The Equal Rights Meat Market — It’s hard to imagine that there was a business going by such a modern and righteous sounding name in the waning years of the 19th century in the middle of Red Wing, Minnesota. But it’s true.
A former enslaved man named Jeremiah Patterson ran the farm-to-counter butcher shop in partnership with Julia Bullard Nelson, a suffragette and temperance advocate who, after the death of her husband in 1869, moved to Texas and then Tennessee to teach former slaves as part of the Reconstruction era. In the 1890s, she returned to Minnesota, where she had lived as a young woman, continuing to work for women’s rights and temperance. During that time, she hired several former Black students to help her with her farm in Belvidere Township. One of those students was Patterson.
The Equal Rights Meat Market didn’t last long, but Patterson remained in Red Wing, marrying Verna Gaylord and starting a family. They were among the city’s first Black residents, and Patterson is considered Red Wing’s first Black business owner.
Last Tuesday, Seitu Jones, an interdisciplinary artist whose works encompasses various modalities of public art, deeply engaged social practice, and intimate drawings, paintings and ceramic pieces, stood in front of the former Equal Rights Meat Market, which is now a Salvation Army. Outside the thrift store, on the sidewalk, Jones has created an outline of a shadow representing Patterson. Next to the outline, reads the text:
I was born as
chattel but
on this corner
I was an owner
and bought
cattle for
The Equal
Rights
Meat
Market
Jones stood at the edge of Patterson’s shadow, which he noted lined up with the sun perfectly on the farmer and butcher’s birthday. Then, Jones poured libations “in the grand African tradition of remembering all the folks who came before as a way of documenting and thanking our ancestors for their perseverance, for their knowledge, for their gift to us,” he said.
“I’m going to pour this, and I’m going to say, ‘Ashe’ and I want you to join me in saying that,” Jones said as he poured the libations at the edge of the shadow. “Ashe” is a word in the Urhobo language of Nigeria— it means “the power to make things happen,” Jones explained.
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Jones researched the history of the African American presence in Red Wing through the First Step Public Artist Residency program, administered by the Anderson Center, with additional funding by the Minnesota State Arts Board. Funding to create two sidewalk art pieces came from the City of Red Wing’s Human Rights Commission and a $20,000 Leadership Boost Grant from the Blandin Foundation. As part of the project, Jones also worked with local students.
Michael Holmes, who advises the Black Student Union (BSU) at Red Wing High School, said that after working with Jones and learning about the history and the artist’s practice, the students discovered a photograph of Jeremiah Patterson’s son, Chester Patterson— the first Black graduate of the school. “It was sitting in the back corner, collecting dust,” he told me. “So from that moment on, we created our own little display case for the BSU.”
Holmes said that for Juneteenth this year, the BSU students will be organizing a history walk encompassing Jones’ art and also current Black owned businesses.
As part of his Red Wing project, Jones conducted research and talked to community members— including Beth Breeden, a human rights commissioner for the city of Red Wing. She was the first Black employee to work for the city in 1976. Her father was the first Black employee of Goodhue County.
“We’re trying to make history right,” Breeden told me.
Jones also connected with local historian Frederick L. Johnson, who wrote a book called “Uncertain lives: African Americans and their first 150 years in the Red Wing, Minnesota.” Johnson told me there were no Black people in Red Wing when he was growing up. His book highlights a time when there were Black people who found success in the town— like Patterson and his children.
According to Johnson, the last of the Patterson family left in the 1920s. “The men left because they wanted to marry, and that wasn’t going to happen.” He noted there were Klu Klux Klan rallies in the area. At that time in Red Wing, the Klan focused its hate on Catholics.
“They marched over the old high bridge, led by all guys in robes on horses,” Johnson said.
According to Jones, the Black presence in Red Wing mirrored what was happening in other maritime towns. “In Hastings, not too far away from here, there were enough folks to form a church. And so there was a community of some sort. And I hope that with Fred’s new book, that’ll even come out more.”
“The most influential black man in America was the Pullman Porter,” wrote Larry Tye in his book, “Rising from the Rails: Pullman Porters and the Making of the Black Middle Class.”
George Pullman, who operated a niche sleeper car business, hired more Black men than any other business in America, “He did it not out of sentimentality, of which he had none, but because it made business sense,” Tye wrote. “They came cheap, and men used to slave labor could be compelled to do whatever work they were asked, for as many hours as told.”
According to Jones, the practice of tipping in America became solidified after the civil war, when formerly enslaved workers joined the service industry. “They weren’t getting paid many times,” he said. “They were earning their living from tips.”
In 1925, the Pullman Porters unionized as The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, and during the Civil Rights Movement, became a powerful organizing entity for anti-segregation efforts.
Descended from Red Wing’s Black community
Jones’ interest in African American history has continued throughout his career. Together with his friend and collaborator Ta-coumba T. Aiken, as well as Jones’ wife, Soyini Guyton, he created “Shadows of Spirit,” along Nicollet Mall in Minneapolis. Like the new Red Wing project, the Nicollet Mall series featured outlines of people representing Minnesota history with accompanying text. In the case of that project, the shadows were cast in bronze. With Aiken and Guyton, Jones created another shadow series, “Shadows at the Crossroads” for the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden in 2019.
But when it comes to Red Wing, Jones has a personal connection to its history: his great grandfather, Joseph Parker, was a porter employed at the Red Wing Hotel.
“I grew up as a descendant of Joseph Parker in South Minneapolis, along with all of these folks who were descendants and all of these other Black folks who settled in these river towns,” Jones said. “None of us knew that. I mean, as adults, we started talking about that— about our ancestors having this kind of common presence here along the river.”
Parker freed himself from slavery in Kentucky and fought for the Union army in an artillery unit. Sometime in the 1870s, Parker made his way North and was counted in the 1880 census.
In Red Wing, Parker lived with a Black barber named Henry Fogg and his wife, Amanda.
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As Jones poured libations on the sidewalk art piece outside of the St. James Hotel last week, a nearby train passed by. It was a poignant coincidence, since Jones’ ancestor likely traveled from the train station to the hotel with baggage from the steamboats to the entrance where Jones’ artwork lays in the cement.
The two art works he’s created in Red Wing “are the foot in the door,” Jones said. “So it doesn’t slam on us and neglect the rich history that’s here in Red Wing.” He sees the two pieces as the first two steps in a longer journey “to celebrate the diverse history of Red Wing and in particular the African American story in Red Wing,” he said.
After Jones poured libations outside of the hotel, he went upstairs to the “original” lobby of the St. James for a reception, and walked through the library into a Victorian dining room. He noted the wallpaper in the dining room looked strikingly similar to the wallpaper shown in the old photographs hung in the basement of the hotel.
I watched Jones as he took in his surroundings with a look of awe in his expressions. Three generations earlier, the artist’s grandfather had likely stood in the same spot at the luxury hotel.
He told me that once his father found out Jones’ great grandfather worked at the St. James, the hotel became an annual trip with Jones’ mother.
“Always I’m attempting to tell some story, but this one is really close,” Jones said. “This is another way to celebrate and pay homage.”
Sheila Regan
Sheila Regan is a Twin Cities-based arts journalist. She writes MinnPost’s twice-weekly Artscape column. She can be reached at [email protected].