By: Anne Millerbernd
Don Olson saw Dinkytown through some of its most memorable social and political movements during the 1960s.
As Vietnam War protests flared up at colleges across the country, the former student activist, who dropped out in 1967 to focus on activism full time, was at the front lines of the University of Minnesota’s movement. Around the same time, a fast food restaurant called Red Barn was proposed in place of five businesses in the area. Olson supported a protest of the establishment that would become one of the most famous in Dinkytown’s history.