Guests were riveted by the first-person accounts of campus protest from Executive Vice President and Provost Karen Hanson and Professor John Wright at the February opening of Takeover: Morrill Hall, 1969, on display now through December 2019 in the Fourth Floor Gallery of Northrop.
Archival documents, photographs, and recordings—some publicly exhibited for the first time—depict the power of student protest when, fifty years ago, on January 14-15, 1969, approximately 70 Black students from the University of Minnesota took over Morrill Hall, the administration building housing the Office of the President. The event lasted 24 hours—changing the history of the University and resulting in the founding of an African American Studies department.
The exhibit was curated by HSPH student Elisabeth DeGrenier and professors Greg Donofrio and Kevin Murphy, with graphic design by Northrop’s Melissa Bartz and copy editing and communications by Amy Nelson. It is part of a yearlong, collaborative series, “1968/69-2018/19: Historic Upheavals, Enduring Aftershocks,” featuring lectures, events and exhibits co-presented by the Institute for Advanced Study, University Honors Program, and Northrop.
Minneapolis is number one in racial disparities: People of color in Minneapolis are more likely than white residents to live in poverty, experience violence, and suffer chronic illness. They are less likely to graduate from high school or own their own home. Housing is the foundation of these disparities.
So begins the exhibit “Owning Up: Racism and Housing in Minneapolis” that was first displayed at the Hennepin History Museum from August 2019 through January 2019. Curated by HSPH master’s students Kacie Lucchini Butcher and Denise Pike, the opening panel of this remarkably powerful exhibit goes on to explain that “Owning Up” contradicts popular narratives and myths about Minneapolis as a so-called “model metropolis,” or “urban paradise” and concludes with a call to action: “We need to grapple with our history of housing” and to do this, “we need to acknowledge redlining, racial covenants, and white violence.”
Owning Up guides visitors through the stories of three black families as they searched for home and community in white-dominated neighborhoods during the twentieth century in Minneapolis. Viewers come away with a devastating understanding of the persistent consequences of redlining, racial covenants, and white violence. The exhibit shows the roots of our contemporary racial disparities in these historic policies. And it asks visitors to “own up” and think about our collective obligation to seek remedies for these historic injustices. “It’s one of those rare works of historical scholarship that stimulates understanding and action in the present and future because it so powerfully frames injustices that occurred in the past,” said Greg Donofrio, director of the HSPH program.
“This is the raw base of what was really going on in Minneapolis,” said Lena Booker, who attended the opening event August 23. Now in her 90s, Mrs. Booker encountered racial discrimination while searching for a home with her husband in the 1960s. “If you were an African American viewing this exhibit, you were not surprised.”
The exhibit attracted a record number of visitors to the Hennepin History Museum. “We strive to be a place where all Hennepin County’s communities’ stories are seen and told, not just the dominant settlers stories, and not just the easy, nostalgic stories,” said the museum’s interim director, Cara Letofsky. “Bringing the Owning Up exhibit into the Hennepin History Museum has allowed us to invite new audiences into our space, have compelling programs that dovetail with the topic of the exhibit, and become known as a partner in the community conversation about advancing human rights for everyone.”
“Owing Up demonstrates the deep connections between the history of systemic racism in Minneapolis and contemporary housing segregation in the city, illuminating contemporary questions of social justice through a historical lens,” according to Rachel Mattson, Curator for the Tretter Collection for GLBT Studies in the University of Minnesota Libraries.
The exhibit drew on research and maps developed by Mapping Prejudice. Kirsten Delegard, Mapping Prejudice Project Director, said the project couldn’t be more timely. “Minneapolis residents, civic servants, and politicians are grappling with contentious questions about housing equity, design, and human rights to shelter as it considers passage of the Minneapolis 20/40 plan.” The exhibit conceived and curated by Pike and Lucchini Butcher offers a powerful illustration of why the status quo is unacceptable in a just and equitable city. They worked with an advisory board of HSPH faculty comprising Kirsten Delegard, Greg Donofrio, and Kevin Murphy.
For their work on Owning Up, Pike and Lucchini Butcher received the prestigious Josie R. Johnson Human Rights and Social Justice Award from the University of Minnesota Office of Equity and Diversity, and the Student Project Award from the National Council on Public History.
