These photos of Jewish entrepreneurs thriving in Minnesota, despite persecution, will inspire you

Excluded from most jobs, Midwest Jews started their own businesses in order to survive

National Jewish Workers Alliance Home, Minneapolis. (Steinfeldt Photography Collection/Upper Midwest Jewish Archives, University of Minnesota)

Jake Mogelson sold cigars and candy out of his St. Paul shop. Sam Solomon ran a laundry business in the border town of International Falls. After Prohibition, Sam Zimmerman opened Minnehaha Liquor Store in the Longfellow neighborhood of Minneapolis. Most Americans become entrepreneurs to control their own destiny. For the Jews of Minnesota, it was a necessity.

Pogroms and upheaval in Eastern Europe during the late 19th and early 20th centuries had driven a wave of Jews into the state. They arrived with little money, speaking little English, alienated even from the established German and Austro-Hungarian Jewish community, which was Americanized and less religiously strict. Jobs could be found in sweatshops and cigar factories, at least in the major cities, but traditional blue-collar trades were mostly closed to them. They had to go into business for themselves to make a living.

Low-cost enterprises became the bottom rung of a financial ladder. Door-to-door salesmen and scrap-metal dealers eked out meager livings, saving what they could. The pivotal next step was to open a store, a base of operations run by the family that could furnish the next generation of traveling salesmen. As income and networks grew, shopkeepers could then expand into distribution or wholesale, employing Jews facing discrimination outside of the community.

Minnehaha Liquor Store, Minneapolis. (Steinfeldt Photography Collection/Upper Midwest Jewish Archives, University of Minnesota)

Times were already hard in Minnesota leading up to the Great Depression. Logging was moving west, grain mills moved out of the state, and the formerly transcontinental shipping business was moving through the Panama Canal. After the First World War, agricultural commodities went into recession. Overseas, the Russian Revolution sparked a panic over foreign radicals, and anti-Semitism was on the rise all across the nation. In the spring of 1924, Congress easily passed race and ethnic restrictions on immigration, partially in response to the more than two and a half million Eastern European Jews who had landed at Ellis Island since 1880. The backlash even hit long-established middle-class Jews, who found reliable white-collar jobs suddenly beyond their reach. Organizations were formed to tackle employment discrimination on both fronts, keeping track of companies that refused to hire Jews and finding jobs for Jews at companies that would.

After the Second World War, soldiers returned from Europe and the Pacific to a new country of possibility and prosperity. But the promises of a robust America hadn’t trickled down to everyone just yet. In 1948, Hubert H. Humphrey, then mayor of Minneapolis, released a report documenting widespread discrimination across employment sectors. Sixty-three percent of responding firms hired no Jews, blacks or Japanese.

Jake Mogelson in front of his tobacco and confectionery store, St. Paul, June 1st, 1915. (Steinfeldt Photography Collection/Upper Midwest Jewish Archives, University of Minnesota)

(left) David and Joe Gantman inside Gantman’s Meat Market, St. Paul. | (right) C. Maslow Grocery Store, North Side, Minneapolis, 1947. (Steinfeldt Photography Collection/Upper Midwest Jewish Archives, University of Minnesota)

Sam Solomon at his business, Master Cleaners, International Falls. (Steinfeldt Photography Collection/Upper Midwest Jewish Archives, University of Minnesota)

David Scheinberg at his grocery store on Minneapolis’s South Side, 1930. (Steinfeldt Photography Collection/Upper Midwest Jewish Archives, University of Minnesota)

Customers in front of Bernie’s Sandwich Shop, St. Paul. (Steinfeldt Photography Collection/Upper Midwest Jewish Archives, University of Minnesota)

(left) Fannie S. Cohen, graduate of the University of Minnesota School of Pharmacy. | (right) Abe Orbuch at Abe’s Produce warehouse, Foley, 1930. (Steinfeldt Photography Collection/Upper Midwest Jewish Archives, University of Minnesota)

Sylvia Borken at the family store, Knox Market, North Minneapolis, 1950. (Steinfeldt Photography Collection/Upper Midwest Jewish Archives, University of Minnesota)

Harry Frishberg at his men’s clothing store, Buffalo. (Steinfeldt Photography Collection/Upper Midwest Jewish Archives, University of Minnesota)

(left) Rose and Ben Mirskey in front of Mirskey’s Grocery Store, St. Paul, 1938. | (right) Supornick’s Grocery delivery truck, St. Paul. (Steinfeldt Photography Collection/Upper Midwest Jewish Archives, University of Minnesota)

Proprietor and printer in front of Schwartz Print Shop in Minneapolis, 1912. (Steinfeldt Photography Collection/Upper Midwest Jewish Archives, University of Minnesota)

(left) Max Shapiro behind the counter at Shapiro’s Butcher Shop, Tower, 1892. | (right) Workers at a laundry shop, 1919. (Steinfeldt Photography Collection/Upper Midwest Jewish Archives, University of Minnesota)

Modelevsky family inside Modelevsky Grocery store, St. Paul, 1926. (Steinfeldt Photography Collection/Upper Midwest Jewish Archives, University of Minnesota)

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