Seventy-five years ago, 29 unionists and working-class socialists were prosecuted and labeled as dangerous revolutionaries by President Franklin Roosevelt’s Justice Department under the newly passed anti-radical Smith Act. Most were members and officers of the militant Minneapolis Teamsters Union that lead the historic 1934 truckers strikes. In Trotskyists on Trial: Free Speech and Political Persecution…
Read MoreRecorded on Tuesday, May 17, 2016 The Iron Range has always held a special place in Minnesota’s labor history and lore. Now the future of the Range seems uncertain. The authors of two recent books give us a great opportunity to grapple with the connections between past, present, and future. Megan Marsnik is the author of…
Read MoreIn his book, The Centralia Tragedy of 1919: Elmer Smith and the Wobblies, Tom Copeland, Macalester graduate and lawyer, tells the tale of Elmer Smith, also a Macalester graduate and lawyer. At the end of the Armistice Day Parade of 1919 in Centralia, Washington, Legionnaires, veterans, and others hostile to the Industrial Workers of the World,…
Read MoreThe Friends and the Minnesota Center for Book Arts are pleased to announce Wendy Fernstrum as the winner of the 2016 Minnesota Book Artist Award for her new piece, One Is the Holiest Number (#2), which was completed in 2015. Her award-winning piece is a meditation on the paradox of one: how each of us as an individual is distinctly…
Read MoreThe Friends of the Saint Paul Public Library, as the home of the Minnesota Center for the Book, is pleased to announce the state-level winners of the 2016 annual national Letters About Literature Essay Contest, co-sponsored by the Minnesota Council of Teachers of English and Common Good Books, and supported by Education Minnesota’s Foundation for…
Read MoreIn addition to Book Award winners in eight categories, The Friends presented the Minnesota Book Artist, Hognander Minnesota History, and Kay Sexton Awards to previously announced honorees—respectively, Wendy Fernstrum, William D. Green, and Jim Sitter.
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