Dar Al-Hijrah was founded in 1998 in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood in Minneapolis and is the oldest Somali mosque in Minnesota. It signals the latest of many phases of immigration to the state, from Scandinavians and other Europeans in the nineteenth century to East Africans in the 1990s and 2000s. The congregation has a unique commitment to civic education and advocates for the idea that Islam is compatible with democracy through its sister organization, the Islamic Civic Society of America.

During World War II, prisoners of war helped relieve a severe labor shortage in many rural areas of the U.S. In Clay County, Minnesota, POWs worked on farms to plant, tend, and harvest the crops that otherwise might have been lost.

Constructed in 1884, the Anoka–Champlin Bridge 4380 was the first structural span of the Mississippi River between Anoka and Champlin. A 1920s renovation strengthened the bridge, replacing the original’s stone materials with steel.

Ethel Ray Nance was an African American activist and writer. During the 1920s, she broke various racial and gender barriers in Minnesota, participated in the Harlem Renaissance movement, worked as a secretary for the National Urban League, and contributed to Opportunity magazine. In later decades, she went on to work for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the San Francisco African American Historical and Cultural Society.

St. Paul’s Rondo neighborhood ran roughly between University Avenue to the north, Selby Avenue to the south, Rice Street to the east, and Lexington Avenue to the west. African American churches, businesses, and schools set down roots there in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, creating a strong community. Construction of Interstate-94 (I-94) between 1956 and 1968 cut the neighborhood in half and fractured its identity as a cultural center.

For over one hundred years, the Grand Theater of Crookston has kept up with the times, transforming itself from a venue for vaudeville and plays to a movie palace for silent films and, finally, “talkies.” By evolving to keep up with technology and the demands of the public, the Grand has remained a vital part of Crookston community life.

Although the Opera House Block was short-lived as a theater due to its hazardous second-floor auditorium, it was the center of entertainment in Crookston for more than fifteen years and hosted a historic 1895 lecture by American humorist Mark Twain. The Opera House Block burned down due to undetermined causes in 1987.

At camps held around the country during World War I, the U.S. Army quickly trained the officers it needed to grow from a small defensive force into one of millions, ready to step onto the world stage. Fort Snelling hosted two such camps in 1917: one between May 11 and August 15 and another between August 28 and November 27.

Begun in the Castro neighborhood of San Francisco in 1987, the Names Project AIDS Memorial Quilt grew into a nationwide community art project memorializing those who had been killed by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Lovers, families, and friends of people who had died sewed quilt panels; others created them for individuals they had never met. In 1988, the quilt embarked on a national twenty-city tour and arrived at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in Minneapolis on July 16.

Allan Henry Spear was the first openly gay man in the United States to serve as a state legislator. In 1993, he won a twenty-year fight to include the LGBT community in Minnesota's Human Rights Act. He served as president of the Minnesota Senate for nearly a decade, taught history at the University of Minnesota for thirty-five years, and was a lifelong lover of travel, food, music, and literature.