ST. CLOUD TIMES — After years of researching censuses, archives and newspapers, a St. Cloud State University professor has published a book examining the ways slaveholders invested in Minnesota communities, including St. Cloud’s.
“Slavery’s Reach: Southern Slaveholders and the North Star State,” written by Christopher Lehman, a professor of ethnic studies, stemmed from Lehman’s discovery that a man who lived in St. Paul in 1860 had also been listed on the census as a slave owner in Maryland that same year.
Lehman learned tourism was a big business in Minnesota, he said, and slaveholders from states such as Louisiana, Mississippi and Missouri came to Minnesota and bought real estate. They would either leave right away or stay for a vacation and then go back to the south.
