Each month, Seward Co-op partners with a local organization for a simple yet powerful community giving opportunity that allows shoppers to “round-up” their grocery bill at the register for recipient organizations.
Called the SEED program, this series of partnerships allows Seward Co-op to work alongside organizations that share our commitment to a healthy community. All funds donated at the register are given directly to the recipient organization at the end of each month.
This February, Seward Co-op is excited to have the Cultural Wellness Center as our SEED recipient. A nonprofit founded and sustained by African Americans, the Cultural Wellness Center works to unleash the power of people to heal themselves and build community.
One of the Cultural Wellness Center’s main efforts is to establish their future world headquarters, called Dreamland, on 38th Street, just a block from the Seward Co-op Friendship store.
Not only will this be a hub for Cultural Wellness Center activity, it will also play a significant role in supporting a thriving corridor of Black culture and business that has a legacy in the area. SEED donations in February will help the Cultural Wellness Center on their journey to breaking ground on Dreamland.
The history of this neighborhood goes back many decades, but an igniting spark came in the form of the Dreamland Café, founded in 1937 on the same ground where the Cultural Wellness Center plans to develop their world headquarters.
Dreamland Café was started by Anthony B. Cassius, a refugee from the Tulsa riots, who established with Dreamland the first integrated restaurant in the Twin Cities. Anthony Taylor (they/them), community development lead at the Cultural Wellness Center, says that Dreamland was “a business where for the cost of a soda, the young hotheads could conspire against the system.”
In addition to a record store, barber shop, grocer, and other Black-owned businesses, the area was also (and is still) home to the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder, the longest family-run African American newspaper in Minnesota, as well as the Tilsenbilt Homes District, a housing project that was one of the first in the country to offer FHA-insured mortgages to all buyers, regardless of race, as well as the first privately developed project in Minneapolis to be interracial.
The Cultural Wellness Center was founded in 1996 as the living legacy of a health initiative called Healthy Powderhorn, which ran the previous two years as a study into why some Black babies lived while others were dying at a higher rate than White babies. As it turned out, Black children with access to African cultural traditions, connectedness, and community were thriving.
Today, the Cultural Wellness Center is focused on finding a solution to the problem that losing culture and community is making people sick. In more recent years, this drive has linked deeply to real estate development, which creates a physical space for culture, connectedness and community. Dreamland on 38th Street will be that center. Its connection to the past booming neighborhood of Black middle-class life, culture and validation in the 38th Street corridor makes it all the more significant.
The future Dreamland on 38th Street will include an incubator for African American entrepreneurs, a community gathering and event space, and a guided self-study community archive to support people to dig deeper into and document their own story.
For Anthony Taylor, the most exciting thing to look forward to is the creation of a place where the community is able to validate their own humanity and study themselves from a legacy standpoint.
This February, ask to round up at the Seward Co-op register or add any donation amount to support the construction of Dreamland on 38th Street and the future of the Cultural Wellness Center.
Seward Community Co-op is open 8 a.m.-10 p.m. daily and has stores located at 2823 E. Franklin Ave., Minneapolis, MN 55406, and 317 E 38th Street, Minneapolis MN 55409.
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