American Crystal Sugar Company

The American Crystal Sugar Company evolved out of its predecessor, the American Beet Sugar Company, in 1934 to operate factories in Minnesota, Iowa, and Colorado. After the Red River Valley Sugarbeet Growers Association bought it in 1973, American Crystal moved its headquarters to Moorhead, Minnesota, and became the first farmer-owned sugar beet cooperative in the United States.

Beltrami County Poor Farm

The Beltrami County Poor Farm provided shelter and care for elderly and disabled people from 1902 until 1935, when old-age assistance programs replaced the poor farm system.

Bernard, John Toussaint (1893–1983)

Minnesota Congressman John T. Bernard fought throughout his life for working people against strong opposition. His outspoken and uncompromising views led him, on his second day in office, to cast the single “no” vote in Congress against the Spanish arms embargo. Bernard’s vote proved farsighted as the Spanish Civil War became, in many ways, a “dress rehearsal” for World War II.

Boyd, Frank (1881–1962)

Frank Boyd was a celebrated organizer in Minnesota for the country’s most influential African American labor union, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, from 1926 to 1951.

Civilian Conservation Corps in Minnesota, 1933–1942

The U.S. Congress paved the way for the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) when it passed the Emergency Conservation Work (ECW) Act in March 1933, at the height of the Great Depression. This New Deal program offered meaningful work to young men with few employment prospects. It resulted in a lasting legacy of forestry, soil, and water conservation, as well as enhancements to Minnesota's state and national parks.

Civilian Conservation Corps-Indian Division

Between 1933 and 1943, Native Americans worked on their lands as part of the Civilian Conservation Corps-Indian Division, run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). More than 2,000 Native families in Minnesota benefited from the wages as participants developed work skills and communities gained infrastructure like roads and wells.

Custom Dressmaking, 1880–1920

Throughout the nineteenth century, custom dressmaking was one of the few socially acceptable professions for women of multiple ages and classes, including immigrants, young farm girls, wives, and widows. Dressmaking establishments—run and staffed primarily by women—provided creative labor, living wages, and career advancement opportunities for businesswomen and skilled workers alike.

Dorsey, Ida (1866–1918)

Employing the racial prejudices and fantasies of elite male clients once used against her, Ida Dorsey established herself as one of the Twin Cities’ most notorious madams, running multiple brothels between the 1880s and the 1910s. As a woman of color in an industry dominated by white women, she demonstrated herself an adept entrepreneur and real estate owner when most women had neither income nor property.

Dunne, Vincent Raymond (1889–1970)

Vincent Raymond (V. R.) Dunne dedicated his life to improving the plight of workers. A leader in the 1934 Minneapolis Teamsters strike and convicted in the Smith Act Trial of 1941 for his involvement in the Socialist Workers Party, Dunne fought many battles in labor and politics.

European American Women at Fort Snelling, 1819–1858

When the Fifth Infantry Regiment came west in 1819 to build a fort on the bluff where the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers flow together, some of the soldiers brought their wives and daughters with them. Women and girls made up around 20 percent of the fort’s population from the time of the first census in 1849 until at least 1900. They included the wives and daughters of officers but also lower-class women (wives and daughters of enlisted men, as well as their servants).

Farmers' Holiday Association in Minnesota

The Farmers' Holiday Association was formed in 1932. The Midwestern organization successfully fought against farm foreclosures with novel strategies like penny auctions, but unsuccessfully lobbied Congress for a federal system that would pay farmers for their crops based on the cost of production.

Fur Trade in Minnesota

The North American fur trade began around 1500 off the coast of Newfoundland and became one of the most powerful industries in US history. In Minnesota country, the Dakota and the Ojibwe traded in alliance with the French from the 1600s until the 1730s, when Ojibwe warriors began to drive the Dakota from their homes in the Mississippi Headwaters region. Afterward, the Dakota continued trading in the south while Montreal traders and their Ojibwe allies established a network of trading posts in the north. For the next 120 years, the fur trade dominated the region’s economy and contributed to the development of a unique multicultural society.

