Late last month, educators and school district officials in Minneapolis, Minnesota, reached a tentative agreement that ended a three-week teachers’ strike. The agreement ended a standoff that has seen classrooms closed for some 30,000 public school students.
The strike was the first for Minneapolis public schools in 52 years. In April 1970, teachers left the classrooms and snapped up pickets for a historic 20-day standoff. The teachers took a big risk at the time because a strike ban was imposed on public employees.
“The moment they picked up a placard and set foot on the sidewalk to join a demonstration, they broke state law,” said Dr. William Green, history professor at the University of Augsburg, to WCCO.
Although teachers eventually returned to work without a pay rise, the strike prompted the state to grant public sector workers the right to collective bargaining.
As part of its coverage of the 2022 strike, Minneapolis-based CBS affiliate WCCO searched archival footage of the 1970 demonstrations to reveal common themes between both movements. WCCO Executive Producer Matt Liddy has dug up 13 minutes of restored footage from the original strike in the station vault for use in his new report.
The footage included a reporter interviewing school children while teachers picketed near a school. Liddy was shocked to realize that one of the children interviewed looked a lot like Minneapolis and global music icon Prince. In 1970 the artist was known as Prince Nelson.
“I immediately went to the newsroom and started showing it to people and saying, ‘I’m not going to tell you who I think that is, but who do you think it is?’ And every single person [said] ‘Prince,'” said Liddy.
The newsroom didn’t have the right equipment to listen to the recording, so they hired a specialist to extract the audio from the interview.
“I think they should get a better education too because, um, and I think they should get some more money because they work, they work overtime for us and all that stuff,” said the kid suspected of to be prince.
It’s pretty clear why Liddy thought the kid in the footage was Prince. The boy physically resembles Prince and his smile is definitely reminiscent of the “Raspberry Beret” singer.
Unfortunately, the child does not tell the interviewer his name. But one of his friends in the video enthusiastically announces that he is “Ronnie Kitchen”. The news team tried to locate Kitchen, but their contact information turned up dead ends.
WCCO then reached out to Kristen Zsschomler, a Twin Cities historian who is also a big fan of Prince. She had collected a large 100-page document following Prince’s rise from Minneapolis to worldwide fame, which included pictures of him as a child.
“I think he is, definitely. Oh my God. Yeah, I think that’s definitely Prince,” she said.
Zschomler connected her to Terrance Jackson, a childhood friend of Prince’s who played in his first band, Grand Central. When Jackson showed the video, he immediately noticed Kitchen and Prince.
“Oh my god, this is Kitchen,” Jackson exclaimed as the video began. “This is prince! Stand up right there with the hat up, right? This is Skipper! Oh my God!”
Prince’s friends called him Skipper as a child.
Liddy’s find is an incredible discovery for Prince fans and people who grew up in Minneapolis. It shows that, even before he was a teenager, Prince had a twinkle in his eye that would become a hallmark of his larger than life personality. No one knows where the incredible charisma comes from, but after seeing this footage, Prince might just have been born with it.
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