Our Reporting

May 10, 2016

State agency pulls boys from Mesabi, warns other states

The Minnesota Department of Human Services is removing five boys it has jurisdiction over at the Iron Range residential treatment facility Mesabi Academy. It also told other states with boys there of its action.

May 9, 2016

Ramsey County to remove all youth from Mesabi Academy

Ramsey County officials said Monday they would pull the remaining 21 boys the county's courts have sent to the private correctional facility in Buhl, Minn. The action follows similar steps by Hennepin County on Friday and comes a week after APM Reports published results of an investigation into the facility, Mesabi Academy.

May 6, 2016

Hennepin County removes 20 children from Mesabi Academy after reports; Ramsey considering same

Hennepin County officials said Friday they're removing 20 children from a juvenile correctional facility on the Iron Range — Mesabi Academy — that's been the subject of two investigative news reports this week.

May 6, 2016

Claims of maltreatment, meager staff training and inadequate programs at Mesabi Academy

Interviews and records indicate troubling incidents and practices. Twin Cities counties are looking more closely at a facility where they've sent boys who need help.

May 5, 2016

Ramsey County freezes some placements at Mesabi Academy

Ramsey County social services authorities said Thursday they are not placing any more boys in the care of Mesabi Academy, a treatment facility in Buhl, Minn., in the wake of an APM Reports investigation into the center.

May 2, 2016

County reopens Mesabi Academy sex abuse inquiry

St. Louis County investigators asked for a tape recording a woman made of her son, talking about whether he had sex with a staffer at Mesabi Academy.

May 2, 2016

Private juvenile center conceals abuse inquiries and pressures county to keep its business deal

On the Iron Range, investigations have created tension between Mesabi Academy and St. Louis County. Job loss, though, was the main concern when county commissioners discouraged a health and human services leader from ending a critical contract with the company.

November 13, 2014

The First Family of Radio: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt's Historic Broadcasts

When Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected president in 1932, he and first lady Eleanor Roosevelt both used the new medium of radio to reach into American homes like never before.

February 12, 2011

Power and Smoke: A Nation Built on Coal

The production of electricity in America pumps out more greenhouse gases than all of our cars, trucks, planes, and ships combined, and half of our electricity comes from burning coal.

January 8, 2011

State of Siege: Mississippi Whites and the Civil Rights Movement

Mississippi led the South in an extraordinary battle to maintain racial segregation. Whites set up powerful citizens groups and state agencies to fight the civil rights movement. Their tactics were fierce and, for a time, very effective.

January 1, 2011

Say It Loud: A Century of Great African-American Speeches

Titled after the classic 1969 James Brown anthem, "Say it Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud," this anthology illuminates the ideas and debates pulsing through the black freedom struggle from the 1960s to the present. These arguments are suffused with basic questions about what it means to be black in America.

June 1, 2010

The Great Textbook War

What should children learn in school? It's a question that's stirred debate for decades, and in 1974 it led to violent protests in West Virginia. Schools were hit by dynamite, buses were riddled with bullets, and coal mines were shut down. The fight was over a new set of textbooks.

May 12, 2009

Bridge to Somewhere

President Barack Obama wants to create jobs by building infrastructure. So did another president. Franklin Delano Roosevelt tried to put people to work by building roads, bridges, dams, sewers, schools, hospitals and even ski jumps. The structures that New Deal agencies built transformed America.

October 12, 2008

Campaign '68

The 1968 presidential election was a watershed in American politics. After dominating the political landscape for more than a generation, the Democratic Party crumbled. Richard M. Nixon was elected president and a new era of Republican conservatism was born.

March 12, 2008

King's Last March

Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968. Four decades later, King remains one of the most vivid symbols of hope for racial unity in America. But that's not the way he was viewed in the last year of his life.

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