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.

Born into slavery in 1852, Prince Honeycutt set a course for himself that led from Civil War battlefields in Tennessee to freedom in the North. He settled in Fergus Falls, Minnesota, in 1872, and his accomplishments there were milestones in the state’s history: the first Black professional baseball player, the first Black firefighter, and the first Black person to run for mayor. In addition, he used his business and leadership skills to assist other Black people moving from the Jim Crow South to rural Minnesota.

On November 6, 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt dishonorably discharged 167 African American infantrymen from their battalion at Fort Brown when they refused to confess to committing acts of violence in Brownsville, Texas, riot three months earlier. Dorsey Willis, the last surviving member of this battalion, lived in Minneapolis from 1913 until he died in 1977. In 1972, his dishonorable discharge was changed to an honorable one, and with the help of Senator Hubert Humphrey, he was allowed a pension of $25,000.

Wards 1 and 3 in Northeast Minneapolis have been the center of the Twin Cities’ Ukrainian community since the late nineteenth century. Vibrant and long-lasting cultural institutions—including churches, Kramarczuk’s Sausage Company, and the Ukrainian American Community Center—have made Ukrainians in Northeast one of the city's most visible groups of European immigrants, in spite of their relatively small population.

In 1879, scientists at the University of Minnesota asked chemistry student Laura Linton to analyze rock samples that had been collected along the North Shore of Lake Superior. Her research identified a previously unknown mineral, which her professors named “lintonite” in recognition of her work. Linton went on to become a chemistry and physics teacher, a research chemist, and, after earning a medical degree at the age of forty-seven, the supervising physician of the women’s ward at Rochester State Hospital.

Bertha Berglin Moller (Delin), jailed twice in Washington, DC, for leading a hunger strike, was one of Minnesota’s most passionate and fiery woman suffragists. Following passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, Moller continued her activism by advocating for the Equal Rights Amendment and women’s labor rights. A modern woman for the 1920s, Moller became a lawyer, divorced, remarried, and supported herself throughout her life.

In Minnesota’s roster of heirs gone bad, Duluth’s Alonzo J. Whiteman ranks high. He followed a youth of wealth, privilege, and education with a young adulthood of dazzling attainment, then decades of crime.

In September 1903, workers in the Minneapolis flour milling industry coordinated a strike that halted production in fourteen different mills. The striking workers fought for higher wages and an eight-hour day. Though their effort failed, it marked a turning point in the city’s labor history by spurring mill owners and other business leaders to limit unions through the Citizens Alliance, an anti-worker organization.

In 1891, George Hormel established a pork packinghouse, Geo. A. Hormel and Company, in Austin, Minnesota. As a small independent meat packer in an industry dominated by corporate giants, Hormel devised a successful business strategy that emphasized quality over quantity and innovation over imitation. By the early twentieth century, his company had become one of the largest independent meatpackers in the Midwest.

On Wabasha Hill, just north of downtown St. Paul, stands Minnesota’s third state capitol building. This active center of state government was built between 1896 and 1905, and was designed by architect Cass Gilbert. Its magnificent architecture, decorative art, and innovative technologies set it apart from every other public building in the state.