History Commons^™

From The White House To The Lake House: Tracing Eliza Winston's Enslavement And Her Pursuit Of Freedom In Minnesota, Christopher P. Lehman

Ethnic and Women's Studies Faculty Publications

Eliza Winston was an African American woman who spent her first forty-three years of life as an enslaved person. Born around 1817, she suffered captivity by multiple enslavers in the slave states Tennessee, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Louisiana and in the free state Minnesota. The couple John McLemore and Betsy Donelson-McLemore kept her in bondage in Tennessee from 1822 to 1834. President Andrew Jackson's wife was a Donelson, and he intervened--while in office at the White House--to keep Winston enslaved by the Donelsons for another fourteen years. After the McLemores held her in urban Nashville, Mary Eastin-Polk brought her to a …

Mansions Of Memories: Linden Hill And The Long Shadow Of The Lumber Industry In Little Falls, 1891-2010, Alexander L. Ames

History Alum Publications

Author Alexander Ames offers a portrait of a Minnesota river town redolent with heritage, resonant with a sense of place, and intent on forging an identity in a changing world. The privileged status of Linden Hill in Little Falls’ collective memory owes itself to the town’s faltering economic and cultural-historical development—as well as to the life and work of a woman named Laura Jane Musser, who endeared the mansions and grounds to the town’s psyche, and who transformed the lumber barons’ homes into mansions of memories.

"Last Chance Liquor 'Til South Dakota": County Option In Minnesota, 1915 - 1965, Michael R. Worcester

History Alum Publications

From 1915 to 1965, Minnesota state statute provided for counties the ability to restrict the sale of alcohol within their borders. This paper shows how that story unfolded as part of the broader Temperance movement.

Huskies Go To War: St. Cloud State During The World War Ii Era, Kayla Stielow

Culminating Projects in History

This is a three-part project centered on the research, historical interpretation, and effective public history programmatic practice focused on the student experience at St. Cloud State during World War II. The project presents historical research and analysis of the student experience, primarily on the actions and reactions to wartime homefront realities, for the campus community throughout the war era. Centering itself in public history, the analysis is then interpreted in the form of a public program based on effective pedagogical practice. In the final chapter the public program is then rationalized, with the pedagogical practices found within the program grounded …

When The Good Times Gave Out: The Community Impacts Of The 1980s Farm Crisis In Central Minnesota, Michelle R. Skroch

SCSU Journal of Student Scholarship

The farms and rural communities of Stearns County Minnesota were not spared from the 1980s farm crisis. People in this region experienced the strain of financial stress and reacted to it in distinct ways. This affected the long-term sentiments and societal functioning of these communities long after the economic numbers improved.

These collective and individual experiences of the farm crisis have been inadequately studied therefore scholars have incorrectly assumed that the effects of the crisis ended in 1986 when the economic market showed an upturn. Instead, the effects continued to cause stagnation and a diminishing of rural communities and people …

Ironic Transitions: Conflicting Results Of Greater Visibility During The Last 20 Years Of Transgender Experience In The United States, Brianna M. Pace

SCSU Journal of Student Scholarship

The spread of internet and social media access in the 21^st century led to increased visibility of transgender persons in the U.S., especially within such popular culture venues as art, music, literature, television, and movies. The rapid communication facilitated by the internet also allowed for the formation of larger, more widespread trans communities. This foundation of visibility and community association enabled transgender persons to achieve many breakthroughs in health and mental health care, as well as in anti-discrimination laws. At the same time, this visibility sparked a countermovement against the rights of transgender persons, paralleling a year-by-year increase in …

Trial By Fire: Cultural Complacency, Institutional Learning, And The Development Of The Fire Warden System In Minnesota, 1870-1920, Blake M. Johnson

Culminating Projects in History

Between 1870 and 1920 Minnesota business culture focused on depleting the land of its resources with little regulation while the ecological landscape was influenced by a hot and dry climatic cycle. As these two forces collide, Minnesota experiences its four “great fires” (1894, 1908, 1910, and 1918). Each of these fires provide substantive documentation on emergency response and relief illustrating Minnesota’s development of a disaster response program. With several localized fires, the learning gained from fire to fire can be assessed. After evaluating the responses to each of these fires, one can conclude that although technological advancements and complex relief …

