[{"alt":"Three-quarters head-and-shoulders view of a woman with her hair parted on the side.","author":[{"name":"Karen Sieber","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/karen-sieber"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246088,"name":"Person","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"October 21, 2026","eraTag":[{"id":186625246085,"name":"1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056202,"name":"1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Jeffrey, Laura (1915–2003)","postbody":"Laura Jeffrey’s influence in St. Paul can be felt beyond her role as one of the city’s first Black librarians. The Macalester College graduate was also deeply involved in African American ...","searchtext":"Laura Jeffrey’s influence in St. Paul can be felt beyond her role as one of the city’s first Black librarians. The Macalester College graduate was also deeply involved in African American institutions like the Hallie Q. Brown Center, Crispus Attucks Home, and St. Phillips Episcopal Church. The modern-day Laura Jeffrey Academy is named in her honor. Laura Marie Jeffrey was born on March 11, 1915, to Arthur Horace Jeffrey and Sarah Smith Jeffrey. Her father also had two children with his first wife, who passed away a year before he married Sarah. While Laura’s parents both grew up around Winona, members of the Jeffrey family first began settling in the region in the 1850s as free people of color. Different branches spread from Hart, near Winona, to the woods of Wisconsin, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, Iowa, the Dakotas, and elsewhere. Prior to that, the family —which had both African American and Native (Nehantic, Montauk) roots—lived in Connecticut. Shortly before Laura’s birth, her newly married parents moved into 366 Burgess Street in the North End of St. Paul, sharing the home with family on her mother’s side. After attending St. Paul Public Schools during the Great Depression, Laura was admitted into Macalester College, where she was the only African American student in her class in the early 1930s. She double majored in history and Latin with plans to become a teacher. At Macalester, she excelled as an honors student, associate newspaper editor, basketball player, member of the Classical Club, and class captain for volleyball. She was also involved with the YWCA, the Women’s Athletic Club, the League of Women Voters, and other groups. After graduating in 1935, Jeffrey spent the next year at home in St. Paul working for the Hallie Q. Brown Center (HQB), which was still in its first decade. At the center’s 1936 annual dinner, she wrote and directed a pageant titled |||The Spirit of Community Service” about the history and mission of the organization. She also became active with the Credjafawn Social Club in 1936, and gave birth to her daughter Cynthia in December of that year. During the 1937–1938 school year, Jeffrey moved to the South for a one-year teaching appointment at the historically Black institution Georgia State Normal and Agricultural College, now known as Albany State. Returning home in the summer of 1938, Jeffrey spoke around the city about her experiences in the Jim Crow South, including at Camphor Memorial Methodist Church. Since the Jeffrey family had generations-long ties in New England, very few people in her family had experienced the ills of Jim Crow segregation, Black codes, or even slavery. Working at HQB again, Jeffrey, a young single mother herself, took on leading the summer camp, young mothers program, nursery school, and other key community programs. Building off of her experience at Macalester’s newspaper, Jeffrey began advising the H. Q. Brown Observer newspaper in 1940. She also played for or coached a variety of sports, including girls’ basketball, golf, badminton, and bowling in the late 1930s and early 1940s. HQB was just one organization that Jeffrey took part in. A 1941 advertisement in the St. Paul Recorder lists Jeffrey as secretary of the Crispus Attucks Home, the noted African American home for orphans and the elderly. She was also an active member of the leading Black female sorority AKA, often writing skits and performances for the group as she had done for HQB. In 1942, Laura’s script |||Interpretation of Negro Life in America||| was performed at a Festival of Nations event by members from Pilgrim Baptist Church, Mt. Olivet Baptist Church, and Camphor Methodist Episcopal Church. In 1950, Jeffrey was listed as a punch-press operator in the US census and St. Paul city directory, but by 1951 she was working at the St. Paul Public Library’s Central branch as a library clerk. A year or two later she was acting head of the Arlington branch. This work inspired her to go to graduate school at the University of Minnesota to study library science while still working during the day for SPPL. After earning her masters in 1958, Jeffrey moved into the role of branch manager at the St. Anthony Park branch and, later, the Highland Park branch. Jeffrey retired in the late 1970s, and she passed away in 2003 at the age of eighty-seven. Laura Jeffrey Academy, a girls-focused charter school, was founded in 2008 and named in her honor.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/MNopedia/MNopedia%202026/Laura%20Jeffrey/jeffreylaura%20(2)_resized.