Dancers perform outside of CLUES (Comunidades Latinas Unidas en Servicio, 797 East Seventh Street, St. Paul) on September 18, 2021, during Fiesta Latina 2021. Photograph by Kevin Gardea. Used with the permission of CLUES.

The art gallery inside the St. Paul headquarters of CLUES (Comunidades Latinas Unidas en Servicio, 797 East Seventh Street) on September 16, 2019. Used with the permission of CLUES.

Dancers perform at Gala Latina 2017, an event organized by CLUES (Comunidades Latinas Unidas en Servicio) and held in St. Paul on October 9. Photograph by Flickr user CLUES Photos, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Promotional artwork created by Daniel Alexander Jones for Ntozake Shange's play a photograph: lovers in motion, ca. 1994. From folder 7 of box 5 of Penumbra Theatre Company records (GV002), Archie Givens, Sr. Collection of African American Literature, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.

Actors in August Wilson's play Seven Guitars, ca. 2002. From folder 14 of box 6 of Penumbra Theatre Company records (GV002), Archie Givens, Sr. Collection of African American Literature, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.

The program for S. H. Murakoshi's Slippery When Wet, 2005. From folder 23 of box 6 of the Penumbra Theatre Company records (GV002), Archie Givens, Sr. Collection of African American Literature, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.

In this video produced by the Minnesota Historical Society, Lou Bellamy and his daughter Sarah sketch out the history of Penumbra Theatre.

August Wilson (1945–2005) is among America’s most critically acclaimed playwrights. He penned several groundbreaking plays while living in St. Paul in the 1980s, including Pulitzer Prize winners Fences and The Piano Lesson. They are both part of Wilson’s magnum opus: a series of ten historical plays called the Pittsburgh Cycle. In the series, each decade of the twentieth century is represented through a play, exploring the cultural, spiritual, and daily lives of African Americans. MN90 producer Marisa Helms reports.

Seth Eastman was a soldier and an artist stationed at Fort Snelling in the 1830s and 1840s. As MN90 producer Marisa Helms reports, Eastman’s greatest contribution to history was his accurate and un-romanticized depictions of Dakota and Ojibwe people in the area of the fort. Because Eastman took an anthropological view in his art, today’s historians can learn about Native practices and cultural artifacts from the era.