Read the Truth! Minnesota’s Past in Print

By John Van Hecke, Executive Director & Fellow, February 13, 2012 at 2:00 pm

Minnesota has an important protest tradition. Mostly, it’s been a left-of-center fight but Minnesota has had right-wing protest movements, too. We are, as a result, a better, stronger and more prosperous state because of our popular willingness to challenge the status quo, seeking equality and justice.

Given this rich experience, why don’t my kids know more about the Farmers Holiday Association?

Learning and telling those stories—sharing Minnesota’s powerful protest narrative—is less clear cut than we’d like it to be. At a basic level, Minnesota has never had a single book attempting to tell the protest tradition story. Thanks to historian Rhoda Gilman, that’s changed.

Gilman’s new book, “Stand Up: The Story of Minnesota’s Protest Tradition,” has just been published by the venerable Minnesota Historical Society Press. Finally, Minnesota has a single, accessible history telling the protest tradition story over our state’s entire timeline.

Gilman is a retired archivist with the Minnesota Historical Society. She’s professionally labored in this material’s vineyard. She’s also a political activist. Her book is informed by the latter perspective but it’s not an ideological rant. It’s a deeply thoughtful attempt to craft a single historical narrative in a way that’s accessible to all readers. Gilman the historian, much more than Gilman the activist, championed this project.

“Stand Up!” is a quick read. That’s a good thing. If you’re deeply engaged by agrarian protest movements—and who among us shouldn’t be?—Gilman leads you to the academic sources. But her goal is to introduce Minnesotans to an important part of our collective past. Read “Stand Up!” and then reconsider both the Occupy and the Tea Party movements. You’ll understand both phenomenons better.

This book is overdue. Minnesota’s protest tradition is the regular subject of academic dissertations, journal articles, history conference paper topics and deeply contemplated monographs. We’ve been missing a single, engaging and absorbing introduction. Gilman’s book fills that need and then some.

Pick it up. Read it. Then, share it with your kids or a friend. Minnesota’s past is much too important to let it go unlearned. Or worse, forgotten.

Posted in News & Notes | Related Topics: Progressive Community