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056216,"name":"African Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186622056210,"name":"Education","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/jeffrey-laura-1915-2003-mnopedia"},{"alt":"Reverend Moses Dickson","author":[{"name":"Karen Sieber","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/karen-sieber"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"August 08, 2025","eraTag":[{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Letter from Moses Dickson to T. M. Fullerton, 1857","postbody":"On March 24, 1857, abolitionist and St. Paul resident Moses Dickson wrote a scathing open letter to the Minnesota Weekly Times about freedom, democracy, and citizenship for Black Americans. ...","searchtext":"On March 24, 1857, abolitionist and St. Paul resident Moses Dickson wrote a scathing open letter to the Minnesota Weekly Times about freedom, democracy, and citizenship for Black Americans. Although it was addressed to a land agent named T. M. Fullerton, the letter appealed to all white Minnesotans to recognize the humanity of their Black neighbors. It provides a record of one man’s response to racial inequality in Minnesota (and across the US) in the 1850s. After the US Supreme Court took up the case of Dred Scott v. Sandford in February of 1856, it considered whether the US Constitution included Black people in its definition of citizens. The ongoing argument left many free African Americans living in Minnesota questioning their legal status. Although the Black codes that governed southern states at the time did not exist in Minnesota Territory, political leaders had found other ways to limit the freedoms of free Blacks moving to northern states. The national question of Black land ownership sparked local debates as Minnesota Territory readied for statehood. In late 1856, a letter-writer to the Minnesota Weekly Times presented a question to the newspaper: Did the Pre-Emption Act of 1841, which allowed US citizens to claim federal land, apply to African Americans in Minnesota? The paper’s editor passed on his query to Stillwater land agent T. M. Fullerton and published his answer on January 3, 1857. In his reply, Fullerton dismissed the land claims of African Americans by denying their citizenship. He wrote that “Colored persons are not, by any of the United States laws, regarded as citizens[.]” When the Supreme Court issued its ruling in Scott v. Sandford two months later, it agreed with him, and Fullerton celebrated the decision in a letter to the Daily Pioneer and Democrat. Black abolitionist and possible Underground Railroad agent Moses Dickson, who was also a business owner in St. Paul, read both of Fullerton’s letters. He responded via the Minnesota Weekly Times in a letter of his own published on March 28. He noted the irony of Fullerton’s training as a preacher and the fact that five of the Supreme Court justices were current or former slaveholders. After asking if Fullerton had ever read the Declaration of Independence, Dickson continued: Why do you make merry over this piece of Judicial Tyranny? In what have I offended that this injustice should be heaped upon me and mine? Is it because I love my country less than you?—No! for you have all the advantages of education and refinement that society can furnish, and are eligible to any office at the gift of the People, your affection for your native land is only enough to put her in chains; while I, though depressed and downtrodden by my country ever since I saw the light of day, love her still…. What kind of institution is a negro? Who am I? I am not an alien, for I was born on American soil. I am not a citizen, for you and your subordinates, the five slaveholders, say I am not. I am a thing. I live, breathe, eat, work, think, die, and if I have a soul—does it go before the eternal judge? Or does the Supreme Court take care of that, too? I may acquire property, but the United States refuses to protect it. I cannot sue for injuries done me, or money due me. There is only one palliating circumstance in this chapter of hellish law—I cannot commit treason as there is no nation to which I owe allegiance. I cannot longer love my country for I have no country to love! Dickson closed the letter by saying that although he expected Fullerton to ignore him in public after he read his words, the reverend could at least remember him in his private prayers. No written response from Fullerton to Dickson survives. Fullerton ended his role as land agent later that year and returned to preaching. Dickson moved downriver to Missouri and entered the ministry himself. Free Blacks who continued to live in Minnesota in the late 1850s and early 1860s did so without protection under the law, and without the same rights as white settlers, until 1868. In that year, a state amendment granted suffrage to all non-white men. Editor’s note: To read all of Dickson’s letter in a more accessible size than the original, see the citation in the bibliography below.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/MNopedia/MNopedia%202025/Underground%20Railroad/Moses_Dickson_Getty_Museum%20copy_resized.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056216,"name":"African Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"},{"id":186625246050,"name":"Politics","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/letter-from-moses-dickson-to-t.