“Quilting Stories” nurtures two new strands in our Truth Telling program in partnership with Million Artist Movement (MAM). The project expands on oral histories shared by local Black elders and on storytelling workshops with Indigenous Ecuadorian elementary school students and families. We bring together personal stories with broader scholarly framings to make Black Twin Cities history more visible and to nuance polarizing migration narratives. Both initiatives remap Twin Cities histories from the perspectives of underrepresented BIPOC communities and build on our Truth Telling Dakota and Anishinaabe stories and K-12 curriculum rooted in Indigenous ways of knowing. These initiatives will also be developed into curriculum thanks to the generosity of the Liberal Arts Engagement Hub and the Minnesota Humanities Center.

In this new phase of the project, we will expand, amplify, and archive the interviews and stories. We recently hosted an event with playwright Lester Mayers, who crafted a play co-commissioned by MAM and Pillsbury House + Theater, drawing on the oral histories which focused on the 1969 Morrill Hall takeover. We will publicize any additional readings.

We have also commissioned a multimedia video by D.A. Bullock that will bring Black oral histories, artwork, music/songs, and images together to map historical events centering African American narratives that will premiere at The UMN Hub in spring 2025. These events include the destruction of Black neighborhoods via the construction of highways, the formation of Black arts-based community centers, and the student activist movement that led to the creation of an African American Studies department at UMN.

We will continue storytelling workshops with Ecuadorian migrant students and their families. We plan to weave a “quilt” of stories that offers a range of perspectives on the migration experience from children and adults, as well as experts in the political economic systems that fuel migration. 

(Public activities and/or events will be posted on our calendar. )