Black Cloud: The Struggles Of St. Cloud's African American Community, 1880-1920, Christopher P. Lehman

Ethnic and Women's Studies Faculty Publications

From the 1890s to the 1920s, a community of over one dozen African Americans existed in St. Cloud, Minnesota. It consisted of African Americans from the South and elsewhere in the North. Most found employment in low-wage jobs, but some--like John Webster and David Basfield--started their own businesses in town. Their children attended the same schools as the other local school-age children, and one of them--Ruby Cora Webster--became the first known graduate of what became St. Cloud State University. The children left St. Cloud by the 1920s, and their parents either stayed there or relocated with them. In the meantime, …

The Slave Trade Route: A Regional And Local Development Catalyst, Chukwunyere Ugochukwu

Geography and Planning Faculty Publications

The conservation of and focus on slave export points turned tourist monuments in Cape Coast and Elmina, Ghana, are incomplete without linkages to other complicit places in the interior that together completes the chain of darkness, the trade in humans along the Atlantic coast of Ghana, as well as in the interior. Completed, it will highlight the infrastructure of the slave business, the domestic, as well as the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. When the chain (route) of the different complicit communities in the interior to these export monuments along the Atlantic coast is conserved, it shall herald a completeness to the …

Miter And Sword: Fighting Norman Bishops And Clergy, Timothy Robert Martin

Culminating Projects in History

This thesis examines Norman bishops and abbots, and their involvement in warfare, either as armed combatants, or commanders of military forces in Normandy, and later in England after William the Conquerors invasion in 1066. While it focuses primarily on the roles of the secular bishops, other relevant accounts of martial feats by other Norman militant clergy are also introduced where appropriate.

The foundation for the use of justified force and later the sanctioned use of violence by these militant secular clergy is explored to better understand the rational perceived by the clergy when acting as ‘soldiers of God.’ The use …

Shaping Student Identities: A Gendered Examination Of The College Chronicle In The 1950s, Blake M. Johnson, Robert W. Galler

Huskies Showcase

Award for "Best Dimension of the Year Reflection: Think Creatively and Critically".

Abstract:

The submission’s goal is to articulate how students in the 1950s shaped their identity in relationship to gender and gendered work in a clear and concise manner. The submission must not only look at the content provided in the sculpting of this identity, but also it must examine exactly how the sculpting of the identity took place, namely, communications in the student newspaper. One cannot prioritize the arguments for or against female industrialized labor and leave out the dimensions of male and female athletics. Likewise, it cannot …

Ojibwe Absent Narratives In Minnesota Forest Park History, Elizabeth Steinson

Culminating Projects in History

A discursive analysis of Minnesota conservation history, with particular emphasis on the establishment of national forests, follows a recognizable pattern of the benign development of federal and state initiatives to ameliorate environmental despoliation around the turn of the twentieth century. Tensions over the creation of bureaucratic institutions to solve these problems are also generally described in terms of binary struggles between local special interests and conservationists who argued over proper management the land and its resources. Absent from these narratives are the indigenous populations who continued to use these lands and resources and resisted federal and state efforts to impede …

Families On The Wwi Home Front, Melissa Peterson

Culminating Projects in History

This thesis examines how state and federal policies related to food rationing, volunteer efforts, and political environment affected the daily life of Minnesota residents, such as the family of Charles A. Lindbergh, during the First World War. It was then used with the established methodology for living history programming to create a program at the Charles Lindbergh House and Museum. In addition to learning about the past, the program helps guests make personal connections between the historical content and their lives.

