Innholdsfortegnelse for Spring 2016 i Wisconsin Magazine of History

This is the story of how Wisconsin mandated special education for all children with disabilities. Simply stated, it happened when parents, mostly mothers, became frustrated with the status quo of permissive legislation that allowed but did not mandate school districts to provide special education programs. Together, they persuaded legislators to recognize that the Wisconsin Constitution guaranteed a free public education to all children. Thirty years later, Dr. Kenneth Blessing1 summarized the achievement in his book, 150 Years of Special Education in Wisconsin, by writing: Historically and programmatically, Chapter 115, Laws of 1973, was undoubtedly the most significant single occurrence in the state’s special education history in the 20th century and the 50 years prior to 1900.2 This is how it happened. We know. We were there. Background Since Wisconsin’s founding…

Late in 1966, a Milwaukee Journal photographer snapped an unassuming picture of Forthune Humphrey Jr., a member of the Milwaukee National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Youth Council, mopping the floor of the group’s Freedom House. Behind Humphrey hangs a large bulletin board filled with carefully trimmed newspaper clippings. One news photograph shows a line of police officers with riot helmets and batons standing alongside young marchers.1 Articles recount the presence of counterdemonstrators, including Ku Klux Klan members in white robes and pointed hoods, and National Guardsmen with sharp bayonets at the ready as tensions rose. The clippings are not from well-known civil rights campaigns in the Deep South—the iconic struggles highlighted in school textbooks and popular accounts of the movement. Instead, they depict a critical, grassroots…

Although the New York Times eulogized Belle Case La Follette in 1931 as perhaps “the most influential of all American women who have had to do with public affairs in this country,” she faded quickly from popular memory.1 And when she is recalled, it’s usually in relation to her husband and sons. This minimization of her own accomplishments began with progressive reform giant Robert M. La Follette famously calling her “my wisest and best counselor.” He openly deferred to his wife’s judgment throughout his storied professional life: as a district attorney, three-term congressman (1885–1891), lawyer (1891–1900), three-term governor of Wisconsin (1900–1906), and, most significantly, during his nineteen years in the US Senate (1906–1925). According to their son-in-law, playwright George Middleton, “Except John Adams with his Abigail, no man in public life was…

Niels Aasen was known in his home country as the “Edison of Norway.” Best known for the invention of the modern hand grenade and other weaponry used in World War I, Aasen relocated to Stoughton, Wisconsin, in 1924 and established the Aasen Corporation of America. The mask pictured above was invented by Aasen to cure his own insomnia, probably brought on by his wartime experiences. The accompanying literature suggests that warm air currents gently moving over the face induce sleep. It offers supporting evidence of birds that tuck their heads under their wings and Hindu slaves fanning their masters with palm leaves. The mask was to be worn over the face from mouth to forehead while lying in bed. Exhaled air moving rhythmically over the face caused a soothing sensation…

The story of Michigan and the automobile industry in the early twentieth century permeates American culture. But many would be surprised to learn of Wisconsin’s early leadership in the production of internal combustion engines. More than a decade before Henry Ford introduced the Model T, farmers began using stationary and portable internal combustion engines for farmwork. Known as “gas engines,” the top two producers of such engines in the early twentieth century were Fairbanks, Morse & Co. and International Harvester—not necessarily in that order. The former produced engines in Beloit, Wisconsin, and the latter in Milwaukee at the old Milwaukee Harvester plant. Fuller & Johnson Mfg. Co. in Madison was yet another important producer of gas engines in those early years. Madison was also home to the popular magazine Gas…

Late in 1966, a Milwaukee Journal photographer snapped an unassuming picture of Forthune Humphrey Jr., a member of the Milwaukee National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Youth Council, mopping the floor of the group’s Freedom House. Behind Humphrey hangs a large bulletin board filled with carefully trimmed newspaper clippings. One news photograph shows a line of police officers with riot helmets and batons standing alongside young marchers.1 Articles recount the presence of counterdemonstrators, including Ku Klux Klan members in white robes and pointed hoods, and National Guardsmen with sharp bayonets at the ready as tensions rose. The clippings are not from well-known civil rights campaigns in the Deep South—the iconic struggles highlighted in school textbooks and popular accounts of the movement. Instead, they depict a critical, grassroots…

Niels Aasen was known in his home country as the “Edison of Norway.” Best known for the invention of the modern hand grenade and other weaponry used in World War I, Aasen relocated to Stoughton, Wisconsin, in 1924 and established the Aasen Corporation of America. The mask pictured above was invented by Aasen to cure his own insomnia, probably brought on by his wartime experiences. The accompanying literature suggests that warm air currents gently moving over the face induce sleep. It offers supporting evidence of birds that tuck their heads under their wings and Hindu slaves fanning their masters with palm leaves. The mask was to be worn over the face from mouth to forehead while lying in bed. Exhaled air moving rhythmically over the face caused a soothing sensation…