Our Blog
Reflections on Inside & Out
March 27, 2024 - By Art from the Inside
Inside & Out: The Humanities and Mass Incarceration was a convening hosted by Illinois Humanities in March 2024 to bring together humanities councils, community members, and organizers to share, connect, and consider the role of the humanities in mass incarceration.
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Harnessing the Digital Humanities to Engage With Black History
February 13, 2023 - By Karen Sieber
As a historian of Black history, I have spent much of my career drawing attention to people, places, and events that get left out of the textbooks.
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A Vision Trust of Black Men
February 1, 2023 - By Alex Tittle
In October of 2022, MHC partnered with Robin Hickman-Winfield of SoulTouch Productions and The Ordway Theater to form A Vision Trust of Black Men. Robin’s vision is a group of Black men committed to uplifting the Black community and embracing the legacies of Black Veterans. In February 2023, The Ordway…
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Impossible to Remain Silent
June 3, 2021 - By Kevin Lindsey
Our nation, for far too long, has remained silent about open and notorious acts of racial violence experienced by African Americans. As a teenager reading, The Black Book edited by Middleton A. Harris and Toni Morrison, I became aware of the countless atrocities experienced by African Americans that were ignored…
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Rage and the Minnesota Poet Laureate
April 30, 2021 - By Athena Kildegaard
A few days ago a jury found Derek Chauvin guilty of killing George Floyd—a murder that feels simultaneously as if it happened yesterday and as if it happened years ago.
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The Work Ahead
April 23, 2021 - By Kevin Lindsey
The work of creating a just society for all does not happen by accident. The work of a just society requires all of us to play a part in advancing the cause of justice.
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Black History Month
February 26, 2021 - By Mayor Melvin Carter
St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter shares a special video message with his thoughts on thoughts on Black History Month.
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When I mention the name Carter G. Woodson
February 24, 2021 - By Brian D. Lozenski
In celebration of Black History Month, the Minnesota Humanities Center has asked some of our friends to write essays to share with you their thoughts on black history and culture, as well as on broad issues of racial and social justice. Like a good conversation with friends after a good…
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I Was Not a Slave . . .
February 22, 2021 - By Amelious N. Whyte, Jr., Ph.D.
“Slavery is not African and Black history, it’s an interruption of African and Black history. Let’s be clear, slavery and colonialism is European history!”
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Mancala Gameworlds and the Afrofuturist Orbit
February 19, 2021 - By John S. Wright, Professor Emeritus University of Minnesota
I managed to meet prize-winning Macalester College novelist/professor Marlon James last year following the publication of his epic fantasy saga "Black Leopard, Red Wolf." It's the first of a planned trilogy in the Afrofuturist orbit: the multidisciplinary movement to imagine or reimagine human technological, social, and political futures and pasts through black speculative cultural lenses.
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