A person can be a lot in one lifetime. Take Felix Battles. He was a pioneer barber and community organizer, a Civil War veteran, and in his youth, a child slave valued at $600.
The Felix Battles monument was dedicated in Fall 2023 near where Battles’ family home once stood. The memorial, located outside Minnesota State University Moorhead’s Center for Business, honors African American Civil War veterans and pays homage to Battles’ contributions to the Red River Valley.
No known photo exists of Battles, yet his influence on the region is more vivid than ever, thanks to Minnesota State University Moorhead School of Communication and Journalism students who recently made a short film about him.
With help from the Historical and Cultural Society of Clay County and under the supervision of WDAY reporter and MSUM Broadcast Documentary Instructor Kevin Wallevand and students premieres “The Pioneer Barber.”
Watch “The Pioneer Barber” trailer.
“Felix played a pivotal role in Moorhead’s early business community. And as a well-respected barber, he paved the way for more persons of color to move to this region and call Fargo-Moorhead home,” Wallevand said. “The documentary is all student-driven. They write, research, study, interview, and produce-edit the entire piece every year.”
The making of ‘The Pioneer Barber’
Running just under 27 minutes, “The Pioneer Barber” is the culmination of the work of more than a dozen students majoring in everything from broadcast journalism to film.
Broadcast Journalism major Christopher Hovden directed “The Pioneer Barber” and said it was an incredible learning experience, from both an artistic lens and a technical angle.
“From managing a group of people to different styles of storytelling and different ways to tell a story, it was a huge learning experience,” Hovden said. “There weren’t any images of Felix, for example, so we had to find ways to put together so much information that could be easily understood and really truly tell the entire story with what we had.”
Wallevand, who covered the monument story in a news assignment last fall, said he was glad his students chose to feature Battles in their documentary project.
“I did a story when they were cutting the outline of the statue that would go up at MSUM. I got to thinking that there seems to be more to the story than a news article,” Wallevand said. “And so the students just took it on.”
Researching the past
Hovden said archives at MSUM as well as the Historical and Cultural Society of Clay County were integral to the project.
Research efforts uncovered many fascinating clues to the history of Black Americans in the Red River Valley, including archival documentation from Roland Dille’s tenure as MSUM’s president that revealed threats on his life for welcoming African American students to campus.
“They really went deep into this to learn more about this individual who was so important to our region. It more than scratched the surface,” Wallevand said.
Hovden said his film team uncovered a probate inventory document from 1856 that revealed Battles’ monetary worth as an enslaved child in Holly Springs, Mississippi.
“We found hundreds of documents of his life as a slave and his journey from the south and up to Minnesota,” Hovden said.
Seeking historical accuracy
As journalism students, accuracy is everything, and Wallevand’s students were sure to include artistic and cultural elements that reflected what people from Battles’ time might have experienced.
“We felt we had to reflect some more of that era in some way, so we had a student reach out to the Second South Carolina String Band, which informed the film’s music by representing something Felix and his family would have listened to,” Hovden said. “We can’t really explain or realize what his life might have been like, but the music is more personal.”
Wallevand said students searched the area for “the perfect barber pole” to photograph and video for the documentary, too. “But without a photo [of Battles], it comes down to artistic storytelling, especially these days [when] we’re so used to having quick access to images,” he said.
‘A history and personality’
For Wallevand, seeing the final film on the big screen is one thing, but celebrating the efforts of his students to bring Battles to life in a way that hasn’t been done before is most satisfying.
Hovden, who graduates in 2025, said the project ultimately helped him understand how to show and tell a story that’s both personal and historical.
“You only have time to scratch the surface in a short news story, but for this film, you get to dig into what happened and why,” Hovden said. “Even though I don’t have a visual image of him, he seems to have a history and personality to me now.”
Felix Battles at HCSCC
HCSCC archivists uncovered a treasure trove of information about Felix Battles’ life and influence on the Red River Valley, leading to their involvement in bringing The Felix Battles Memorial at MSUM to life. HCSCC’s Programming Director Markus Krueger designed the memorial. More information about HCSCC’s Felix Battles archives can be found here.
