The Wake

For many, heading to the West Bank is not the most exciting part of the day - whether we bike, walk or hastily thrust ourselves onto overcrowded Campus Connectors to make it over the river. But while we press on through the slush or in a bus packed tight with fellow students, do we appreciate where we are headed? How many of us really know the West Bank, its neighbors or their cultures?

For the past month a tribute to the West Bank community has been housed in the Elmer L. Andersen Library: “Community/University: Students Explore West Bank History.” The exhibit, put together by Kevin Murphy’s Public History 3001 students, introduced the West Bank’s culture and showcased its unique history.

Murphy’s students compiled five projects to display the development of the West Bank. Topics included the history of the Little Earth Native American community, changes in the bar and music scene, the culture of the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood, and the development and expansion of the university. The students used various methods to organize archives, interviews with locals and University officials, film, photographs, newspaper clippings and more into a multimedia exhibition.

After wandering through the exhibit in between classes, Lindsey Nelson, an Interior Design pre-major said, “I learned a lot about the neighborhood … it made me want to get off campus and explore Cedar-Riverside.” Traveling through the exhibit, attendees like Nelson could pick up a booklet titled, “Saloons on Snoose Boulevard,” which compiles the history of bars in the Cedar-Riverside area. They could stop to catch a documentary introducing the ever-changing hippie, jazz, folk and blues scene in the neighborhood. Attendees could also peruse several visual displays, including a slide show and timeline telling the story of Little Earth’s struggle to survive. Audio was also available, including voices of those directly affected by the university’s expansion. Photographs and blueprints demonstrated the university’s growth as well.

The exhibit not only organized and documented the history of the Cedar-Riverside area, but it also asked difficult questions about the development of the neighborhood. The Little Earth display told exhibit-goers of the discrimination that Native Americans faced in housing—both before and after the development of Little Earth. The music installment suggested development has hurt the scene, and another display asked if the university and surrounding communities have formed a “communiversity.” Responses from attendees, posted on a bulletin board, were overwhelmingly negative, suggesting the university and its neighbors remain fairly segregated from each other.

Andria Peters, a senior history major who worked on the project focusing on the university’s expansion, was not shy to admit the class was a lot of work. “Regular exhibits take years and years and years to develop, and we’re given a semester,” she said. However, she still thought it was worth it. “It’s the first time ever since I’ve been at the University of Minnesota where I felt like I was actually contributing something,” she explained. “Something meaningful came out of this class.”

Murphy said that many of the installations would live on after the exhibition closed. For example, “Saloons on Snoose” booklets will be made available at local bars, and the Little Earth display was created to be freestanding so that it could be given to the Little Earth Community—where it will continue to be updated. Peters said she and Jeff Rosenberg, with whom she worked on the university’s expansion project, would try to relocate the display elsewhere at the university or in the neighborhood. The class also helped Bedlam Theatre gather ideas and conduct research for its musical, “West Bank Story,” opening in June.

Although Peters contended that the class was tough for only three credits, she would still “recommend it to all kinds of students … you don’t have to be a history major.” She explained that students are taught research and analysis techniques, and need no experience. Peters also urged, “I’d recommend any class with Kevin Murphy to anyone.”

Murphy and his graduate teaching assistant, Andy Urban, “might develop a class for Dinkytown,” Murphy hinted. The “game plan, over the years, is to focus on different neighborhoods’… themes in the Twin Cities,” he said.

In a typed handout available at the exhibit, Murphy explained that the “course encourages enrolled students to think about what constitutes a ‘community.’” He also described his hope for his students to “continue to explore the relationship between community and university.” Interestingly, a similar objective was important to Elmer L. Andersen, namesake of the library where the exhibit was held. He is quoted on the library’s website, andersen.lib.umn.edu, as having once asked, “What nobler purpose can there be for a University than to gather up the prizes of a culture —preserve them, propagate them, make them available—so that the best of what has gone before can be preserved and built on?”