This week in state history

Historic Minnesota events with anniversaries this coming week.

Nov. 29

2000 Pioneering journalist Marvel Jackson Cooke dies in New York. Born in Mankato in 1903, Cooke moved to Harlem in 1926 and worked for the NAACP’s Crisis magazine, the Amsterdam News, and the People’s Voice. In 1950 she joined the staff of the New York Daily Compass and was the first African American woman to work full-time for a major white-owned American newspaper.

Nov. 30

1912 Gordon Parks is born in Fort Scott, Kansas. He would move to St. Paul as a teenager and eventually develop a career as a photographer, writer, filmmaker, composer, and musician. He would work for the Farm Services Administration, become a war photographer in 1943, and be the first African American on Life magazine’s staff. His movies include The Learning Tree, based on his autobiography.

1960 Novelist Ernest Hemingway is admitted to St. Mary’s Hospital in Rochester, where he undergoes shock treatment for depression. He stayed for nearly two months. He returned in the spring. A few days after he is discharged in late June, he commits suicide in Idaho.

Dec. 1

1860 The state’s first book-quality paper, manufactured at the Cutter and Secombe paper mill in St. Anthony, is used in the Minnesota Farmer and Gardener, an agricultural magazine.

Dec. 2

1857 The first state legislature convenes, five months before Minnesota is admitted to the Union. Despite its questionable legality, the session passes more than 90 laws and elects Henry M. Rice and James M. Shields as U.S. senators. The pair travel to Washington and wait for statehood to become official so that their terms can begin.

1858 The term “Land of Lakes” is first applied to Minnesota in the St. Anthony Falls newspaper the Falls Evening News.

Dec. 3

1842 Charles A. Pillsbury is born in New Hampshire. After moving to Minneapolis in 1869, he would learn the flour-milling business and help introduce roller mills that could crush Minnesota’s spring wheat into high-grade bread flour. Upon his death in 1899, the Pillsbury-Washburn Flour Mills Company would be the largest in the world.

Dec. 5

1950 A snowstorm lasting until December 8 drops 35 inches on the Duluth area and 25 on the Twin Cities area.

This column is derived from MNopedia, an online project at mnopedia.org. and developed by the Minnesota Historical Society and its partners.