This is a chat transcript.
Steve Keillor joined us for an online Q&A to answer your questions about Minnesota's history! His book, Shaping Minnesota's Identity: 150 Years of State History is clearly a Minnesota Sesquicentennial read. What better way to dig into the state's history than to directly ask a history professor and author?
This is a chat transcript.
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Julia Schrenkler
Interactive Producer
Minnesota Public Radio
American Public Media
Objects in Mirror
More from MPR with Steve Keillor: A history of presidential hopefuls in Minnesota (History professors Hy Berman and Steve Keillor join Midday to examine the list of Minnesotans who made a run for the presidency. Part of MPR's Minnesota Sesquicentennial series.)
From his bio courtesy Pogo Press:
A lifelong resident of the state, Steven J. Keillor earned his PhD in History at the University of Minnesota. He has written biographies of two Minnesota governors-one of a Republican (Knute Nelson) and one of a Farmer-Laborite and DFLer (Hjalmar Petersen). The Minnesota Historical Society published his history of the state's rural cooperatives, as well as a memoir of a First-Minnesota soldier in the Civil War that he edited. He has also written about the Grand Excursion of 1854 and the history of the city of Rochester. He teaches Minnesota history at Bethel University in St. Paul. Keillor has three children and two grandchildren, and he resides with his wife Margaret in Askov, Minnesota. Visit Steven Keillor's Web site at www.stevekeillor.com.
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Comments: 23
what aspects of Minnesota's landscape have most shaped its people?
Steve Keillor replied:
The diversity of Minnesota's landscapes has impacted the state's history because it has made it impossible for the state to become one farming region, for example. Northern Minnesota has been forced to turn to lumbering and mining in order to earn a livelihood, and that makes for regional conflict in the state.
Steve Keillor
Can you tell us about the times of Minneapolis Mayor Thomas Van Lear, first and only Socialist Mayor in Minnesota? It seems like an interesting time in our history.
Steve Keillor replied:
Thomas Van Lear was elected Mayor of Minneapolis in 1916, as part of a wave of so-called "sewer Socialism" -- that is, the attempt by Socialists to win elections in cities by promising better municipal services. Milwaukee also experienced Socialist city government. Van Lear's election alarmed Minnesota conservatives and helped lead to the repressive measures of the Minnesota Commission of Public Safety in World War I.
Steve Keillor
What kinds of research materials did you use when writing your book? Interviews? Library? History center?
Steve Keillor replied:
I used letters, memoirs, and newspaper sources at the MHS History Center in St. Paul. Much of the book was based on other historians' books as well as research notes from my prior books on Minnesota history.
Steve Keillor
Also, can you tell us more about the Minnesota Commission of Public Safety? That Van Lear-related tid-bit makes me want to know more.
Steve Keillor replied:
I have a fresh interpretation of the Minnesota Commission of Public Safety -- the nearly-dictatorial state agency that supervised Minnesota's contribution to the national war effort in World War I. My book argues that it was basically the Progressives' agency, albeit one run amok by the end of the war. Its local units, especially, harassed Non-Partisan League members, socialists, pacifists, and German-Americans in a sometimes brutal manner.
Carl Chrislock has written a book about the agency called "Watchdog of Loyalty."
Steve Keillor
How do you think of history? Does it change or do people change the way they thinkg about it? What do you need for proof to "change history?"
Steve Keillor replied:
"History" has two basic meanings: (1) the actual events of the past and (2) the written accounts of past events. Clearly, meaning (1) does not change, although new evidence can give us a new understanding of what actually occurred or can tell us that something we used to believe occurred actually did not occur. In meaning (2), all written accounts necessarily reflect the writers' perspectives, and so these are bound to change over time.
That change is more in matters of interpretation, of what to include and what to omit from the written account, and of value judgments -- than it is a change in the narrow description of the events themselves. I hope that helps a bit.
Steve Keillor