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State Capitol history comes alive for middle school students
By Randy Croce 9 February 2011
| ST. PAUL - The Minnesota State Capitol building stands as a Minnesota icon, embodying the history and values of the state. But it also can be an exciting teaching tool, as one middle school class learned this winter. |
Every year, educators bring thousands of students to the building to learn about civics, architecture and art. Few hear, however, about the workers who built the structure and the struggles they endured in the community and on the job. From November through January, I was able to collaborate with St. Paul teacher Steve Cox on a unique class at Washington Technology Middle School that focused on this history.
Students were able to meet with a master stonecutter and with the grandson of one of the workers who built the Capitol. They examined the tools and materials used in the construction and viewed the modest workers’ homes that rose up near the imposing dome. They discussed the issues facing the workers, many of them immigrants and the children of former slaves.
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| Master stonecutter Mark Wickstrom demonstrated his craft for students. |
Cox, a member of the St. Paul Federation of Teachers, teaches history at Washington. I’m a video producer and instructor at the University of Minnesota Labor Education Service. Our collaboration was possible through a grant from the Education Minnesota Foundation for Excellence in Teaching and Learning.
The class was a part of the wider “Who Built the Capitol?” project, which is researching and bringing attention to the largely unknown story of the 1896-1907 Minnesota statehouse construction workers. Researchers Dave Riehle, Vickie Woodcock, John Sielaff and I have been finding and compiling information about these trades workers and contractors from the Minnesota Historical Society and other local and national archives, as well as from union halls, company records, local governments and cemeteries.
We have talked with descendents of these workers, who have shared stories, photos, documents and tools that have been handed down in their families. These primary sources were important assets for the class, as students reviewed copies of payroll sheets, union membership and dues records and meeting minutes and heard directly from a worker’s relative.
Former St. Paul City Council member Jerry Blakey came to the school to tell the class about his grandfather, Cassiville Bullard. Bullard was a highly skilled stonecutter, mason and bricklayer who worked not only on the Capitol but many other prominent public buildings in the Twin Cities. He was also a member of Bricklayers Local 1, one of few trades unions of the time to accept African Americans as members in integrated locals.
The class visited the Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers Local 1 training center, where master stonecutter Mark Wickstrom described his years of training in France and Germany and demonstrated the tools and techniques that were also employed by 19th Century artisans. These presentations inspired many individual student projects on stonecutters and on Bullard in particular.
Students learned about the many different trades necessary to build the Capitol through a Smart Board game developed specially for the course, Capitol Jobs Jeopardy, in which they competed to match job names with descriptions of what the workers did. Then, examining contractor payroll records, the class discovered the differing wages of the workers and supervisors.
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| Jerry Blakey, a former member of the St. Paul City Council, talked about his grandfather, who helped build the Capitol. |
Students got a more concrete idea about the compensation and social class lifestyle differences for various occupations on a bus trip “parade of homes,” visiting laborers’ rooming houses, Bullard’s home (which he built himself) and a construction foreman’s residence, as well as the Summit Avenue mansion of William Butler, the co-owner of the company contracted to build the Capitol.
As more than half of the members of the class were first or second-generation immigrants, the major role of workers from other countries and other regions of America in building the Capitol resonated with the students. A tour conducted by Minnesota Historical Society Site Manager Brian Pease highlighted the German-influenced Rathskeller in the Capitol basement and the story of World War I anti-German sentiment that led to painting over the German sayings that originally decorated the walls – which were not fully restored until the 1980s.
Students explored class issues further through individual projects, including attitudes toward immigrants revealed through the Rathskeller history, a comparison of differing workers’ wages and the costs of goods at the time, the materials used in the Capitol construction and the controversy over using stone from Minnesota versus out-of-state materials. Labor historian Riehle spoke on some of these topics and did interviews for projects, while Woodcock worked one-on-one with students to help them find and interpret period newspapers and documents.
We believe other educators can adapt these Capitol-based lessons to their own classes. For more information on the course, e-mail Steve or Randy or phone 612-625-5546.
Randy Croce is on the staff of the Labor Education Service, University of Minnesota. |
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