Public History Community Research Project for St. Paul Model Cities: St. Paul’s Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, 1925-1941

Model Cities is a 501 (c) (3) private non-profit organization created in 1967 to address health disparities and increase health access among residents of St. Paul’s Summit-University community. Model Cities’ vision is to be actively engaged in the development of urban communities through family support services, affordable housing development, homeownership counseling, commercial revitalization and economic development, principally for low and moderate-income residents. This project is looking for a graduate student researcher to work with Yuichiro Onishi, Associate Professor of AA&AS and Asian American Studies, to conduct archival research and local African American newspapers to establish the rich local history of African American railroad workers in St. Paul with a strong emphasis on details surrounding the local movement for the BSCP in St. Paul. This archive will be the first step in strengthening the public art feature of Model Cities’ redevelopment initiative. The final project will be a well-defined repository of early civil rights stories in Minnesota. The student researcher will mine local African American newspapers and manuscript collections at the Minnesota Historical Society, integrate new findings into the existing website, keep a detailed work log including personal reflections on research challenges and discoveries, and submit a self-evaluation narrative. The stories unearthed and archive will be built upon the existing website that Professor Onishi’s course delivered to Model Cities. The written report of the findings will be submitted in September 2015.Conducted on behalf of Model Cities. Supported by the Kris Nelson Community-Based Research Program, a program of the Center for Urban and Regional Affairs (CURA) at the University of Minnesota