East Side Freedom Library

History Revealed: Finding Moses Dickson with Karen Sieber
2024-06-20 19:00 - 20:30 (America/Chicago) | East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier St, Saint Paul, MN, 55106
June 20 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

History Revealed: Finding Moses Dickson
with Karen Sieber
Thursday, June 20, 2024, 7:00 pm
Watch for program details to come.

In partnership with the East Side Freedom Library & Roseville Library.
New documentation places Moses Dickson, one of the most well-known leaders of the Underground Railroad, living in Minnesota during the 1850s. Despite being one of the most influential Black figures of the nineteenth century, there has always been a gap in knowledge about the abolitionist’s whereabouts in the 1850s, a period in which he was known to have led countless individuals to freedom and organized a massive slave rebellion. In celebration of Juneteenth, historian Karen Sieber, Director of the Finding Moses Initiative, will give a talk on Dickson and his time in Minnesota and will provide insight into how Dickson’s story connects to both the local and the national Black freedom movements. She will also discuss a new initiative being launched around Dickson to examine the people, places, and moments of the nineteenth-century Black Midwest, a collaboration between scholars across state lines.

Karen Sieber is an award-winning scholar of riots and resistance, Black history, and labor history in the United States. She is best known as the creator of Visualizing the Red Summer, part of the AP African American Studies curriculum, and for her work in the Gayle King CBS documentary Tulsa 1921: An American Tragedy. Her work has appeared in Jacobin, Yahoo, MSN, Minnesota History, The Conversation, PBS, Smithsonian, American Historical Association, Labor, and in the book Where Are the Workers?: Labor’s Stories at Museums and Historic Sites. For more on her work visit www.ksieber.com.

History Revealed: Why We Left
2024-05-16 19:00 - 20:30
Why We Left: Untold Stories and Songs of America’s First Immigrants
Joanna Brooks

History Revealed Special Event
Thursday, May 16, 2024, 7:00 pm

Live presentation on Zoom. Register Here.
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. For questions, please email events@rchs.com
Free and open to all

In partnership with the East Side Freedom Library, Ramsey County Libraries and Norway House.
A grounded, tender, and mournful reckoning with the catastrophes that launched poor, white Anglos into their role as itinerant foot soldiers for modern imperialism—now in paperback (May 2024) with a new preface.
Why We Left reveals the dislocation, violence, and deforestation that propelled seventeenth- and eighteenth-century working-class English emigration, offering a powerful restorying of the journey to our present moment of precarity and rootlessness. Following American folk ballads back across the Atlantic, Joanna Brooks shares a scholarly and personal account of the intergenerational traumas that shape the history of white Anglos on Turtle Island.
Joanna Brooks’s ancestors were among the early waves of emigrants to leave England for North America. For generations, they lived hardscrabble lives, eking out subsistence in one place after another as they continually moved west in search of a better life. Why, Brooks wondered, did her people and countless other poor English subjects abandon their homeland for such unremitting hardship? The question leads her on a journey through an obscure dimension of American history.
She will share folk ballads such as “Edward,” which reveals the influence of deforestation on the dislocation of early Anglo-American peasant immigrants, and “The House Carpenter’s Wife,” which emphasizes the impact of economic instability and the colonial enterprise on women. From these ballads, tragic and heartrending, Brooks uncovers an archaeology of the worldviews of America’s earliest immigrants. This tenth-anniversary edition includes a new preface and develops a haunting historical perspective on the ancestors we thought we knew.
Joanna Brooks is an award-winning scholar and writer whose work tends to catastrophes of human belonging in American history. The author or editor of ten books on race, religion, colonialism, and social movements, her writing has been featured in global media, including the BBC, NPR, the Daily Show, CNN, MSNBC, and the Washington Post.
Why We Left is published by the University of Minnesota Press.
RCHS is committed to presenting the stories and histories of all in our community, and we are pleased to bring you tonight’s program. To that end, in 2022, we are working to bring you programs focused on our series, “Making Minnesota” which will explore the often untold stories, histories and experiences of the some of the world-wide immigrant, African American and Indigenous communities that make up our most diverse county.

May Book Geek Happy Hour
2024-04-07 16:00 - 18:30
Book Geek Happy Hour
Join the conversation here on Zoom!
Are you thirsting for some time to read and a chance to talk about what you’re reading? Gather with others to share what you’re reading! Better than a book club!
Read on your own starting at 4pm and join the Zoom conversation at 5:30pm to share what you are reading.

2024 History Day Workshops and Mentoring Sessions
2024-03-30 10:00 - 12:00
TURNING POINTS IN HISTORY
MAKE HISTORY DAY FUN! The East Side Freedom Library invites your students to benefit from our rich resources and our experienced mentors
The 2024 National History Day theme asks students to think about how change takes place and what its consequences have been. Are you interested in racial justice, labor activism, women’s rights, immigrant history, the impact of GLBTQ+ movements, environmental activism, and more? Come to to the East Side Freedom Library where they will find rich resources (books, art, music, and more) for their research and experienced mentors eager to help them shape their project. We have worked effectively with local students for the past nine years.
EVERY SATURDAY MORNING, 10 AM TO NOON
We encourage students to make an appointment by emailing peter@eastsidefreedomlibrary.org, and that they be prepared to follow our safety protocols, including wearing a mask if asked (as we are unsure what our precautions will be as we get deeper into the fall). After their initial mentoring consultation, they will be welcome to come at other times to use our resources, and our mentors will be available for one-on-one conversations, in person or remotely. If you would like to speak with us, feel free to call us at 651-207-4926.
We look forward to working with you and your students.
