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This Day in Minnesota History

January 29, 1858

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Entertainer Daniel D. Emmett obtains a business license for his "Ethiopean Minstrels," a blackface minstrelsy group. Emmett visited the state often in the 1850s while his brother Lafayette served as chief justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court, and it is believed that while here he wrote an early version of "Dixie," which was performed at Russell C. Munger's music store in St. Paul.

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