Exhibit developers Sasha Suarez (left) and Amber Annis (right) in the States of Incarceration exhibit at the Minnesota History Center. Suarez and Annis are both PhD Candidates in American Studies at the University of Minnesota
The exhibition States of Incarceration: A National Dialog of Local Histories opened on November 20th, 2018 at the Irvine Gallery of the Minnesota History Center in St. Paul, where it was on display until February 18, 2019. Created by university students from around the country, including University of Minnesota students, this national traveling exhibition and interpretive website was organized by the Humanities Action Lab. While the larger project explores the roots of mass incarceration in communities across the nation, the local installation focused on the high rates of Native American incarceration in Minnesota as a central aspect of settler colonialism. In this exhibit, visitors examine how today’s Minnesota prison population has been shaped by centuries of Native trauma. The exhibition features art, artifacts and additional local content created by exhibit developers Amber Annis and Sasha Suarez and local partners.
States of Incarceration is a project of the Humanities Action Lab and is made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, National Endowment for the Humanities, Whiting Foundation, Open Society Foundations, and Mellon Foundation.
On November 30, 2018, HSPH Masters student Tianna Odegard sat down with States of Incarceration exhibit developers Amber Annis and Sasha Suarez, both PhD students in American Studies at the University of Minnesota, to talk about the exhibit, community collaboration, and the impacts of incarceration on Native communities. What follows is Tianna’s summary of that conversation.
Annis began working on Humanities Action Lab projects several years ago when, as a student, she took a class that focused on the Guantánamo Public Memory Project. Later she worked with HSPH professor Kevin Murphy as a teaching assistant for an undergraduate course in which students created content for the States of Incarceration project, and began to explore the historical roots of mass incarceration for Native people in our region. Suarez is an alumna of the University of Minnesota Morris, which was a former Indian boarding school, and she previously advised a group of undergraduate students who created the digital content for States of Incarceration about Indian Boarding Schools as a form of incarceration.
In summer 2018, Annis and Suarez took the leading roles in developing new content for the installation of the exhibition at the Minnesota History Center, which involved working closely with local community partners. They worked alongside an exhibit team from the Minnesota History Center and the University of Minnesota.
Annis and Suarez reached out to community groups in the Twin Cities area that have been working with incarceration and prison reform for years. Fortunately, they were able to build on work already being done by community groups as they curated the exhibition. According to Amber “when working with communities you should always ask the question, ‘How do you see yourself in an exhibit, what would that look like for you?’”
Annis and Suarez’s favorite accomplishment was the curation of a case containing materials provided by community partners. This community case is filled with letters, beadwork, and artwork. They think that this case is important because it challenges visitors’ limited perceptions about what it means to be a person incarcerated. Suarez stated that this part of the exhibit “does so much to make incarceration about human beings.” It allows formerly incarcerated people to demonstrate that while imprisonment was meant to dehumanize them it didn’t succeed. Suarez adds that it is “crucially important to share that in this kind of space.”
Guests on the opening night of the exhibit were also impressed by the Community Exhibit Case. Suarez stated, “Visitors wanted to spend more looking at it because there is so much that can be gained by looking at these very personal pieces.”
Annis has been told by many co-workers that the opening night may have been one of the most successful at MNHS because you could really feel the community partnership. The opening, which featured a range of community voices, fostered a deeper conversation about what incarceration means across communities, including Indigenous, African American, and undocumented communities. Oyate Hotanin (Voice of the People), a community group devoted to “art, healing, and change,” played a key role in the decision-making process for the exhibition and the opening event. Their participation ensured that community voices were empowered and demonstrated that what different communities have faced are not isolated moments but shared.
As Suarez puts it, “The speakers themselves were drawing on this kind of coalitional solidarity in these experiences from oppression and dehumanization but were doing it in such a way that made it really hopeful and uplifting.”
Amber Annis is a PhD candidate in American Studies and the Community Partnership Director for the Heritage Studies Program. She works in the Department of Inclusion and Community Engagement at the Minnesota Historical Society. Sasha Suarez is a Ph.D. candidate in American Studies at the University of Minnesota.
Guests were riveted by the first-person accounts of campus protest from Executive Vice President and Provost Karen Hanson and Professor John Wright at the February opening of Takeover: Morrill Hall, 1969, on display now through December 2019 in the Fourth Floor Gallery of Northrop.
Minneapolis is number one in racial disparities: People of color in Minneapolis are more likely than white residents to live in poverty, experience violence, and suffer chronic illness. They are less likely to graduate from high school or own their own home. Housing is the foundation of these disparities.
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