100 years later, Phyllis Wheatley center continues to be a beacon for the Black community

In the early decades of the 20th century, when Black writers and performers visited Minneapolis, they needed a place to stay. Even celebrities such as W.E.B. Du Bois, Marian Anderson, Duke Ellington and Langston Hughes were not welcome in local hotels.

So they stayed at Phyllis Wheatley House.

The organization, now known as the Phyllis Wheatley Community Center and named after an 18th-century enslaved woman who became a well-known poet, was created 100 years ago in north Minneapolis.

It began in the midst of the Jim Crow era as a settlement house, one of a number of such places around the country providing services to the urban poor and European immigrants. Black women who were studying at the University of Minnesota but barred from living in its dorms boarded at Phyllis Wheatley House. It went on to provide lodging to people who wouldn't have found it elsewhere.

Gradually, it grew to provide support of many forms in an era when Black people were often rejected or threatened elsewhere. It offered social services, recreation, culture and a gathering space for adults and children in the North Side's then small but growing Black community.

"Community centers have been a major influence in helping Black kids be able to enjoy some of the activities that were just normal for white kids," said Freddie Davis-English, 79, a retired member of the African American Family Services board who was heavily involved with the center when working in juvenile corrections.

Notable people who spent time at the center included civil rights activist W. Harry Davis, an author, civic leader and coach for the amateur Golden Gloves and Olympics boxing. Davis had a lifelong connection to Phyllis Wheatley, where he first coached boxing and later spent years on its board of directors. Davis, who died in 2006 at age 83, was a longtime member of the Minneapolis School Board, founded the Minneapolis Urban Coalition and was the first Black man to run for Minneapolis mayor with major party backing.

The center also holds an important place in Minneapolis music history. Prince's father, John L. Nelson, played at Phyllis Wheatley and other community centers with his jazz group, the Prince Rogers Trio. Later, Prince himself played there with Grand Central, his band in high school.

"The doors were always open for everybody — I feel that way even to this day," said Autumn Frazier-Cotten, 65, of Brooklyn Park, whose grandmother ran the center's nature camp in Carver County for 36 years.

In 1970, the building on Aldrich Avenue N. that the center had occupied since 1929 was demolished for construction of Interstate 94; a joint project between the Wheatley Community Center, the Minneapolis Park Board and the Minneapolis Public Schools funded the construction of a new building at 1301 10th Av. N., which the center occupies today.

The center will mark its centennial with a gala next April.

The event "shows people in the community why we are what we are and why we've been there for 100 years," said Valerie Stevenson, 58, who served on the center's staff for 20 years before retiring three years ago as vice president of programs. She now lives in Mississippi, but is serving as the center's interim director.

When Stevenson was 14 and had just moved to Minneapolis from Mississippi, the center was a place to make her first local friends and feel welcome.

"It boosted my self-esteem," she said. "It's been doing that for 100 years for [generations of] members of the community."

Nowadays, the center houses the Mary T. Wellcome Child Development Center for preschool children and a clinic providing free COVID-19 testing and vaccinations to anyone in Minneapolis. Programs it hosts include youth basketball, training in parenting skills for people with children, courses in technology skills for young men and women, financial education and advice for women, support for victims of domestic violence.

It connects people in need with food assistance and other resources, works with students who've had school attendance issues and offers young people involved in the legal system help in changing the course of their lives.

It holds special events for Thanksgiving, Earth Day and Juneteenth. An annual Santa Breakfast offers breakfast for families, with age-specific gifts for the children.

"We want to make sure that kids wake up with something to open on Christmas Day," said Kimberly Caprini, program manager for the Quality Parenting Academy and Community Resource Services and former member of the Minneapolis School Board.

Starting in the 1950s, the center operated Camp Katharine Parsons on Oak Lake in Carver County, a popular summer day camp where North Side kids and their families could experience nature, learn camping skills, canoe and do various science projects.

"We were brought down to the water and told to open our eyes," recalled Caprini, 60, who attended the camp as a kid. "I screamed. I had never seen so many stars in my life. I remember jumping into the air."

Stevenson, 58, remembers making bowls out of old records and decorating them with macaroni — "my mother kept it for years," she said —and eating a "hobo," a mixture of ground beef and vegetables wrapped in foil and cooked over a campfire.

As a kid, Frazier-Cotten spent so much time at the nature camp "we always used to think that we owned it," she said. But for some North Side campers, "it was the first time kids would ever leave their block. They saw nature, up close and firsthand."

Campers learned "how to use a knife properly, how to start a fire properly, how to put out a fire properly, cutting firewood, how to swim, how to canoe, identifying plants and trees."

The camp fell into disrepair and closed in the early 2000s. But the center plans to restore it, and requested permission from Carver County to start work. The plan was initially turned down by Watertown Township, where the camp is located, with some lakeside neighbors protesting in exchanges so heated that Caprini was called by a racial slur, she said.

But "honestly, I think we're past that" conflict, said Laura Danielson, a retired attorney who helped work on the project. Representatives from the center met with neighbors to discuss objections and "fundamental worries, guns and weapons and all that stuff," as well as programming, safety protocols and the kind of watercraft allowed in order to control the spread of milfoil.

Finally, Danielson said, a "couple of old farmers got up" to defend the camp, saying children in the past had never caused trouble and they liked seeing them there. In the end, the county board unanimously approved a conditional-use permit last year.

The Phyllis Wheatley center lingers in the memories of people who hung out there as children. Davis-English was involved with a group of older people at the center who "would talk about what they used to do when they would come to activities at Phyllis Wheatley," she said.

"There are people that to this day talk about the Wheatley and how they connected with a healthy adult that gave them support when they were feeling down."

Frazier-Cotten is among those who think back fondly at time she spent at Phyllis Wheatley.

"It's just a much needed part of the community, where you can feel welcome at any time," she said. "You always had a place to go, and you were safe when you went there."