The Golden Horses of St. Paul, Minnesota
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| Victor J. Blue for The New York Times |
The Golden Horses of St. Paul, MN
When I see an article about my hometown, St. Paul, Minnesota in the Sunday New York
Times I take notice. The color photo of the St. Paul Capitol and grounds
catches my eye, with the golden horses on the roof, overlooking the crowd, filled with mostly young protesters sitting on
the grass, signs about BLM and not staying silent.
I remember climbing stairs to the top of the Capital to see
those golden horses as a young child, age 7 or 8, this would be the mid 1970’s.
My mother took me and my younger brother to the city, from our home in the
suburbs, on a day trip over summer
school break. My dad worked at Taystee Bakery, which is not far from the
Capitol grounds, so in perspective my mom was probably also visiting Dad with
us kids in tow in the family station wagon. The capitol is a grand building,
designed by architect Cass Gilbert, and the horses, “formally a guilded
quadriga sculpture group titled ‘The Progress of the State’ stand like a senitel over the front façade of
the Minnesota State Capitol.’ Gilbert commissioned Daniel Chester French, “best
known for the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, to do the work. He sculpted
the chariot and human figures and animal sculptor Edward Clark Potter created
the horses. The Quadriga (Latin for
‘four-horse chariot’) has greeted Capitol visitors since its installation in
December 1906.”
I don’t remember any of this, of course, on our guided tour,
only someone leading us up steps to climb to the top to see the golden horses.
We could get up close and the guide let us touch the gleaming gold leaf. Even at that age, I was surprised to see graffiti
carved into a horses’ flank. Initials of
long-forgotten couples or singles wanting to make a statement stood out to my
curious mind.
The four golden horses represent the fours elements: earth,
wind, fire and water. They pull a
chariot with two female figures , “Agriculture” and “Industry” holding the
bridles to control the forces of nature.
Together they symbolize “Civilization.” The charioteer is a man called
“Prosperity.” He holds a staff bearing the name “Minnesota” in his left hand
and cradles a horn of plenty filled with Minnesota produce in his right arm….
pineapples emerging from the hub of the chariot wheels are a symbol of
hospitality. The forward motion of the group suggests the future progress of
the state of Minnesota.
Decades later, the tours continue but without access to the
golden horses. After much restoration to
restore them, they are back to surpass their original glory in French’s vision.
Minnesota has been a fairly progressive state, and growing up I was proud to
call myself a member of the DFL Democrat-Farmer-Labor party (as were my
parents) and voted in every election. I
was born in Miller Hospital, a couple of miles away from the State Capitol,
where the F. Scott Fitzgerald children
were born in the 1920’s. The hospital
has since been torn down and replaced by the Minnesota History Museum. My
education of diversity and a holiday such as Juneteenth was not taught in
school. I remember one black woman in our graduating class of over 300 at
Tartan Senior High School, class of 1980.
Tartan was named after the 3M scotch tape, also head-quartered in
Maplewood, the suburb where I lived with my parents. Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing, or “the
Mining” as we called it, playing in the field across the street that was owned
by 3M, or learning to drive in the parking lots and roads surrounding the 3M
headquarters. Some of my classmates who
still live in the area are dying of cancer from a mysterious chemical
leakage.
I also remember reading about the Rondo neighborhood, which
was a black neighborhood gutted when the Interstate freeway went through in the
1950’s. Racism and discrimination was
all around me, growing up as white, but it wasn’t until much later that I was aware of and embraced the differences. I think about the irony of our carefree
outings as we picnicked near the Indian mounds at Mounds Park overlooking St.
Paul, which is a burial site for six
Dakota tribes. When we drove south to Mankato to see our cousins, it
was the place of the Dakota War of 1862, or the Sioux Uprising, the largest
one-day mass execution in American history.
I embraced the Hmong that moved in to revitalize the
University Avenue strip that links St. Paul to Minneapolis. In an area that was
getting run-down, the Hmong pooled their resources to open restaurants and
shops that are now the pride of the Cities, raising property values. I sold
real estate briefly and worked with some Hmong families that pooled their money
to buy an apartment building so they could house their families together. When I
moved to Minneapolis, snatching a job at the Loft Literary Center, my St. Paul
friends were afraid to cross the river. They watched the news stories of
shootings or gangs in one part of the city and assumed they weren’t going
anywhere except to a Twins or Vikings game across the bridge. When the 35W bridge collapsed in Minneapolis,
I was working a few blocks away. I had crossed it many times, and it was under
construction with lanes blocked off so thankfully there was less traffic on it
when it fell. It took me a few months to
feel safe going over or under bridges again.
I dated a black man who was afraid to drive by himself on a
road trip, and he only dated white women. I took my bike or the light rail to
the Cedar-Riverside area to engineer and co-host our weekly Write On Radio
show, in the hub of the Somalian neighborhood, the high rise with a sea of
women wearing the hajib and the men smoking and hanging out in the Hard Times Café.
It
is good to know that Iliam Omar, the 37-year-old
mother of three is the first Somali-American, first African-born American, and
one of the first two Muslim American women to serve in the US Congress. Keith Ellison, now Minnesota’s Attorney General, was the first Muslim elected to congress, and previously
served my district five in Minneapolis. Minnesota is also home to Hubert Humphrey,
Eugene McCarthy, Paul Wellstone (yes I remember exactly where I was when he
died in the plane crash), Walter Mondale, Jesse Ventura and Al Franken.
Minnesota has moved away from an agriculture and farming
focus into a salad bowl of diversity. The tangled roots run deep, with Indian lynchings
and black shootings, smothered with the white entitlement hidden in the 10,000
plus lakes of beauty and privilege. The Northwoods are a great escape, if you
know someone with a cabin, or can snag a campsite in the crowded summers. If
you don’t, you are stuck in the hot city, where the humidity can be choking and
the mosquitoes fierce. Air conditioning
is a necessity. The frozen ice of winter
is melted in a flash, with a quick transition into summer heat, thunderstorms
and tornadoes on the flat prairie. The
family bonds are tight, with summer cabins passed down through generations,
families together on major holidays, the same high school friends living within
twenty miles of where they were born. When
my parents moved out of state in the early 90’s when Dad retired, the links
were broken. It was then I turned to friends, to poets, to start my own
traditions. I knew how it felt to be an outsider in the land of my birth. My holidays were spent with others feeling
outcast, as I gathered around a holiday dinner table, or an orphan
Thanksgiving, as host or guest. I left
Minneapolis in 2011 to continue my journey in the high desert of New Mexico. I
felt I had to leave to align with what I felt was home.
Those four horses, perched on the capitol, are the elements
we cannot control.
Wear A Mask.
As the ones holding the reins, we must be fair and just to
all.
Black Lives Matter.
What does Prosperity look like for Minnesota?
The Great Minnesota Get-Together, the State Fair is
cancelled this year.
The golden horses are watching. There is still graffiti. They’ve seen a lot
looking down on the rotunda courtyard this last century. What will be the
progress that awaits my home state?
Parties Point Fingers as Effort to Pass Police Reform
Collapses in Minnesota, NY Times. June 21, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/20/us/minnesota-police-george-floyd.html
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