St. Paul, Minnesota

Liminal has it completely ass-backwards. It was Minneapolis that had the anti-semitic vibe, not St. Paul; and it was well-earned, too. Jews in Minneapolis prior to about the early 1950's were arguably the most impoverished and ghettoed in the United States. A then-notorious 1946 article by sociologist Carey McWilliams declared Minneapolis to be "the anti-semitic capital of the U.S." The period from 1936-38 is remembered as being particularly awful for Minneapolitan Jews, and is probably the closest any region in the U.S. came to engaging in a bona fide pogrom.

Even as recently as the late 1950's Jewish schoolchildren in at least one elementary school in Minneapolis were in dread of the last school day before Easter vacation, when all the kids would be trucked into an auditorium, the Jewish kids ordered to stand up, and all the other kids instructed by the principal to point at them and shout "boo."

Although St. Paul was by no means a kosher paradise, the situation was much different there, where the local Jewish population was wealthier, more widespread, and far more socially integrated. Instead, St. Paul's chief problem in the 1930's wasn't anti-Semitism, but gangsterism; while the local Minneapolis brownshirts were busy busting Jewish heads and spraying swastikas on anything lived in, operated by, or worshipped by Jews, the city fathers of St. Paul had arranged a nationwide "safe haven" policy for gun-totin' gangsters, turning the city into the premier hideout location for the likes of John Dillinger, Al "Creepy" Karpis, and Ma Baker and her kids.

Nowadays, St. Paul has an almost pathetic level of pride in its "gangster past," and has a healthy little tourist industry built up around it. Minneapolis has so successfully buried its anti-Semitic roots, on the other hand, that it has apparently convinced people that it was really St. Paul that was the culprit all along.

As for modern neo-Nazi groups and publishing organizations; again, it's Minneapolis, not St. Paul, that gets the brass ring. Both the overtly pro-Nazi National Socialist Movement and the recently-defunct Panzerfaust Records (a prominent neo-Nazi music label), for example, are/were headquartered in Minneapolis. I don't know of any major anti-Semitic groups that are based out of St. Paul.

St. Paul, a city, capital of the State of Minnesota, and county-seat of Ramsey co.; on the Mississippi river. The city is built on both sides of the river, which are connected by several bridges, including a fine iron structure. The ground on both sides of the river rises in three plateaus, the highest being 200 feet. The main part of the city is on the second and third plateaus, but it also occupies the bottom lands along the river. Area 55 square miles; pop (1910) 214,744.

The city owns an extensive waterworks system. The reservoirs have a storage capacity of 30,000,000 gallons, and the water is distributed through 244 miles of mains. There are in all 385 miles of streets, of which 50 miles are paved. The sewer system covers about 160 miles. The annual death rate averages 8.47 per 1,000.

The principal public buildings are the Capitol, containing the library of the State Historical Society; the court house and city hall erected at a cost of more than $1,000,000; custom house and postoffice. Besides these there are three free hospitals, and Protestant and Roman Catholic orphan asylums.

The Federal census reports over 600 factory-system plants, employing $36,500,000 capital and 14,300 wage-earners; paying $19,500,000 for materials used and $7,210,000 for wages; and yielding annual products valued at over $38,500,000.

On Sept. 1, 1900, there were 5 National banks in operation, having a combined capital of $3,800,000, and a surplus fund of $720,000. The gross earnings were $393,251.21, and net earnings #98,242.54.

At the close of the school year 1898-1899 there were 24,344 pupils enrolled in public day school, and in private and parochial schools 12,000; and the average daily attendance in public day schools was 19,010. There were 534 teachers; 46 buildings used for public school purposes; and for public property of an estimated value of $2,575,125. The institutions for higher education are Hamline University (M.E.); Concordia College (Luth.); Macalester College (Pres.); St. Paul's and St. Thomas's Seminaries (R.C.); and several medical colleges.

A French Canadian settled on the site of the city in 1838. Three years later, Father Gaultier, a French Catholic priest, founded the first church here, and named it St. Paul, from which the city derived its name. It received its city charter in 1854, and united the suburb of West St. Paul in 1874. Since the latter year there has been such a rapid growth that the outskirts of the city reach those of Minneapolis. These two cities are known as "The Twin Cities of the West."