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.
Star Tribune
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, on the campaign trial, gives a pep talk to the Mankato West High School Scarlets, a team he once coached.
MANKATO – The football players in their pads jogged out to face their rivals Friday night as Gov. Tim Walz, back home briefly as he campaigns across the country as vice presidential nominee, cheered them on.
“Don’t forget to have fun, enjoy,” Walz told players on the football team at Mankato West High School, where he worked as a geography teacher and assistant football coach before launching a political career that carried him to the Democratic Party’s national ticket.
Since choosing Walz as her running mate, Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris has touted his background as a football coach, hunter and gun owner, as Democrats reach out to Midwestern voters and look for inroads with men.
Walz’s stop in Mankato is one of a series of media stops in the battleground states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, where the governor is talking high school football and hunting.
“This is the best of America,” Walz told reporters after greeting the players of Mankato West ahead of their rivalry game with Mankato East. He said he would visit his old classroom, before heading to watch the game.
A quarter center ago, Walz was the assistant defensive football coach for the 1999 Mankato West football team that won the state championship. That year’s crosstown rivalry game was a spark for Mankato West as it headed toward its state championship, said John Considine, a Mankato West alum and right tackle on that 1999 Class 4A championship team.
“It’s good to have him back,” Considine said Friday.
Local Republicans called Walz’s appearance a stunt. “They’re getting desperate to get the word out,” said Yvonne Simon, chair of the Blue Earth County GOP, adding she’s doesn’t think the governor’s “coach” branding is catching on.
“There’s a fair amount of stuff we’ve digested over the years,” Kerfoot told the Star Tribune at the time of the sale. “It’ll take a while to pick all of it out of me.”
In recent years, he and Sue have spent summers in Minnesota and then traveled back to Missouri to be close to family for the rest of the year.
Visitors love to drop in and talk about Justine Kerfoot or Bruce Kerfoot or the years they spent working at the lodge, Fredrikson said. He’s found that Bruce’s energy seemingly matched that of his mother, who died in 2001 when she was 94.
“He was one of those people that was able to get stuff done more easily or better than other people,” Fredrikson said. “Maybe because of who he was, or maybe because the stars align for this kind of person.”
In a social media post, Kerfoot’s family said they had peace knowing he and his mother “were paddling together to their shore lunch spot.”
Mark Hennessy knew Kerfoot for 40 years, but has had a closer view for the past three years. He said without Kerfoot, the Chik-Wauk Museum and Nature Center, located near the end of the Gunflint Trail, wouldn’t exist. Whenever there was a work project, the executive director said, Kerfoot would show up.
A teenage motorcyclist was killed in a collision with an SUV at a Burnsville intersection, officials said Friday.
The crash occurred shortly after 7:30 p.m. Thursday at Burnsville Parkway and Interstate 35W, police said.
The motorcyclist was identified by the Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s Office as Peter Vsevolod Genis, 17, of Burnsville.
An SUV driver was turning left from westbound Burnsville Parkway to northbound 35W when Genis went through a red light while heading east and struck the SUV.
The SUV driver and a woman with him, both from Burnsville, were not hurt.
The other vehicle was a Mercedes SUV. The driver was a 30-year-old male from Burnsville, with a 29-year-old female passenger from Burnsville. Neither of them was injured.
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