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Articles by Dave Kenney
Minnesota’s battles over margarine
Margarine’s origins dated back to 1867, when a French chemist named Hippolyte Mège-Mouriès — seeking a prize offered by Emperor Napoleon III — developed a process for turning beef tallow and milk into a spread that tasted like butter. Mège-Mouriès called his product oleomargarine. (It later became widely known simply as oleo and margarine.) In 1873, Mège-Mouriès’s oleomargarine manufacturing process received a U.S. patent. American oleo manufacturing began in earnest a few years later.
The origins of the NAACP in Minnesota Original
About seven thousand African Americans lived in Minnesota during the early decades of the 1900s. The vast majority of them resided in St. Paul and Minneapolis. In recent years, a small core of community leaders from the cities’ Black professional class had established a series of organizations to promote civil rights, but those groups had all declined due to some combination of neglect, indifference, and ineffectiveness.
Thursday - January 25, 2024 - Cityline
Expert tips for building your custom home Hosted by Tracy Moore. It’s Home Day on Cityline and we’ve got Renovation Experts The Bro-Law’s here to talk us through building a custom home. Staging Expert Farah Singh spills the staging secrets that will help you fetch top dollar for your home; plus, everything you need to know about home insulation and a clever little DIY that can elevate your décor using your scrap wallpaper.
Moving through Minnesota:
Humans have always been mobile creatures. Although some claim to prefer sedentary activities, most actually find it difficult to stay in one place for too long. Minnesotans are no different in this regard from anyone else. They vary only in the particulars. People have moved into, out of, and within the borders of the land we now call Minnesota for centuries. Their movements—and the ways they have moved—constitute the history of transportation in the state.
Case in Minnesota from 1964 was among the first to espouse battered woman syndrome
At the end of the past year President Biden pardoned and purged the criminal records of six people. Five of them had been convicted of relatively minor drug- and alcohol-related crimes. But one of them, Beverly Ann Ibn-Tamas, was sentenced to five years in prison for shooting and killing her abusive husband in 1976.
As 1918 showed, pathogens do not respect school calendars
As we in Minnesota get ready to send our kids back to school — either in-person, virtually, or through some combination of the two — we should try not to let our hopes get the best of us. If history is any guide, we will eventually be forced to acknowledge what we already know: that pathogens do not respect school calendars.
As 1918 showed, pathogens do not respect school calendars
Community Voices features opinion pieces from a wide variety of authors and perspectives. (Submission Guidelines) A 1918 influenza awareness poster showing a Red Cross nurse with a gauze mask over her nose and mouth. U.S. National Library of Medicine 19 seconds ago Sign up here to get our daily updates on coronavirus in Minnesota delivered straight to your inbox each afternoon. And go here to see all of MinnPost’s COVID-19 coverage.
African-Americans have long defied white supremacy and celebrated Black culture in public spaces
From Richmond to New York City to Seattle, anti-racist activists are getting results as Confederate monuments are coming down by the dozens. In Richmond, Virginia, protesters have changed the story of Lee Circle, home to a 130-year-old monument to Confederate General Robert E. Lee. It’s now a new community space where graffiti, music and projected images turn the statue of Lee from a monument to white supremacy into a backdrop proclaiming that Black Lives Matter. This isn’t a new phenomenon.
The militarization of Twin Cities police goes way back
The militarization of police departments may have accelerated over the past two decades thanks to the federal government’s “1033 Program,” but the process has been going on much longer than that. In early 1968, the police departments in Minneapolis and St. Paul both decided to arm themselves with AR-15 semi-automatic rifles. The AR-15 was, at the time, considered the twin of the M16, a military weapon used heavily by U.S. troops in Vietnam.
Looking back to 1887, when a Ramsey Co. sheriff killed a Black Minnesotan
Community Voices features opinion pieces from a wide variety of authors and perspectives. (Submission Guidelines) Distrust, fear, and loathing of law enforcement has permeated African-American communities in the Twin Cities — with good reason — since long before the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police.
The true scope of a pandemic only becomes clear after it’s over
Community Voices features opinion pieces from a wide variety of authors and perspectives. (Submission Guidelines) Sign up here to get our daily updates on coronavirus in Minnesota delivered straight to your inbox each afternoon. And go here to see all of MinnPost’s COVID-19 coverage. On March 9, 1958, a global flu pandemic unofficially became a national joke.
How snowmobiles launched Polaris into a nationally known company
Courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society 1964 Polaris sales brochure. From “Pamphlets relating to snowmobiles and snow cruisers, 1939–.” Pamphlets collection (TL234), Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul. Polaris Industries of Roseau, Minnesota, manufactured its first snowmobiles in 1956. In the years since then, it has remained an industry leader in production, sales, and innovation, even as it has diversified into other, more lucrative product lines.
Minnesota in the 70s: Authors Explore the Decade of Change
Tpt’s film Minnesota in the 70s is an adaptation of the book by co-authors Dave Kenney and Thomas Saylor. The film was created in collaboration with Minnesota Historical Society Press. As is often said about adaptations, ‘the book is better.’ So here, taken from the introduction of the book and reprinted with the permission of our friends at MNHS Press, is the introduction to the book that offers insights on the co-authors’ approach to scholarship and storytelling on this pivotal decade.
Mankato, 1971: Minnesota's own monument-removal experience
Courtesy of the Minnesota Historical SocietyThe Mankato monument in 1930It’s easy, as Minnesotans, to sit back and watch from a safe distance as Americans elsewhere struggle to decide what to do about the Confederate monuments in their midst. Minnesota, after all, is apparently among the minority of states without at least one such monument within its borders.
Think Minnesota doesn’t have earthquakes? Think again
The earthquake that rattled a large portion of central and northern Minnesota on September 3, 1917, while small by historical standards, fascinated many Minnesotans. In the days after the quake, exaggerated accounts and faulty expert analysis reflected the state’s inexperience with geological convulsions.Sometime between 3:20 and 3:30 on the afternoon of September 3, 1917, people across a wide swath of central and northern Minnesota felt the ground move beneath them.
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