Britt Robson opines:
>I second the idea of Nellie Stone Johnson over Mary Richards for a Mall
>statue.
As the author of Nellie Stone Johnson's oral history, I have no problem with
a Mary Richards statue on Nicollet (it's a shopping street, after all, so a
TV character is a perfect consumerist tribute.)
But a statue of Nellie is also a great idea. As some of you may know, Nellie
is the first black elected in Minneapolis, to the library board back in
1945. In a city that had never elected a black, she was the leading
vote-getter among all library candidates, a tribute to a coalition of labor
& liberal activists -- but most importantly to Nellie herself, who
door-knocked whole precincts in Northeast, where few blacks lived, racking
up ten-to-one margins in those precincts. She outpolled Hubert Humphrey (who
won the mayoralty after a 1943 defeat) in many areas. She was one of the
Farmer-Labor party folks who sat down at a cafeteria table at the downtown
Minneapolis Y in the mid-'40s to create the merger that resulted in the DFL
party.
Nellie, who is still alive, frail but together at 95, has spent the
subsequent 56 years working on education, many of those as a member of the
State College board (now MnSCU). Through her Nellie Stone Johnson
scholarship fund, more than 100 children and grandchildren of union members
have gone to MnSCU colleges.
Some of you may also know that legislators rejected a bill to put a bust of
Nellie at the state capitol - it's a long story and too sorry to go into
here. (Nellie is too free about picking enemies - most were justified, some
were unfortunate.) But this is a great woman. She served six years on the
library board, helped get blacks employed in the library system, and has
lived a full enough civic life for fifty of us.
When I asked her why she ran, Nellie told me, "The library had to be open to
all and well-funded so that people of modest means would have this vast
knowledge at their disposal.I know I talk all the time about equal education
for all, but saying that everyone should have an education was a hard, real
issue in those days. 50 percent of the people had no access to higher
education - people in the working class, financially. Women were just so low
down it was pitiful. [The library] was a clear extension of classroom
education. That was one of the reasons I agreed to [run]."
I propose a fitting place for a Nellie statue be at the new public library.
I ask our Minneapolis civic leaders to consider this. It would be a blessing
if we said yes while she is still alive.
David Brauer
King Field - Ward 10
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