Star Tribune
Meet the woman who preserves and catalogs St. Paul’s Rondo memories
Eye On St. Paul recently read a terrific story by Star Tribune columnist Laura Yuen about Kayla Jackson, an archivist at the Hallie Q. Brown Community Center in St. Paul. Having grown up in what was once the Rondo neighborhood — and being a self-described history nerd — I wanted to piggyback on Laura’s story and ask a few more questions.
This interview was edited for length.
Q: How long have you been an archivist?
A: I have been an archivist here at Hallie Q. Brown for two years and four months. But I’ve been working in the world of archives from soon after I graduated from undergrad back in 2018.
Q: Where did you graduate?
A: The Rochester Institute of Technology [in Rochester, N.Y.], with a degree in museum studies and a focus on archives.
Q: What was it about archives that interested you?
A: The sense of community history. I moved around a lot as a child. And when I moved to New York, I realized unfortunately for me a lot of my elder family members passed away. And so, I didn’t have easy access to pictures of my Nana or my Papa, that kind of link that connects you to the rest of the world. I desperately, desperately wanted that and I looked at the world of archives and I saw a field that was predominantly white. And I felt that it was important to have Black archivists there and for me to be there so that there were fewer people who would have the feeling that I had in not being able to look back.
Q: Why is it important for a community to have a sense of its history?
A: I would say being an archivist is like being a road builder. What I tell people is just because you can drive doesn’t mean you know how to build a road. There’s a lot of quiet power in the person who gets to decide where your road goes, what they connect to, what they don’t connect to. Even though I’m not from here, I do live a few blocks from where I work. I get to work with people from the Rondo community and I get to see them grocery shopping or at the craft store. There’s a sense of trust there, inherited trust. The community has easy access to me, and I get to create those roads with them so that they know it can be more accessible to them.
Q: What have you learned about Rondo, about the character of the Rondo neighborhood, in doing this work?
A: One word: classy. I love the pictures that families are willing to share with me. These are Black people who own land, own businesses. They looked so good, and they just had this sense of community, that “I have a shoulder to lean on, if I need someone to help me get from here to there or get this project on my house done.” I think that’s really beautiful.
Q: What kinds of items do you collect?
A: It depends, from archive to archive. This archive has a lot of paper documents, or what we call graphic materials. We have diaries. We have photographs. We have 35-millimeter slide transparencies. We have negatives. And we have 16-millimeter films.
Q: Going back how far?
A: Well, our photographs go back to 1860. Our 16-millimeter film goes back to 1955.
Q: Has the Hallie Q. Brown Center always had an archive?
A: This archive began in 2016-17 as a completely volunteer endeavor. One of our previous development directors reached out to Dr. Catherine Squires at the University of Minnesota. Hallie Q. Brown, which has been around since 1929, had a photography department, so they had students and community members taking pictures all the time. We had photos tucked away in the basement. And [officials said] “We can make something out of this.”
And with the help of Dr. Squires, we got the funds to hire me in 2021. The unfortunate fact of archives is that so much of it is grant-funded. There’s a lot of talk about how important history is, but sometimes people don’t want to fund it.
Q: What has your work contributed to this community?
A: It gives them a sense of … retrospective. When I talk to people, they get a chance to see their past.
Let me share a couple anecdotes: There is a man from the Retired Men’s Club. It’s a senior group that meets here. Every month or so, I go show them pictures from the archive. At one point, I showed [the man] a picture of his sister. Unfortunately, she has Alzheimer’s. So, a picture of her came up and he asked me, “Is there any way I could get that picture?” Of course, I spent the whole afternoon looking for every single picture I had of this woman, and I dug them out and put them in a folder and I gave it to him. And … the man starts crying. He looks at me and says, “Thank you.”
That’s why I do what I do, right? Because I can put things online for researchers and that’s really great. But being able to do that, helping members of the community have that connection, is amazing.
Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan and her daughter were among the throngs Friday as President Joe Biden delivered the apology that many Indigenous Americans thought would never come.
“I think he really said the things that people have been waiting to hear for generations, acknowledged just the horror and trauma of literally having our children stolen from our communities,” said Flanagan, a member of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe. “It’s a powerful first step towards healing.”
Hundreds of boarding schools operated in the 19th and 20th centuries, separating Indigenous children from their families and forcing them to assimilate to European ways. Many children were abused, and at least 973 died, according to a report from the U.S. Department of the Interior.
