Diverse radio for Minnesota’s communities
18 Unique Stations from Border to Border
18 Unique Stations from Border to Border
Roy Wilkins earned his professional chops as a Twin Cities journalist. But it was as an activist and director of the NAACP, says producer Britt Aamodt, that Wilkins helped change history with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Before Jeffrey Dahmer was a serial killer, he was a high school student. Britt Aamodt has the story of Dahmer’s school trip visit to the office of the Vice President of the United States, Walter Mondale.
In 1977, Anita Bryant and her organization Save the Children led a crusade to repeal gay rights laws across the country. Britt Aamodt looks at what happened when a Minneapolis gay rights activist met Bryant with a pie and when her crusade arrived in St. Paul in 1978.
By 1884, thousands of St. Paul’s citizens gathered at the train station to greet the arrival of a famous visitor. Britt Aamodt has the story behind Sitting Bull’s weeklong tour of St. Paul.
In 1860, William H. Seward, governor of New York and failed presidential hopeful, came to St. Paul to stump for Abraham Lincoln. He spent four days in the Minnesota capital. Britt Aamodt wonders why his speech was so long and what he thought of the steamship Alhambra.
Everybody knows that before First Ave was an iconic live music venue it was a Greyhound bus station. But fewer know the history of the in-between years. Britt Aamodt turns back to the early 1970s when First Ave was Uncle Sam’s and the dance beat was disco.
In 1975, George Lucas was pitching a new space opera to Hollywood. To help him with the pitch, Lucas brought along work by John Berkey who specialized in science fiction cover art. Britt Aamodt has the story of the Minnesota painter and his brush with Star Wars.
Growing up in Minnesota, Michael Wilson knew he wanted to work with primates after he watched a documentary on Dian Fossey. Britt Aamodt looks at Wilson’s work with the research team that studied the primate version of HIV (simian immunodeficiency virus) in chimpanzees.
