While making up a smaller percentage of Minnesota's population compared to national averages, African Americans have had a profound influence on the history and culture of the state from its earliest days to the present. Author David Taylor chronicles the rich history of Blacks in the state through careful analysis of census and housing records, newspaper records, and first-person accounts. He recounts the triumphs and struggles of African Americans in Minnesota over the past 200 years in a clear and concise narrative. Major themes covered include settlement by Blacks during the territorial and early statehood periods; the development of urban Black communities in St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Duluth; Blacks in rural areas; the emergence of Black community organizations and leaders in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries; and Black communities in transition during the turbulent last half of the twentieth century. Taylor also introduces influential and notable African Americans: George Bonga, the first African American born in the region during the fur trade era; Harriet and Dred Scott, whose two-year residence at Fort Snelling in the 1830s later led to a famous, though unsuccessful, legal challenge to the institution of slavery; John Quincy Adams, publisher of the state's first Black newspaper; Fredrick L. McGhee, the state's first Black lawyer; community leaders, politicians, and civil servants including James Griffin, Sharon Sayles Belton, Alan Page, Jean Harris, and Dr. Richard Green; and nationally influential artists including August Wilson, Lou Bellamy, Prince, Jimmy Jam, and Terry Lewis. African Americans in Minnesota is the fourth book in The People of Minnesota, a series dedicated to telling the history of the state through the stories of its ethnic groups in accessible and illustrated paperbacks.

This is the first comprehensive examination of the Black press in the Middle West. It rewrites the history of the Middle West and proves that Blacks were not only present, but that they helped to shape the history, character, and political agenda of the region.

A set of mutually beneficial relationships between southern slaveholders and Minnesotans kept the men and women whose labor generated the wealth enslaved.

The story of Somalis in Minnesota begins with three words: sahan, war, and martisoor. Driven from their homeland by civil war and famine, one group of Somali sahan, pioneers, discovered well-paying jobs in the city of Marshall, Minnesota. Soon the war, news, traveled that not only was employment available but the people in this northern state, so different in climate from their African homeland, were generous in martisoor, hospitality, just like the Somali people themselves. The diaspora began in 1992, and today more than fifty thousand Somalis live in Minnesota, the most of any state. Many have made their lives in small towns and rural areas, and many more have settled in Minneapolis, earning this city the nickname "Little Somalia" or "Little Mogadishu." Amiable guide Ahmed Yusuf introduces readers to these varied communities, exploring economic and political life, religious and cultural practices, and successes in education and health care. he also tackles the controversial topics that command newspaper headlines: alleged links to terrorist organizations and the recruitment of young Somali men to fight in the civil war back home. This newest addition to the people of Minnesota series captures the story of the state's most recent immigrant group at a pivotal time in its history.

An intricate narrative of the Dakota people over the centuries in their traditional homelands, the stories behind the profound connections that hold true today.

This true crime history recounts more than a century of crime, deviousness, and disaster in the North Star State. In Minnesota Mayhem, local historian and author Ben Welter explores the best of the state's worst moments. Culled from the archives of the Minneapolis Tribune and its successor newspapers, these stories and photos range from the catastrophic to the chillingly curious and the simply strange. Among the true tales told in these pages, Welter recounts the career of a successful con man in 1871; an 1881 fire that destroyed the State Capitol; a flu outbreak that killed more than 10,000 Minnesotans in 1918; the arrest of Frank Lloyd Wright at a Lake Minnetonka cottage in 1926; an arrested stripper who claimed wardrobe malfunction in 1953; and the 1977 murder of a wealthy matron in Duluth.