Other Minnesotans reacted similarly to Flanagan, saying they welcomed the apology but that additional action is needed to help Indigenous people move forward.
Anton Treuer, a professor of Ojibwe at Bemidji State University, wrote in a newsletter that the apology was “a welcome first step on the journey to healing.”
“There is no way to truly right historical injustices for the children buried at Carlisle, Haskell, and other schools, but these words set a new tone for the country and will help heal the anguish so many Natives have carried for so long,” Treuer wrote. “It gives me hope that we can come together to reconcile and heal our troubled nation.”
Sen. Mary Kunesh, DFL-New Brighton, the first Indigenous woman to serve in the state Senate, called Biden’s apology encouraging.
“This recognition of past wrongdoings is an important step towards healing relationships between the United States and the sovereign nations affected by these past systems,” Kunesh said in a statement. “This dark period of American history must be remembered and taught.”
“I have done everything in my power to remedy this situation, and it continues to get more and more violent by the day,” Moturi wrote. “There have been numerous times when I’ve seen Sawchak outside and contacted law enforcement, and there was no response. I am not confident in the pursuit of Sawchak given that Sawchak attacked me, MPD officers had John detained, and despite an HRO and multiple warrants — they still let him go.”
On Friday, five City Council members sent a letter to Mayor Jacob Frey and Police Chief Brian O’Hara expressing their “utter horror at MPD’s failure to protect a Minneapolis resident from a clear, persistent and amply reported threat posed by his neighbor.”
Council Members Andrea Jenkins, Elliott Payne, Aisha Chughtai, Jason Chavez and Robin Wonsley went on to allege that police had failed to submit reports to the County Attorney’s Office despite threats being made with weapons, and at times while Sawchak screamed racial slurs. Sawchak is white and Moturi is Black.
The council members also contend in their letter that the MPD told the County Attorney’s Office that police did not intend to execute the warrant for “reasons of officer safety.”
At a Friday afternoon news conference at MPD’s Fifth Precinct, O’Hara said police had been working to arrest Sawchak since at least April, but “no Minneapolis police officers have had in-person contact with that suspect since the victim in this case has been calling us.” The chief pointed out that Sawchak is mentally ill, has guns and refuses to cooperate “in the dozens of times that police officers have responded to the residence.”
O’Hara put aside the option to carry out “a high-risk warrant based on these factors [and] the likelihood of an armed, violent confrontation where we may have to use deadly force with the suspect.” The preference, he said, was to arrest Sawchak outside his home, but “in this case, this suspect is a recluse and does not come out of the house.”
ROCHESTER – The Federal Transit Administration has green-lighted an $85 million grant supporting the development of the city’s planned Link Bus Rapid Transit system.
The FTA formally announced the grant on Friday during a ceremonial check presentation outside of the Mayo Civic Center, one of the seven stops planned for the bus line. The federal grant will cover about 60% of the project’s estimated $143.4 million price tag, with the remaining funds coming from Destination Medical Center, the largest public-private development project in state history.
Set to go live in 2026, the 2.8-mile Link system will connect downtown Rochester, including Mayo Clinic’s campuses, with a proposed “transit village” that will include parking, hundreds of housing units and a public plaza. The bus line will be the first of its kind outside the Twin Cities — with service running every five minutes during peak hours.
“That means you may not even need to look at a schedule,” said Veronica Vanterpool, deputy administrator for the FTA. “You can just show up at your transit stop and expect the next bus to come in a short time. That is a game changer and a life-transformational experience in transit for those people who are using it and relying on it.”
The planned Second Street corridor is already one of the busiest roads in Rochester, carrying more than 21,800 vehicles a day, and city planners have talked for years about ways to reduce traffic congestion in the city’s downtown. Local officials estimate that the transit line, which will rely on a fleet of all-electric buses, will handle 11,000 riders on its first day of operation and save eight city blocks of parking.
Speaking to a crowd of about 100 people gathered on Friday, Sen. Amy Klobuchar said the project shows Rochester is thinking strategically about how it handles growth.
“If you just plan the business expansion, and you don’t have the workforce, you don’t have the child care, the housing or the transit, it’s not going to work very well as a lot of communities across the nation have found,” Klobuchar said.
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