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.

Lynching is widely believed to be something that happened only in the South. But on June 15, 1920, three African Americans, Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson, and Isaac McGhie, were lynched in Duluth, Minnesota.

In the annals of Minneapolis crime one man occupies the place held by Al Capone in Chicago and Meyer Lansky in New York and Miami: Isadore Blumenfeld, also known as Kid Cann. He was a lifelong criminal who made fortunes in liquor, gambling, labor racketeering (all protected through political corruption), and real estate. Only late in life did he serve more than a year in prison. He retired in Florida and died rich.

The Barker‒Karpis gang, a revolving cast of Midwestern criminals, shuttled in and out of St. Paul in the 1930s, committing robberies and kidnappings under the protection of a corrupt police force.

National Prohibition went into effect January 17, 1920. On March 23—sixty-six days into Prohibition—federal liquor agents arrested Oscar Martinson, sheriff of Hennepin County. Next came William M. Nash, Hennepin County Attorney, indicted April 6, arrested May 13. Martinson pleaded guilty. Nash was acquitted, but Governor J. A. A. Burnquist removed him from office. Nash and Martinson were the highest-ranking Minnesota law enforcement officials prosecuted under Prohibition.

John Lyght, Minnesota’s first African American sheriff, faced different challenges than his constituents as one of the only African Americans in Cook County. A reputation for fairness, however, won him multiple re-elections with wide support between 1972 and 1994.

From statehood in May 1858 until May 1896, Minnesota had one resident federal district court judge. His name was Rensselaer Russell Nelson.

The only documented hanging held in Clay County occurred on September 20, 1889, when Thomas Brown was hanged for the murder of Moorhead Patrolman Peter Poull. Newspapers across the country reported on the sensational event; the Los Angeles Herald called it “a quiet execution.”

After the intense violence of the first few decades of the twentieth century, the St. Paul Police Department (SPPD) experienced a period of steady growth and relative social calm in the 1930s. During these "quiet years," the department expanded, reformed its policies, and experimented with new ideas and technologies.

Lois Jenson and her coworkers Patricia S. Kosmach and Kathleen Anderson filed the lawsuit Jenson v. Eveleth Taconite Co. in 1988, after years of harassment at Eveleth Mines on the Mesabi Iron Range. The case became the first sexual harassment class action tried in US federal court and set a precedent for future harassment trials.