This collection brings together stories where theater, music, visual arts, and literature are utilized as creative tools for cultural expression and connection across Minnesota’s Black communities.
From Penumbra Theatre and the Givens Collection of African American Literature to music halls, art galleries, and literary centers on both sides of the Mississippi River, Black Minnesotans have created and occupied spaces where they take center stage.
Rather than creating art for art’s sake, the stories in this collection highlight artists who use these mediums to share their experiences, cultivate community, and reflect on what it means to be Black in Minnesota.
February 27, 1995 - MPR’s Tom Meersman talks with Nothando Zulu, a master storyteller and member of the Minnesota Black Storytellers Alliance. Zulu shares her thoughts on the cultural and historical importance of storytelling and provides some illustrative examples.
June 5, 1995 - As part of MPR’s Voices of Minnesota series, Beth Friend speaks with Evelyn Fairbanks, author of "Days of Rondo." Fairbanks talks of her memoir, an interpretive account of events in the life of a black family from the South struggling for survival and meaning in a northern city. Rondo was a St. Paul black neighborhood that vanished with the coming of the freeways in the 1960s.
June 5, 1995 - As part of MPR’s Voices of Minnesota series, Beth Friend speaks with Evelyn Fairbanks, author of "Days of Rondo." Fairbanks talks of her memoir, an interpretive account of events in the life of a black family from the South struggling for survival and meaning in a northern city. Rondo was a St. Paul black neighborhood that vanished with the coming of the freeways in the 1960s.
November 20, 1996 - MPR’s Mary Stucky reports on local poetry book "The Palm of My Heart," which collects vivid poetry by African American children who live in Minneapolis and St. Paul.
February 17, 1997 - A Voices of Minnesota with the perseverance of two families in facing racial discrimination. Barbara Cyrus tells of her family's move to escape discrimination in the south only to encounter it in the north. Then, Archie Givens Junior tells how his father's commitment to education led him to donate African American art and literature to the University of Minnesota.
February 19, 2002 - MPR’s Cathy Wurzer interviews author Paul Nelson about his book "Fredrick L. McGee: A Life on the Color Line."
April 15, 2004 - Immigrants to the U.S. often arrive with a tremendous hope for a new life as well as a deep sense of loss for the one left behind. Those themes, plus culture clash and the resilience of youth, are at the center of the play "Snapshot Silhouette." A product of the Children's Theatre Company of Minneapolis, the play has for the past month been providing Twin Cities students a glimpse of what life is like for some of the region's newest immigrants. It is built around two twelve year old girls, one Somali and one African-American who, as circumstances have it, find themselves living together in the same Minnesota home.
September 23, 2005 - MPR’s Karl Gehrke reports on Seattle composer Stehen Newby’s “Rondo Oratorio,” It is a multi-movement work for large chorus, chamber orchestra, rhythm section, soloists and narrators that captures the spirit of the people who lived in St. Paul's long-gone Rondo neighborhood.
August 9, 2006 - The University of Minnesota Libraries have acquired the archive of Penumbra Theatre Company in St. Paul.
May 18, 2012 - Is life better for an African American artist today living in the Twin Cities than it was twenty or thirty years ago?