-m.-fullerton-1857"},{"alt":"Joseph Farr","author":[{"name":"Karen Sieber","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/author/karen-sieber"}],"categoryTag":[{"id":186625246090,"name":"Thing","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"date":"July 25, 2025","eraTag":[{"id":186622056214,"name":"1850–1877 (Civil War and Reconstruction)","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"keydate":"","name":"Underground Railroad in Minnesota","postbody":"Although long ignored in Underground Railroad scholarship, evidence indicates that small groups of Black and white abolitionists in Minnesota aided freedom seekers at different times and ...","searchtext":"Although long ignored in Underground Railroad scholarship, evidence indicates that small groups of Black and white abolitionists in Minnesota aided freedom seekers at different times and places in the 1850s and 60s. Waterways like the Mississippi River and territorial-era stagecoach roads were integral to the freedom movement. Free Black barbers, steamboat workers, and businessmen in Minnesota cooperated with abolitionists in Galena, Chicago, St. Louis, and beyond, all with a common goal: the end of slavery. As they do in other states, legends, inconsistencies, and a system of operation meant to be elusive complicate a full understanding of the Underground Railroad in Minnesota. While slavery was technically illegal there, boundaries between freedom and bondage were blurry. Southern businessmen and Fort Snelling officers often brought enslaved individuals in and out of Minnesota from slave states. The Dred Scott case famously examined the complexity of this issue in court. Following the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, crossing the invisible boundary into the North was not enough to guarantee one||s safety and freedom. Freedom seekers could still be captured and brought back to the South. In response, many self-emancipated individuals traveled deeper into the wilderness of the upper Midwest and away from the detection of slave catchers. While some continued on into Canada, others settled into the region’s growing boomtowns or mining and farming communities. Free Blacks also began moving to the region in search of opportunities for advancement and freedom from the oppression of Black codes enacted in other states. Minnesota Territory, then at the edge of westward growth, was an ideal destination for freedom seekers. Free Blacks found opportunities for work and community building in the area’s booming river towns. Goods and people circulated on steamboats and stagecoach lines, and the individuals who gathered in spaces like barbershops and eating saloons found opportunities to use those existing paths and industries to lead people to freedom. In 1850, around the same time as the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, a number of free Black abolitionists began settling in the territorial city of St. Paul from Galena, Illinois. Many worked on steamboats like the Dr. Franklin, Oronoco, and Nominee as barbers, porters, and laborers, moving up and down the river from New Orleans to St. Paul. Black barbers in particular were known to be integral to the freedom movement in other parts of the country for their roles in information sharing and gathering, and building networks. Many known Underground Railroad agents were barbers. Joseph Farr and his uncle William Taylor aided in the Underground Railroad in the 1850s after moving to St. Paul from Galena. Taylor’s barber shop on Third Street (now Kellogg) placed them in sight of incoming steamboats on the Mississippi River. Others involved in helping people to freedom in the city included a man named David Edwards [Talbert], who worked as a cook at International Hotel; steamboat worker Eugene Berry; an agent in Galena named James Garrett Johnson; and fellow barber James Highwarden. Berry and others working on the steamboats further down river disguised fugitive slaves, including women, as young male laborers on board. Once in St. Paul, they hid escapees at Taylor’s home across Third, or at an ice cream saloon a few blocks away. A white ally named Fournier who lived near White Bear Lake aided in the effort, as did stagecoach operator and future St. Anthony mayor Alvaren Allen, and unnamed allies in Prescott, Wisconsin, across the river from Hastings. Black abolitionist Moses Dickson, recognized nationally as a leader in the Underground Railroad, lived in St. Paul during the years leading up to statehood. Dickson lived near Farr and Taylor in Galena before moving north, and he had close connections to known UGRR operators in Galena and Saint Louis. James Garrett Johnson, whom Farr mentions as an agent in his own recollection, was a member of the International Order of Twelve in Galena, one of two secret abolitionist organizations Dickson started. In St. Paul, Dickson and his wife Mary operated an eating saloon and later a barbershop, both possibly aiding in his abolitionist efforts. Dickson was also the first educator of African American children in town. By the late 1850s, more abolitionist-minded individuals began moving to the region from New England. Among them were Ralph and Emily Grey, a free Black couple from York, Pennsylvania. The