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…