Hormel Strike, 1985–1986

On August 17, 1985, about 1,500 Hormel Foods Corporation workers went on strike at the meat-processing plant at the company’s headquarters in Austin, Minnesota. The strikers, members of United Food and Commercial Workers’ Local P-9, cited a wage freeze, dangerous working conditions, and a wage cut as the reasons for the strike, which continued for thirteen months. New non-union workers were hired and the National Guard was called to protect them, drawing global attention. The conflict is heralded as one of the most contentious and longest-running strikes in Minnesota history.

Immigration to the Iron Range, 1880–1930

During the early twentieth century, the population of the Iron Range was among the most ethnically diverse in Minnesota. Tens of thousands of immigrants arrived from Finland, Austria-Hungary, Italy, Sweden, Norway, Canada, England, and over thirty other places of origin. These immigrants mined the ore that made the Iron Range famous and built its communities.

Iron Man Memorial, Chisholm

The Iron Man Memorial in Chisholm stands at eighty-five feet tall as a monument to the miners of Minnesota’s Iron Range. The nearly thirty-year story of its creation reveals northeastern Minnesotans’ commitment to recognizing their history, expanding local heritage tourism, and diversifying their economy beyond the mining industry.

IWW Lumber Strike, 1916–1917

In December of 1916, mill workers at the Virginia and Rainy Lake Lumber Company went on strike, and lumberjacks soon followed. The company police and local government tried to crush the strike by running the lumberjacks out of town, but when the strike was called off in February, the company had granted most of the workers’ demands.

Johnson, Nellie Stone (1905–2002)

Nellie Stone Johnson was an African American union and civil rights leader whose career spanned the class-conscious politics of the 1930s and the liberal reforms of the Minnesota DFL Party. She believed unions and education were paths to economic security for African Americans, including women. Her self-reliant personality and pragmatic politics sustained her long and active life.

Journeymen Barbers in Minnesota

Journeymen barbers were skilled craftsmen whose labor organizations helped shape the barbers’ trade in Minnesota. Politically active from their first arrival, they allied themselves with third-party movements after World War I. Shopping mall barbershops, consumer choices, and lost union membership led to organizational decline in the 1970s.

Knights of Labor in Minnesota

The Knights of Labor shaped business and political policy in Minnesota communities in the late nineteenth century by working with the Farmers' Alliance and advocating for shorter work days, equal pay for women, child labor laws, and cooperation between workers.

How labor and labor organizing have shaped the state

Labor and Labor Organizing in Minnesota

Since statehood, Minnesota workers have joined together to improve and protect their livelihoods, rights, and voices in the workplace. Labor organizations, especially unions, have stood up for members’ interests with employers. They have participated in politics to influence society for the benefit of all working people. Minnesota labor has experienced successes and setbacks, times of positive relations with businesses and government, and times of hostility. Minnesotans have been national innovators in labor strategies and organizational forms.

Labor Lyceum and Workmen’s Circle

A small, committed group of Jewish immigrants raised the funds needed to build the Labor Lyceum at 1426 Sixth Avenue North in Minneapolis in 1915. The two-story brick and stucco building was a hub for radical Jewish cultural, political, and social activities for the next thirty-five years.

Martial Law in Albert Lea, 1959

In the winter of 1959–1960 a bitter packing-house workers’ strike against Wilson & Company in Albert Lea descended into such disorder that Governor Orville Freeman declared martial law. A federal district court later ruled his order unlawful.

Mesaba Co-op Park

Located near Hibbing, Mesaba Co-op Park is one of the few remaining continuously operated cooperative parks in the country. A gathering place of the Finnish cooperative movement, the park served the ethnic political radicals who energized the Iron Range labor movement and Minnesota’s Farmer-Labor Party.

Mesabi Iron Range

The Mesabi Iron Range wasn’t the first iron range to be mined in Minnesota, but it has arguably been the most prolific. Since the 1890s, the Mesabi has produced iron ore that boosted the national economy, contributed to the Allied victory in World War II, and cultivated a multiethnic regional culture in northeast Minnesota.

Mesabi Iron Range Strike, 1907

Tired of ethnic discrimination as well as dangerous working conditions, low wages, and long work days, immigrant iron miners on the Mesabi Range in northeastern Minnesota went on strike on July 20, 1907. It was the first organized strike on the state's Iron Range.

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