Bakery inside St. Peter State Hospital (St. Peter, Minnesota), ca. 1938.

The ironing room in St. Peter State Hospital (St. Peter, Minnesota), ca. 1938.

Willmar 8 strike headquarters, February 21, 1979. Photograph by the St. Paul Dispatch-Pioneer Press .

Crew of the Walker, Judd & Veazie sawmill at Marine Mills (Marine on St. Croix), ca. 1885. Photograph by John Runk.

Voyageur interpreters at Snake River Fur Post (called North West Fur Post at the time), 1983.

Irene Paull, Joe Paszak, and an unidentified person, 1937.

The construction crew at the new American Beet Sugar Company factory in East Grand Forks, 1926. From the Red River Valley Sugarbeet Growers Association records, 1919–1994, Northwest Minnesota Historical Center, Moorhead. Used with the permission of Northwest Minnesota Historical Center.

Minneapolis was a notorious anti-union town in the early 1900s. But a series of truckers’ strikes in 1934 turned the city into one of the most powerful union cities in the United States. MN90 producer Marisa Helms reports that the strikes were part of a wave of union actions across the country and spurred passage of the 1935 Wagner Act.

Nellie Stone Johnson was a labor organizer, activist, and the first Black elected official in Minneapolis. Hear what she has to say about her work in this video.