Slaveholder Investment In Territorial Minnesota, Christopher P. Lehman

Ethnic and Women's Studies Faculty Publications

Enslavers from slave states came to Minnesota during the Antebellum Era and invested in land and businesses there. The investors represented the diversity of slaveholders: owners of large plantations, operators of small farms, and urban residents. Some enslavers actively bought and sold people, but others had unwittingly inherited captives from deceased relatives. Most of them had brief stays in Minnesota during the spring and summer while making their investments, but a few of them sold all their captives in the South and then permanently relocated to Minnesota to buy the land for their new homes. Their investments provided sorely needed …

Cokato Through August Akerlund's Lens, Johanna M. Ellison

Culminating Projects in History

Swedish immigrant turned United States citizen August (Gust) Akerlund captured Cokato’s history through his photography from 1902-1950. Today, Akerlund’s photography studio and 14,019 negative collection are preserved due to the care of Akerlund’s family, the staff of the Cokato Museum, and the community of Cokato. Although Akerlund’s collection and studio provides a window into Cokato’s past, the few published works that mention Cokato do not utilize both Akerlund’s life and his photographs as complementary sources. This thesis is an attempt to rectify this neglect by using Akerlund’s resources (including his photographs, life story, and studio) to question the popular perception …

Stalin: From Terrorism To State Terror, 1905-1939, Matthew Walz

Culminating Projects in History

While scholars continue to debate the manner in which the Great Terror took shape in the Soviet Union, Stalin’s education as a revolutionary terrorist leader from 1905-1908 is often overlooked as a causal feature. This thesis analyzes the parallels between the revolutionary terrorists in Russia in the first decade of the twentieth century, particularly within Stalin’s Red Brigade units, and the henchmen carrying out the Great Terror of the 1930s. Both shared characteristics of loyalty, ruthlessness and adventurism while for the most part lacking any formal education and existing in a world of paranoia. As violence spread after the 1905 …

“Extermination Or Removal”: The Knights Of The Forest And Ethnic Cleansing In Early Minnesota, Catherine M. Coats

Culminating Projects in History

The Knights of the Forest was an 1863 secret society that formed in Mankato, MN, during the aftermath of the U.S.-Dakota War. They took an oath to advocate for the banishment of “all Indians” from the state of Minnesota. But newspaper articles written by and about four members show that the organization was only concerned with the exile of the Ho-Chunk people, who had not participated in the U.S.-Dakota War. In the winter of 1862-1863, settlers in the Mankato region pressured the federal government for Ho-Chunk removal under the threat of extermination of the Ho-Chunk people. Their reservation had comprised …

The Register And The Wrecking Ball: A Case Study Of Four Minnesota Carnegie Libraries And What They Reveal About The Destruction And Preservation Of Historic Structures, Karah Hawkinson

Culminating Projects in History

American interest in historic preservation has been on the rise since the late 1960s. Efforts, successful and unsuccessful, to save historic landmarks have involved everyone from historians and city planners to average citizens fighting to save their memories. Much has been written about the process of preservation, but very little has been said about the reasons why one historic structure thrives while another languishes or is lost to the wrecker.

This thesis provides background on the Carnegie library building program and historic preservation in America, and includes a case study of four Minnesota Carnegie library buildings - built during the …

Captains Of Industry And Robber Barons, David Evensen

Curriculum Unit on the Gilded Age in the United States

As we move though our unit on the Gilded Age, we will spend time taking about the era’s Captains of Industry and Robber Barons. In this age, capitalism in the United States begins to reflect our current market economy. In this lesson we will see Captains of Industry and Robber Barons test the boundaries of that system. The emergence of men like Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Morgan and how they bring about government subsidies, labor reform, money in politics, political corruption, and larger government over-site in commerce, industry, and labor.

Native American Land Cessions, 1867-1890, David Evensen

Curriculum Unit on the Gilded Age in the United States

As we move though our unit on the Gilded Age, we will spend time taking about the era’s Westward expansion. In this age, the United States (US) made and broke several treaties with Native Americans. In this lesson students will be able to describe and feel the impact of federal policies on indigenous nations. The surrender of Chief Joseph, the Dawes Act, the death of Sitting Bull, and the massacre at Wounded Knee all show how the United States navigated their policy with Native Americans. It is important to teach this portion of US history so students can have an …

Native American Land Cessions, 1867-1890: An Annotated Bibliography Of Selected Sources, David Evensen

Curriculum Unit on the Gilded Age in the United States

Annotated Bibliography to accompany the Native American Land Cessions 1867-1890 lesson plan.

