People, Locations, Episodes

The Hallie Q. Brown Center, (St. Paul) Opens

H.Q.B. Union Hall (1940)

The Hallie Q. Brown Center of St. Paul, MN, was incorporated on this date in 1929.  The center is one of Minnesota's oldest African American community service organizations.

The Hallie Q. Brown Center’s story started in 1908 when Black members of the Odd Fellows and Masons fraternal lodges of St. Paul purchased six lots on Aurora Street between Kent and Mackubin located within St. Paul's largely Black Rondo neighborhood. There the organization began to serve the unmet needs of the Black community and create better relationships with the white community.

In 1914, the Union Hall Association was organized, and it built a neighborhood center on one of the lots. From 1923-1929, the St. Paul Urban League and the YWCA contributed funds and other support.

In 1929, a new interracial committee was formed under The Hallie Q. Brown Community House and I. Myrtle Carden of Pittsburgh, PA., was hired as its first director. Carden served the community house for 20 years and left in 1949. During her tenure, Hallie Q. Brown became the second-largest neighborhood center in St. Paul.

Over the years, the center grew to provide educational, social, cultural, and human services activities for community residents of all ages. During the 1970s, the organization's name was changed to the Hallie Q. Brown Community Center. Also during this time, it constructed a new, larger facility--the Martin Luther King Center on Kent Street to accommodate its wide-ranging programs.

Hallie Q. Brown thrives with several daily community and educational programs and has also been home to Penumbra Theatre.