This week in state history

Historic Minnesota events with anniversaries this week.

June 19

1852 Congress passes a resolution changing the name of St. Peter’s River to a form of its original Dakota name, Mni Sota, or Minnesota. It is translated as “waters that reflect the sky,” “sky-colored waters,” or “muddy water.” The river had been known to the French as “St. Pierre” (and to Anglophone Europeans as “St. Peter”) for 150 years, with increasing use of “Minnesota,” since the days of the explorer Pierre Charles Le Sueur.

June 20

1887 William A. Hazel, an African American architect, files suit after being denied in May a room at the Clarendon and Astoria hotels in St. Paul. His specialty was designing stained glass installations for Tiffany & Company in New York. He was arrested after expressing his dismay at the Astoria, which avoided being named in the suit because it apparently truthfully had no rooms available. He sued the owners of the Clarendon for $2,000 under the Equal Accommodations Act of 1885 and won. The jury awarded him just $25, but Hazel was happy to win the case on principle. It would be nearly 20 years before Minnesota passed a civil rights law.

1970 Brothers Dave, 30, and John Kunst, 23, and their mule, Willie MakeIt, set out from their Waseca home to walk around the earth and raise money for UNICEF. John was killed when bandits shot him in the mountains of Afghanistan in October 1972. Dave was shot in the chest but survived by playing dead. After spending four months recovering from his injuries, Dave resumed his journey along with his brother Pete, from the spot where John was killed. Pete returned home during the Australia-leg of the trek but Dave continued, returning to Waseca on Oct. 5, 1974, as the first person to verifiably walk around the earth, 14,450 miles.

June 21

1921 Actress Jane Russell is born in Bemidji. Russell’s parents, natives of Grand Forks, lived in Edmonton, Canada until shortly before her birth. They had a cottage in the Bemidji area and wanted their daughter to be born an American citizen. They returned to Canada nine days after her birth, where they lived for the first one or two years of her life. The family then moved to Southern California. Russell died in 2011.

1973 The United States Hockey Hall of Fame opens in Eveleth, the capital of American hockey.

June 22

1861 The First Minnesota Volunteer Infantry Regiment departs Fort Snelling for Washington, eventually finding both glory and death in the Civil War.

June 23

1911 Duluth celebrates its first Svenskarnas Dag, the Swedish midsummer festival, with a parade, music, and speeches. Minneapolis began a long celebration tradition in 1934.

June 24

1948 African American leaders in the Twin Cities area reject an offer to establish an “all-Negro” unit of the Minnesota National Guard. The group tells state adjutant general Ellard A. Walsh that it cannot accept the offer as a matter of principle. Walsh had proposed forming a truck company so that African Americans could take advantage of a provision in military draft law that exempted guardsmen. Four men had tried to sign up for the Guard in an effort to avoid being drafted. VFW and American Legion representatives opposed the segregation of the Guard. The issue proved moot when President Truman signed a new draft law that no longer exempted Guard members. During World War I, with National Guard members off fighting in Europe, the state established a Home Guard, which included a battalion of black men. The 16th Battalion would serve with white guardsmen in the fire zone around Cloquet in 1918. In 1949, Guard troops were no longer segregated in Minnesota by law.

June 25

1977 The first Grandma’s Marathon is run from Two Harbors to Duluth. Named for its first major sponsor, the Duluth-based Grandma’s restaurant, the race draws more than 8,500 contestants annually. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the race scheduled for this weekend was cancelled, a first for the event.

This column is derived from MNopedia.org and developed by the Minnesota Historical Society.