This month marks the 150th anniversary of the death of Sylvanus B. Lowry, the slaveholding Southerner who fostered investment in what is today St. Cloud’s Northside-Hester Park neighborhood.
In an article for “Crossings” magazine, professor and social historian Chris Lehman asserts that slave-generated dollars created the economic foundation for what was then called Upper Town.
- View a PDF excerpt from the Stearns History Museum’s December/January issue
A land speculator in the mid-1850s, Lowry acquired lots, then sold them to family members and acquaintances in Tennessee.
Ethnic Studies professor Chris Lehman
Writes Lehman: “One important legacy of the Tennesseans is that the area remains devoid of businesses. The slaveholders were content to owning lots in Minnesota but living in Tennessee with their slaves.”
Lehman is a professor and chair for the Department of Ethnic and Women’s Studies. In his 15th year at St. Cloud State, Lehman holds a doctorate from University of Massachusetts-Amherst.
His five books, including 2014’s “Power, Politics, and the Decline of the Civil Rights Movement: A Fragile Coalition, 1967–1973,” have enriched the African-American historical canon.
View a mini-biography of Lehman. Learn about our minor program in African American Studies.