couple settled in Saint Anthony where Ralph ran a barber shop. In 1860, the Greys famously helped Eliza Winston in her freedom case and subsequent escape to freedom. Winston and her husband had partially paid for their freedom from the Gholson family years earlier, but Eliza was still sold to the Christmas family. When Eliza was brought North with the family from Mississippi the Greys helped her arrange a hearing. Although a Minnesota judge ruled in her favor, a pro-slavery mob converged on her location to return her to slavery. The Greys reportedly aided Eliza in an escape to Canada, although reports conflict about her eventual whereabouts. Emily’s father William Goodridge was a noted Underground Railroad leader in York, and joined them in Minnesota by the mid-1860s. Minneapolis Pioneers and Soldiers Memorial Cemetery, where the Grey and Goodridge family are buried, was recently awarded Network to Freedom designation for the burial site||s connection to freedom seeking history. Minnesota remained an active place of freedom seeking even up through the end of the Civil War. Following the Emancipation Proclamation, a group of formerly enslaved individuals in Missouri headed up river on the steamboat Northerner in search of freedom and a new life. The group of 125 refugees, including their leader Rev. Robert Hickman, founded Pilgrim Baptist Church in the years following the war. In 2023 the church and freedom seekers became the first Minnesota location designated on the National Park Service’s Network to Freedom map. In addition to the above stories, there are also numerous individuals from Minnesota’s past that are being explored as possible but unverified agents and operators. In Southeast Minnesota, numerous rumored locations exist around Rushford, like the Rosewell Valentine House. Daniel Dayton, owner of a stagecoach stop in Big Springs along the Dubuque-St. Paul Trail, is considered by some to be a possible agent given his abolitionist beliefs, industry, and location. Another hint of the Underground Railroad in the southeast part of the state is the Jeffrey family, who settled in Hart, north of Rushford. The free Black family has abolitionist roots in maritime Connecticut. From the 1840s through the 1860s, clusters of their family began settling around the upper Midwest, including Hart, the Twin Cities, Chicago, and Upper Peninsula Michigan. In Winona, steamboat Captain Orrin Smith may also have aided in the transportation of escaped slaves. Many in St. Paul and Galena’s Black freedom networks worked on boats owned by Smith over the years. Winona’s large abolitionist community at the First Congregationalist Church may also have contained individuals helping in the effort, as did Winona’s Black barbers. There is evidence that abolitionists active in the UGRR in other regions of the country later settled in Minnesota. Among them was Oren Birney Cravath, reportedly an agent in Ohio and New York, who settled in St. Charles in Winona County. Despite evidence of numerous abolitionists living in the southeast part of the state, and the region’s existing territorial transportation networks, no verified accounts from freedom seekers or agents have yet been discovered. Historians across the state continue to seek documentation that helps better understand these networks. Editor’s note: The claim that Farr, Taylor, Edwards, Berry, Johnson, and white allies operated an Underground Railroad network in Minnesota appears in a reminiscence written by Farr and printed in the St. Paul Pioneer Press in 1895, half a century after the events described. No other surviving source confirms this information. Farr’s story of dressing up a girl as a boy was a common one shared in Underground Railroad recollections nationwide. Moses Dickson, in fact, shares a nearly identical story in his own end-of-life memoir, but he claims the incident occurred in New Orleans. Dickson’s account also states that he was organizing a slave rebellion in the Deep South in the 1850s—even though records place him in St. Paul or Galena for most of the decade. Dickson’s account does mention being in Wisconsin Territory (which included Minnesota) in the 1840s, but it neglects to mention his time in St. Paul as a barber, business owner, and educator. As with the stories of Farr and Taylor, no additional evidence confirms Dickson’s account of helping freedom seekers beyond a half-century-old recollection. Paper trails conflict with both men’s stories.","src":"https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/MNopedia/MNopedia%202025/Underground%20Railroad/Pioneer_Press_May_5_1895_page_8.jpg","topicsTag":[{"id":186622056216,"name":"African Americans","slug":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index"}],"url":"https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/underground-railroad-in-minnesota"}]

Karen Sieber

Karen Sieber is a historian of social justice history best known as the creator of Visualizing the Red Summer, which is used in AP African American History classes nationwide. She teaches graduate courses in public history at Southern New Hampshire University and leads the Finding Moses Initiative exploring Black freedom seeking in the upper Midwest. She was a 2024–2025 Gale Family Library Research Fellow.

Karen Sieber

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