Sabathani Community Center marks 60 years with block party honoring Clarissa Walker and Launa Q. Newman

Sabathani Community Center will celebrate six decades of serving the heart of South Minneapolis with “Coming Back Home: Sabathani’s 60th Anniversary Block Party” on Saturday, Aug. 8, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the center’s parking lot at 310 E. 38th St. The event is free and open to the public.

The celebration marks a milestone for one of Minnesota’s oldest Black-founded nonprofits while honoring two women whose leadership helped shape South Minneapolis: Clarissa Rogers Walker and Launa Q. Newman, longtime Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder publisher and grandmother of current MSR CEO and Publisher Tracey Williams-Dillard.

Walker and Newman were both honored in November 2019 when the Minneapolis City Council designated six-block stretches of South Minneapolis in their names: Clarissa Rogers Walker Way, running along 3rd Avenue South, and Launa Q. Newman Way, along 4th Avenue South, both stretching from East 36th to East 42nd streets. This year’s block party allows the broader community to celebrate both women together, following what organizers describe as a recognition that never got its full moment amid the pandemic.

Two women who shaped the South Side

Walker, a Kansas City transplant who arrived in the Twin Cities in the 1950s, became a social worker and eventually landed at Sabathani, where she organized the Sabathani Family Resource Center. She ran its food shelf, clothing shelf and emergency assistance programs, making sure families in need were treated with dignity.

Her daughter, Neva Walker of IME Consulting, has carried that legacy forward as a co-presenter of this year’s block party. Neva Walker grew up at Sabathani, working the food shelf as a child, recruiting friends for back-to-school donation drives as a teenager, and later raising her own son alongside nieces and nephews in the center’s youth program.

“My mom was a visionary that believed her main goal was taking care of people,” Neva Walker said. “It wasn’t just about giving food; it was about seeing the whole person and their family.”

Neva Walker described her mother’s approach as offering “a helping hand up” rather than charity alone, whether that meant teaching someone to grow their own food, helping them find stable housing, or making sure elders had a community program to turn to.

“People don’t just get streets named after them,” Neva Walker said. “For us in the Black community, oftentimes our leaders who are just doing the actual work day to day, they don’t get recognized either.”

Newman, an Iowa native who moved to the Twin Cities in 1958, married Cecil Newman, founder of the Minneapolis Spokesman and the St. Paul Recorder. After Cecil Newman died in 1976, Launa Newman took over daily operations of both papers, eventually leading their merger into the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder in 2000. She later passed leadership to her children, Norma Jean Williams and Wallace “Jack” Jackman, before naming her granddaughter, Tracey Williams-Dillard, publisher and CEO in 2007. She remained active in community service until she died in 2009.

“My grandmother taught me that this work has never been about any one person; it’s about showing up for your community and making sure their stories get told,” Williams-Dillard said. “Seeing her honored alongside Ms. Walker at this celebration means everything to our family, and it’s a reminder of the shoulders MSR and Sabathani both stand on.”

“A blueprint” for the next 60 years

Sabathani President and CEO Scott Redd, who joined the organization about four years ago, said the community’s resilience through the pandemic, the 2020 uprising following George Floyd’s murder, and more recent challenges has been shaped by the leaders who came before him.

“I don’t think there’s too many communities that’s been thrown, especially Black communities, all these things and been able to withstand it like this community has,” Redd said. “I think that doesn’t happen without the groundwork, without leaders like Ms. Newman, Ms. Walker, Mr. [Cecil] Newman, Bill English, Tracey [Williams-Dillard].”

Redd said stepping into the role felt less like starting something new and more like continuing an existing legacy.

“I had a blueprint,” Redd said. “Never have I worked for an organization that has been such a long-standing, trusted community partner like Sabathani.”

Redd drew a direct connection between Sabathani and MSR as sister institutions.

“When you think about organizations like the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder, we are legacy organizations that our community is not going to let go away, because they need us,” Redd said. “They need places like Sabathani, places like the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder, to capture their voice. To not speak for them, but to speak to them and with them.”

Sabathani’s building is currently undergoing a geothermal heating and cooling system upgrade, funded in part by $17 million in raised support, replacing a roughly 67-year-old HVAC system that cost about $28,000 a month to operate.

What to expect at the block party

The event will feature live music from Sounds of Blackness, Johnnie Brown and other local performers, along with food trucks and a vendor marketplace Redd described as an extension of the neighborhood’s “Black Wall Street.” A backpack giveaway sponsored by Greater Twin Cities United Way will distribute any unclaimed backpacks starting at 2:30 p.m. on a first-come, first-served basis.

The event is presented in partnership with Neva Walker of IME Consulting and Tracey Williams-Dillard of the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder, with additional sponsorship from CenterPoint Energy, Xcel Energy and others. More information is available at www.sabathani.org/block-party.

Jasmine McBride welcomes reader responses at jmcbride@spokesman-recorder.com.