The Friends of the Saint Paul Public Library

Special Feature: SPPL Live with author Brent Olson

We are excited to feature the first episode of the Saint Paul Public Library’s new podcast, SPPL Live. The first episode features Brent Olson, author of The Inadvertent Café and other books on life in southwestern Minnesota, serves up wit and wisdom from the prairie, and talks about his life as a writer, farmer, and owner of a small-town café. The post Special Feature: SPPL Live with author Brent Olson [https://thefriends.org/2016/12/21/special-feature-sppl-live-with-author-brent-olson/] appeared first on The Friends of the Saint Paul Public Library [https://thefriends.org].

Trotskyists on Trial with Donna Haverty-Stacke (2016 Untold Stories)

Seventy-five years ago, 29 unionists and working-class socialists were prosecuted and labeled as dangerous revolutionaries by President Franklin Roosevelt’s Justice Department under the newly passed anti-radical Smith Act. Most were members and officers of the militant Minneapolis Teamsters Union that lead the historic 1934 truckers strikes. In Trotskyists on Trial: Free Speech and Political Persecution Since the Age of FDR, Donna Haverty-Stacke tells the story of how these strikers were imprisoned, and how the Smith Act was later invalidated by the Supreme Court. Haverty-Stacke is an Associate Professor of History at Hunter College, New York. The post Trotskyists on Trial with Donna Haverty-Stacke (2016 Untold Stories) [https://thefriends.org/2016/05/26/trotskyists-on-trial-with-donna-haverty-stacke-2016-untold-stories/] appeared first on The Friends of the Saint Paul Public Library [https://thefriends.org].

The Iron Range: Past, Present & Future (2016 Untold Stories)

RECORDED ON TUESDAY, MAY 17, 2016 The Iron Range has always held a special place in Minnesota’s labor history and lore. Now the future of the Range seems uncertain. The authors of two recent books give us a great opportunity to grapple with the connections between past, present, and future. Megan Marsnik is the author of the novel Under Ground, which centers around the roles of women in the miners’ strike of 1916. She teaches high school in Minneapolis. Marsnik is joined by Jeffrey Manuel, Associate Professor of Historical Studies at Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville, and author of Taconite Dreams: The Struggle to Sustain Mining on Minnesota’s Iron Range, 1915-2000. The authors will participate in a conversation and reading moderated by Peter Rachleff of the East Side Freedom Library.   The post The Iron Range: Past, Present & Future (2016 Untold Stories) [https://thefriends.org/2016/05/24/the-iron-range-past-present-future-2016-untold-stories/] appeared first on The Friends of the Saint Paul Public Library [https://thefriends.org].

Elmer Smith and the Wobblies with Tom Copeland (Untold Stories 2016)

In his book, The Centralia Tragedy of 1919: Elmer Smith and the Wobblies, Tom Copeland, Macalester graduate and lawyer, tells the tale of Elmer Smith, also a Macalester graduate and lawyer. At the end of the Armistice Day Parade of 1919 in Centralia, Washington, Legionnaires, veterans, and others hostile to the Industrial Workers of the World, marched on the IWW union hall intending, again, to run the radicals out of town. The Wobblies knew of the plan and, on the advice of Elmer Smith, defended themselves and their hall. The attack began, the Wobblies fought back, four Legionnaires died, and three others were seriously injured. Later the Legionnaires lynched one of Wobblies. Twelve Fellow Workers and Elmer Smith were indicted for murder for one of the Legionnaire deaths. The jury acquitted Smith, but most of the others went to prison. Elmer Smith spent the rest of his life fighting, both in and out of court, for workers’ rights and for the freedom of his codefendants. Despite being jailed, ostracized, and disbarred, Elmer Smith never gave up the struggle. This is a story not often told but it needs to be heard by all those interested in the struggle to secure the rights of workers.  The post Elmer Smith and the Wobblies with Tom Copeland (Untold Stories 2016) [https://thefriends.org/2016/05/11/elmer-smith-and-the-wobblies-with-tom-copeland-untold-stories-2016/] appeared first on The Friends of the Saint Paul Public Library [https://thefriends.org].

Catherine Madison (2016 Fireside Reading Series)

Catherine Madison closes the Fireside Series with a reading from The War Came Home with Him, which tells the stories of two survivors of one man’s war: a father who withstood a prison camp’s unspeakable inhumanity and a daughter who withstood the residual cruelty that came home with him. Doc Boysen died fifty years after his ordeal, his POW experience concealed to the end in a hidden cache of documents. In The War Came Home with Him, Madison pieces together the horrible tale these papers told—of a young captain in the U.S. Army Medical Corps captured in July 1950, beaten and forced to march without shoes or coat on icy trails through mountains to camps where North Korean and Chinese captors held him for more than three years. As the truth about her father’s past unfolds, Madison returns to a childhood troubled by his secret torment to consider, in a new light, the telling moments in their complex relationship. Journalist Madison was editor-in-chief of Utne Reader, senior editor at Adweek and Creativity Magazine, founding editor of American Advertising, and editor-in-chief of Format Magazine. She has written articles for many publications, including the Chicago Tribune, Star Tribune, and Minnesota Monthly. The post Catherine Madison (2016 Fireside Reading Series) [https://thefriends.org/2016/03/07/catherine-madison-2016-fireside-reading-series/] appeared first on The Friends of the Saint Paul Public Library [https://thefriends.org].