The Dalai Lama Tenzin Guyatso, head of state and spiritual leader of the Tibetan community worldwide, visits the Tibetan American Foundation of Minnesota and shares his message of compassion, tolerance, kindness, and peace.
Charles G. Maybury dominated architectural practice in Winona from 1865 to 1905, designing churches, schools, courthouses, commercial buildings, and residences in the city and throughout southeast Minnesota. He moved comfortably between styles, including Italianate, Queen Anne, Richardsonian Romanesque, and Gothic Revival. Many of his buildings have survived and are on the National Register of Historic Places.
Mayim Rabim, the only Reconstructionist synagogue in the Twin Cities, was founded in 1992. Its founders were former members of Adath Jeshurun in South Minneapolis. In 2014, the small congregation continues to worship at its original home, the Minneapolis Friends Meetinghouse.
The name of Dr. William Worrall Mayo is synonymous today with high-quality, compassionate health care. Dr. Mayo and his sons, William and Charles, helped put Minnesota on the map when they founded Mayo Clinic in Rochester.
Senator Eugene McCarthy challenged President Lyndon Johnson for the 1968 Democratic nomination, mobilizing a youth crusade against U.S. intervention in Vietnam and changing the course of politics in Minnesota and the nation.
Conservative lawyer John F. McGee was the dominant personality on the Minnesota Commission of Public Safety, the body that governed Minnesota during World War I. Under McGee’s leadership, the commission demanded unquestioning support for the war effort and suppressed possible German American dissent. After the war, McGee became a federal judge who was well known for the heavy sentences he imposed on bootleggers.
Fredrick Lamar McGhee (1861–1912) was Minnesota’s first African American lawyer, its most consequential early civil rights leader, the only Minnesota public figure born in slavery, a renowned orator, and a criminal defense lawyer famous for his courtroom victories. His civil rights work had national reverberations. His break with Booker T. Washington and subsequent alliance with W. E. B. DuBois led to the foundation of the Niagara Movement, and then the NAACP.
As a legislator, Helen E. McMillan served Mower County for twelve years. She was also involved in the Red Cross, the Women’s League of Voters, the Human Rights Commission, and the United Council for Church Women.
The Medtronic medical device company was founded in 1949 by Earl Bakken and Palmer Hermundslie. From its beginnings in a converted garage, it has grown into a multi-billion-dollar enterprise and one of Minnesota’s leading businesses.
Believing that war and violence are inconsistent with Jesus’s teachings to love one’s enemies, a group of people from Molotschna Colony, Russia—Mennonites of Dutch descent—searched for a permanent home in the early 1870s. They found such a place, where they could follow their faith without persecution, in Minnesota’s Cottonwood County.
Mennonites arrived at Mountain Lake in 1873. Mennonites are a Protestant Christian group with sixteenth century European origins. Their name refers to Menno Simons, who was a Dutch religious reformer. Simons preached a fundamentalist, more literal interpretation of the Bible. He also emphasized the importance of adult baptism. Along with these beliefs, Simons promoted a simple way of life similar to Jesus Christ and the apostles. As part of his creed, he stressed the importance of Christian brotherhood, pacifism, and the primacy of family in Christian life. The tenet of pacifism played a significant role throughout Mennonite history.
It is the rare financial institution that offers patrons an awe-inspiring architectural experience along with check-writing privileges. The Merchants National Bank in Winona, designed in 1911-1912 by the Minneapolis firm of Purcell, Feick and Elmslie, is one such edifice.
Well-connected socially and politically, William Rush Merriam rose through the legislative ranks to become the eleventh governor of Minnesota by age thirty-nine. In 1899, President William McKinley appointed him director of the twelfth national census.
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.
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.
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.
During the summer of 1916, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) coordinated a strike of iron ore miners on the Mesabi Iron Range. The strikers fought for higher wages, an eight-hour workday, and workplace reform. Although the strike failed, it was one of the largest labor conflicts in Minnesota history.
In the Minnesota region during the eighteenth to mid-nineteenth centuries, métis, or mixed-ancestry, people often acted as bridges between white and Native American communities. The Métis cultural community of Pembina formed out of fur trade dynamics and influenced Minnesota during its territorial birth.
The Metropolitan Sports Center, or Met Center, was built to house the new Minnesota North Stars NHL team in 1966 and 1967. The facility, in Bloomington, was adjacent to the Metropolitan Stadium—once home to the Twins and Vikings. After the North Stars left the state, the Met Center was demolished.
When local enthusiasts wanted to lure major league sports to Minnesota in the 1950s, they made plans to build an outdoor stadium in the cornfields of Bloomington. Metropolitan Stadium—"the Met"— hosted Minnesota's professional baseball, football, and soccer teams until the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome replaced it in 1981.
Roy W. Meyer's studies of Dakota people and the US government policies that affect them brought about thoughtful public conversation during the late 1960s and 1970s, a time of social turmoil in the country.
Mi Perú-Minnesota (Mi Perú-MN) is a non-profit organization that promotes Peruvian culture through folkloric dances and ethnic events. Founded in Minneapolis in 2017, the group strives to bridge Peruvian and Minnesotan cultures while contributing to the diversity within Minnesota’s Latine population and society at large. Over the years, it has grown to become a multigenerational and multiethnic group with a presence as one of the primary Peruvian folkloric dance groups in Minnesota.
Mickey Crimmons and Bert Mattson opened Mickey's Diner, located at 36 West Seventh Street in downtown St. Paul, in 1939. Such diners had gained popularity early in the twentieth century as inexpensive, often all-night, eateries. Built to resemble a rail car, Mickey's was particularly notable for its unique look. Its unusual architecture made it a local landmark, and earned it a place on the National Register of Historic Places.
On April 15, 1913, John Benson opened a Minneapolis law office to offer legal help to the poor. By 2013, the office had morphed into Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid. It has served hundreds of thousands of Minnesotans.
Throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, migrant workers, mainly from Mexico, have played a vital role in Minnesota’s economy, often working in low-wage farming and food-processing industries.