Rough Patches On The Railroad, Annotated Bibliography Of Selected Sources In The Gilded Age, 1877-1900, Dylan Koenig

Curriculum Unit on the Gilded Age in the United States

Annotated bibliography to accompany Rough Patches on the Railroad lesson plan.

Inventors And Inventions Of The 19th Century, Dylan Koenig

Curriculum Unit on the Gilded Age in the United States

As we dive deeper into the Gilded Age, the students begin to understand the idea of change in this era. The prior lesson discussing the chaos and drastic change of America, the students will understand the amount of change. Change is everywhere and is constant. Drastic upgrades with technology are sweeping across the country at a rapid pace. This causes change in industry and improves the lives of people in a general sense. Tasks that were once difficult are made easier with a new invention or an upgrade of an old one. Products that were once made manually and involved …

Rough Patches On The Railroad, Dylan Koenig

Curriculum Unit on the Gilded Age in the United States

As we continue to dig deeper into the Gilded Age, we begin to see the importance the railroad made for the expansion of the United States. The Transcontinental Railroad was one of the America’s biggest accomplishments in all of its history. It gave companies the ability to move resources across the country in ways that were once either very difficult or impossible to do. The railroad system boosted the economy and was developing the country at a pace that would make it one of the most powerful countries in the world. As time went on, more and more expansion of …

The Election Of 1896: The Fall Of The People's Party, Olivia Lee-Benton

Curriculum Unit on the Gilded Age in the United States

The People’s Party (also known as the Populist Party) was a short-lived political party that was a result of agrarian unrest. The party was formed on the consolidation of multiple organizations, most notably, Farmer’s Alliance and the Knights of Labor. Formally established in 1892 with the creation of the Omaha Platform , the People’s Party called for numerous resolutions, the free coinage of silver in particular. This would have made it so that both silver and gold would be used as a currency with a ratio of 16:1 (bimetallism), causing more money to be in circulation. In this lesson, we …

The Election Of 1896: The Fall Of The People's Party: An Annotated Bibliography Of Selected Resources, Olivia Lee-Benton

Curriculum Unit on the Gilded Age in the United States

Annotated bibliography to accompany The Election of 1896: the Fall of the People's Party lesson plan.

Analyzing Populist Party Primary Documents, Cassandra Nelson

Curriculum Unit on the Gilded Age in the United States

We will be exploring the platform of the Populist Party and the mission of the Populist Party. In order for students to understand the Populist Movement and why it was extremely popular during this time period, they must understand what the Populist Party stood for and how they were different from the other major political parties of the time. Students will have the opportunity to analyze two primary documents and compare and contrast the ideas for the Populist Party and the goals that the Populist Party wants to reach. There will also be a major focus on vocabulary for this …

The Gilded Age And Technological Innovations, Kayla Peterson

Curriculum Unit on the Gilded Age in the United States

This lesson will include the students teaching about the technology of the Gilded Age to a classroom of middle school students. The lesson will be one week in length and is designed for an AP US History Class. This information is important for students to know because students can begin to grasp how much is different in today’s society compared to the Gilded Age. It is also important to link back how much changed during this time period with the new innovations and inventions that came about. During the lesson, I would like the students to be thinking like teachers …

Suffrage Or No Suffrage, Kayla Peterson

Curriculum Unit on the Gilded Age in the United States

This lesson focuses on the Women’s suffrage movement, which was started during the Gilded Age (1865-1900). By studying and learning about this movement, students will begin to grasp how much was changed during and by the women who continually fought for equality and rights. In this lesson, students will learn the thoughts and thinking of the time period by analyzing primary documents from the era. By studying this information, students will, hopefully, start to really understand and and realize how different our world today would have been different if these women never stood up and fought for their rights.

Suffrage Or No Suffrage, An Annotated Bibliography Of Selected Sources, Kayla Peterson

Curriculum Unit on the Gilded Age in the United States

Annotated bibliography to accompany the Suffrage or No Suffrage lesson plan.