Lavender Bridge
Metropolitan State University, St. Paul, MN
Image courtesy of Metro State's Alumni News. |
Queer student groups have a longstanding history in the Twin Cities--possibly, this history goes back to a bisexual group at the University of Minnesota in 1968 (see: the B.E.C.A.U.S.E. Conference, but it certainly dates to the organization of Fight the Repression of Erotic Expression (F.R.E.E.. Minnesotans continue a tradition of emphasizing strong education(1); this emphasis creates a large, vocal, and active student population. In many respects, activist students were responsible for initiating the queer community after the Stonewall Riots.
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This is especially evident when Metropolitan State University (then a community college) sought a new campus in 1988. St. Paul and Minneapolis each offered sites for “Metro State;” Minneapolis proposed donated land on its Northside (where a high concentration of African-American families live) and St. Paul countered with a proposal on its troubled East Side.(*)
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Image courtesy of Lavender Bridge's newsletter, The Lavender News |
(1)
(2)Tretter, Jean-Nickolaus. Interview with the author and Jacob Gentz, 1/16/2009
(3)
(*)"St. Paul offers to buy hospital site in bid for Metropolitan University" The St. Paul Pioneer Press, 1/7/1988.
(*)Beach, James. "Lavender Bridge." Lavender Magazine issue 206: 4/18-5/1, 2003. Pages 76-77.
This page is still under construction. -SVC
Part of Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN: 100 Queer Places in Minnesota History, (1860-1969), (1969-2010)