Hallie Q. Brown Community Center, St. Paul

Hallie Q. Brown Community Center (HQB) was founded in 1929 to support the growing Black community of St. Paul. Established to promote social harmony and help people find adequate housing, HQB also provided a place of refuge and solace. It became the second-largest neighborhood center in St. Paul, complementing the Phyllis Wheatley Settlement House in Minneapolis.

HQB’s origins lie in the Settlement Housing Movement, ca. 1880s–1920s. As European immigrants joined Black migrants from the South in northern US cities, social reformers founded settlement houses: organizations that provided services like education, healthcare, and childcare to the newcomers. While European immigrants benefited, Black communities did not. The overall belief among many of the white settlement leaders was that “Blacks could better progress on their own, through separate self-help or racially oriented organizations, but not through the settlement house movement.” As a result, many Black women reformers participated in a separate settlement-housing movement.

As more Black Americans migrated from the South to St. Paul, community leaders saw a need for social centers for Blacks, who were at that time barred from many local facilities. The local Odd Fellows and Masons—two St. Paul organizations—then came together to purchase six lots on Aurora Avenue between Kent and Mackubin Streets. This led to the formation of the Union Hall Association in 1914.

With funding from the YWCA and the St. Paul Urban League from 1923 through 1929, the Union Hall Association hosted programs and provided meeting spaces. St. Paul Urban League Executive Secretary Elmer A. Carter surveyed additional sites, and in or around January 1929, members of an advisory committee met to discuss ideas for a new community center.

In April of 1929, the emerging organization hired I. Myrtle Carden as its executive director and organized discussions about what its name should be. The board and community members decided to select the name through an essay contest that invited students to profile a prominent leader. Herbert Howell, a student from Hamline University, won the contest with an essay about the suffragist, educator, and activist Hallie Q. Brown. Thus, Hallie Q. Brown Community Center was born.

During Carden’s tenure as director, HQB organized a daycare, young-adult and seniors programs, recreation opportunities, and meetings. It became a hub for local groups like the Golden Agers, the St. Paul Women’s Council, and the Men’s Council. Unique for its time, the center exposed participants to activities that many African Americans could not access, such as “camping, archery, athletics[,] debates, home economics, [and] nursery school.” Known as “Hallie,” the center offered an escape from the daily stresses of living in racially segregated America, including racist housing covenants.

During the early 1960s, the Minnesota Highways Department collaborated with the Federal Highways Administration to build Interstate 94. The construction displaced thousands of residents in St. Paul’s Rondo neighborhood—the home of HQB and “the heart of Saint Paul’s black community.” Newly hired director Alice S. Onqué and other staff at HQB pondered difficult questions: “Where to relocate?” “How to best serve the community?”

After conducting a community survey, HQB chose to relocate to the south side of I-94. Henry R. Thomas, the center’s third executive director, helped raise funds for the construction of a new building, as did HQB’s board of directors, and in 1972 the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Recreation Center was built at 270 North Kent Street.

During the 1970s, HQB offered a myriad of arts programming that both served the community and reflected the diversity of needs within it. The center during this time also offered child development programs, juvenile delinquency prevention, activities for senior citizens, cultural arts opportunities, and job development. Program developers “recognized the fact that visual art, music, literature, and theater can strengthen collective identity, combat racial stereotypes, and affirm a sense of self-worth.” In 1976, HQB was awarded a $150,000 grant to support its cultural arts programming. This funding led to the hiring of Lou Bellamy, who founded Penumbra Theatre Company inside the MLK Community Center in the same year.

In the 2020s, HQB functions as a multi-service center that prides itself on serving the community; promoting African American heritage; inspiring personal growth, self-sufficiency, and self-determination; and developing community leadership. It has continually expanded its outreach efforts to meet the needs of all groups seeking a supportive service agency, including the Twin Cities’ growing Hmong, Somali, and Latino populations.