Work People's College

Work People's College (Finnish: Työväen Opisto) was a radical labor college established in a largely rural area just outside Duluth, Minnesota in 1907 by the Finnish Socialist Federation of the Socialist Party of America. School administrators and faculty were sympathetic to the syndicalist left wing of the Finnish labor movement and the institution came into the orbit of the Industrial Workers of the World during the 1914-1915 factional battle that split the Finnish Federation. The school ceased operation in 1941.

In 2012 the Twin Cities branch of the Industrial Workers of the World relaunched Work People's College on a limited basis as a summer training camp for the group's activists and organizers.

Finnish immigrants to the United States during the first years of the 20th Century tended to be a literate community, with 97% of those arriving between 1899 ad 1907 knowing how to read and write. Education was a valued part of Finnish immigrant life and the desire for institutions of higher learning in their own language extended across generational and ideological boundaries. As early as 1900 there were discussions about establishing a school that would provide a liberal alternative to Suomi College and Seminary of Hancock, Michigan.

Work People's College was preceded by a "folk" high school of the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Church of America that was founded in Minneapolis in September 1903. The school was launched with a view to teaching the Finnish language and Lutheran religion to its students. Finnish immigrants in this period constituted nearly 40 percent of the population of Northern Minnesota, with a goodly number of these working in the mining and timber industries or on the docks of Duluth, a major port on the southernmost tip of Lake Superior.

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