This Black History Month 2026 we will spotlight Black Minnesotans whose contributions unfortunately got overlooked and often forgotten locally and nationally.
This week’s question: Did you know Minnesota had a dominant Black basketball team during the 1920s? New York-based historian Claude Johnson, founder and executive director of the Black Fives nonprofit organization (www.blackfives.org), recently emailed me the answer.
The Minnesota Up-Towns were sponsored by St. Paul Black businessman Owen Howell, who founded the team in 1922. They were hailed as “the strongest colored quintet in the Northwest,” wrote Johnson.
The all-Black team was named for Howell’s Up-Town Sanitary Shop, then located at 339 Wabasha Street in downtown St. Paul. Howell also was a community leader, founder of two Black newspapers, and president of the St. Paul chapter of the National Negro Business League.
Otis Woodard, Harry Davis, Clifford Bush, Lonzo Few, Walter Chestnut, John White and Joe Carr were the featured players, and John Davis served as the team’s manager. They practiced and played their home games at Mechanics Arts Gymnasium in St. Paul.
Reportedly the Up-Towns played 15 games and only lost four times, competing against “some of the strongest quintets in the Twin Cities” and usually the only Black team in amateur basketball tournaments in 1922.
Johnson recently discovered the Up-Towns, a Minnesota Black basketball team based in a state more known for hockey than hoops for most of the early 20th century.
“I think sometimes I’m just as thrilled to hear about something new that I’m learning,” stressed Johnson. Now he knows about the Up-Towns and Howell’s five-decades-successful business, whose motto was “The Home of Service” that did cleaning, repairing and pressing suits, shoes and hats, and dry cleaning.
Howell also sponsored a Black bowling league and a Black baseball team, both under the Up-Town Sanitary Shop moniker. His shop, founded in 1901, closed in 1950, and Howell passed away in 1955.
“More than a team,” continued Johnson, “they inspired and reinforced Black entrepreneurship, community pride, and resilience.”
“Let’s tell their story,” he said on the Up-Towns, “because the way we do it, it’s the research, and it’s the education.”
Now the Minnesota Up-Towns takes its place in the state’s “forgotten history.” As Johnson said, “We should just celebrate it.”
Black men’s brain health
The fifth annual Black Men’s Brain Health Conference took place February 3-4 in Oakland, Calif. during Super Bowl Week. This year’s theme is “The Power of Community Engagement: Transforming Black Men’s Participation in Brain Health and AD/ADRD Research.”
It featured both in-person and online sessions, including one on the legacy of the Black Panther Party’s public health programs, a leadership symposium for high school players, and a wellness workshop.
Former pro football player and current brain health researcher Dr. Robert W. Turner III started the conference. “When we started working on this project, I never imagined it would have such an impact on so many people’s lives,” he said in a press release. “It is amazing to see NFL athletes come together with Alzheimer’s caregivers, researchers, clinicians, and people from the community to address this critical issue.”
The Black Men’s Brain Health Imitative examines how sociocultural impacts and early detection of brain health issues, including Alzheimer’s, can improve wellness in the Black community.
Turner told us previously that what better place to discuss brain health among Black men is where the Super Bowl is being staged.
Charles Hallman welcomes reader comments to challman@spokesman-recorder.com.