In 1876, 145 years ago, a school opened in North Minneapolis on the corner of Aldrich Ave. and 6th Ave. North (now Olson Memorial Highway). Sumner School was built in the West Division of the Minneapolis Board of Education. The City of Minneapolis and the City of St. Anthony were consolidated in 1872. Until 1878, when they were consolidated by state statute, the schools were divided into two divisions: the West Division was Minneapolis and the East Division was St. Anthony.
Sumner School had additions added in 1885, 1898, 1909 and 1912. By 1926 it had 19 regular classrooms as well as rooms for Manual Training, Domestic Science (sewing, cooking), Mechanical Drawing, Medical Examinations, a Gymnasium-Auditorium, Shower and Rest Rooms. There were also two one-room wooden portable annexes. In 1926 it also had a telephone — the number was Hyland 0958.
Just 11 years after the end of the Civil War, the school was named after Charles Sumner, who had passed away only two years earlier, and was an American statesman, orator and U.S. Senator from Massachusetts. Sumner was best known as a staunch abolitionist and champion of equal civil and voting rights for freed slaves. During the Civil War he was the most vigorous advocate of emancipation, of enlisting blacks in the Union Army, and of the establishment of the Freedmen’s Bureau. In 1856 Sumner was viscously attacked in the Senate Chamber because of these views. Three days after Sumner gave a fiery anti-slavery speech on the floor of the Senate, he was savagely beaten with a cane by Peston Brooks, a member of the House of Representatives from South Carolina. Because of his injuries, it was several years before Sumner could return to the Senate.
In 1911 the Board of Park Commissioners also named a new park Sumner and the first three acres of the park were purchased, mostly by condemnation. That sat just a few blocks north of the school. In the summer of that year the Board of Park Commissioners received a petition from the Associated Jewish Charities for a park in what was called the “Jewish district” of the neighborhood. The park, which was just a few blocks north of the school, was named for Sumner Place, a street that once went through the park. The street had been named for Charles Sumner.
The neighborhood near Sumner School and Sumner Field park was poor and eventually would be populated mostly by low-income African American and Jewish families. The land where the Sumner Field park and the surrounding homes were located was a swampy creek bed. Bassett’s Creek had been routed underground in the early 1900s and housing was built above it by using fill which lead to unstable soils. The Sumner Field area was considered the most undesirable housing area in Minneapolis. In the early 1930s, the houses in this area were razed to make way for Minnesota’s first public housing project which was built by the WPA. In December of 1938, the Sumner Field Housing Project opened. It consisted of 48 three-story, flat roofed, red brick residential buildings and one building for a central steam-heating plant.
Sumner School was closed in 1941, the building sold in 1945 and was eventually torn down. After a federal lawsuit, the Sumner Field Housing Project was torn down in 1998 and replaced by the current Heritage Park housing. It’s only Sumner Field park that still bears the name of this once well-known anti-slavery advocate.