SoulForce: Black, Brown, and Red Power in the Twin Cities

We'd love to hear your thoughts about Minnesota Unraveled! Please fill out our survey ⁠here⁠. America in the 1960s was a landmark decade for civil rights. But the passage of the Civil Rights Act (1964) and the Voting Rights Act (1965) neither completely, nor immediately, addressed the issues facing diverse communities throughout the country. The Black Power Movement—as well as empowerment movements in the Mexican American and Native American communities—sought to address societal and structural  inequalities with more immediacy. Minneapolis’s North Side neighborhood is a community where all three groups' struggles against the structural forces that sought to disenfranchise them intersected. But what exactly connected these groups and their movements? How did they come to join together for the betterment of their collective community? In this episode, historian and host Dr. Chantel Rodriguez explores the histories of these social movements for freedom and equality, as well as the forces that sought to divide and destroy these communities. To gain more insight, Chantel spoke with James Curry, exhibit curator at the University of Minnesota’s Urban Research and Outreach-Engagement Center. Chantel also spoke with Nick Estes, member of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe and assistant professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota; and Jimmy Patiño, teacher, historian, and researcher in the Department of Chicano and Latino Studies at the University of Minnesota.