Founded in 1924, the Phyllis Wheatley House was the first settlement house to serve the social service needs of African Americans in Minneapolis. In the 1930s, it became a center of African American life at a time when racial segregation divided the city.
Nellie Francis, ca. 1921. Francis was a founding member of the NAACP, a Women's Suffrage activist, and champion of Minnesota's anti-lynching bill. Photograph is from the St. Paul Appeal May 7, 1921.
In the years leading up to and immediately following World War I, African Americans in St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Duluth established separate chapters of the recently formed National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).