In popular culture, Minnesota bring up images of hotdish, "Minnesota Nice," and white immigrant communities. While these are certainly part of the story, Minnesota has a rich history of racial diversity, beginning with the indigenous Chippewa, Ojibwe and Dakota communities and including more recent arrivals of Hmong, Somali and Mexican immigrants. Minnesota has also been home to a small but vibrant African American population. "Minnesota Nice" has not made us exempt from racism, and has a history of racism that stretches back for centuries. We compiled this guide to help you further explore the people who make up Minnesota and the issues they face. Be sure to search the catalog to find additional resources and please reach out to a librarian if you have any research questions related to this topic.
What Does Justice Look Like? The Struggle for Liberation in Dakota homeland by 
The Dakota War Of 1862 by 
Original Local by 
The Sioux Chef's Indigenous Kitchen by 
The Assassination of Hole in the Day by 
Daybreak Woman by 
North Country by 
Barefoot Heart: Stories of a Migrant Child by 
Barrios Norteños: St. Paul and Midwestern Mexican Communities in the Twentieth Century by 
Mexicans in Minnesota by 
Latino Voices : Stories of Latin American Immigrants and Their Impact in a Community by The Gustavus Library is committed to fostering an inclusive and welcoming environment for all our patrons. We acknowledge that harmful and outdated language or terminology exists in catalog records for our materials, though, and we would welcome your help in identifying such instances.
If you encounter any language that you consider to be harmful or offensive to yourself or others, please use this form to report it and suggest alternative language. We will contact the Library of Congress to request that changes be made whenever we come across items under their purview and will supplement our own descriptions with more respectful terms as necessary. We also direct you to our entire Harmful Language Statement for more information.
Whiteness in Plain View: A History of Racial Exclusion in Minnesota by 
The New Minnesotans: Stories of Immigrants and Refugees by 
A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota by 
Sparked: George Floyd, Racism, and the Progressive Illusion by 
The Ku Klux Klan in Minnesota by 
We Are Meant to Rise by While these resources cover the entire geographic area of the United States, you can still find information related to Minnesota within these resources.
These FBI files provide detailed information on the evolution of AIM as an organization of social protest and the development of Native American radicalism. Covers 1968-1979.
A curated selection of primary sources on African American history and movements against racial injustice. Sources include legislation, legal cases, and documents about leaders and organizations. The collection is organized into six areas: Slavery and the Abolitionist Movement (1790-1860); The Civil War and the Reconstruction Era (1861-1877); Jim Crow Era from 1878 to the Great Depression (1878-1932); The New Deal and World War II (1933-1945); The Civil Rights and Black Power Movements (1946-1975); The Contemporary Era (1976-2000)
This primary source collection covers African American history and experience as recorded by the news media. Sources include a variety of American and global news sources, including current and historical Black publications. NOTE: The library subscribes to Series 3 (1976-current).
This collection of FBI files provides source materials for major social movements and key figures in early twentieth century black history and it provides a window into the development of America’s first systematic domestic surveillance programs.
Claiming Place by 
The Bride Price by 
Hmong in Minnesota by 
The Hmong Migration by 
His Name Is George Floyd: One Man's Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice by 
Making Minnesota Liberal: Civil Rights and the Transformation of the Democratic Party by 
A Peculiar Imbalance: The Fall and Rise of Racial Equality in Early Minnesota by 
Degrees of Freedom: The Origins of Civil Rights in Minnesota, 1865-1912 by 
Swinging for the Fences: Black Baseball in Minnesota by 
The Lynchings in Duluth by 
Diesel Heart: An Autobiography by 
Blues Vision by This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
