Innholdsfortegnelse for Winter 2016 - 2017 i Wisconsin Magazine of History

In 1974, Wisconsin had the highest number of juveniles in adult jails in the nation. Of the staggering number of 23,694 kids incarcerated, 10,688 were in county jails and 5,831 were in city jails, with the remainder housed more appropriately in juvenile detention centers.1 Most jailed youth were held in isolation cells to keep them separate from adults.2 Incredibly, as many as two-thirds of these children were not charged with any crime.3 They were labeled as “status offenders”—runaways, school truants, or “uncontrolled.” Four hundred and eighteen were labeled simply “neglected or abused.”4 Over one thousand of the children were thirteen or younger; the youngest was just seven years old.5 How could this happen to Wisconsin’s children? This article traces how a group of activists began to peel back the coverings…

In the city of Oaxaca, Mexico, on August 2, 1950, the newspaper Provincia reported that the current director of the city’s School of Music and Speech, Diego Innes Acevedo, had been designated the new director of the State Band of Oaxaca.1 Though later sources described Innes, a native Oaxacan, as having spent some thirty-five years in the United States and leading a “symphonic orchestra in Milwaukee,” the story of his life in the country remains largely unknown.2 While in the United States, Innes conducted a number of orchestras in Milwaukee, including the Wisconsin WPA Symphony Orchestra, which was established by the Works Project Administration Federal Music Project in the late 1930s. In the United States’ conception of the interwar years, Latin America came to be seen as provocative, thrilling, cooperative,…

A sled that “rides like a bronco!” “The greatest thrill on any hill!” “A safe, yet thrilling new winter sport!” That is how a 1958 advertisement for the Mirro Aluminum Company of Manitowoc, Wisconsin, described its new aluminum toy, the Sno-Bronco. The company already had had success with its Sno Coaster, a saucer-shaped sled introduced in 1954 that took advantage of America’s fascination with flying saucers. With the Sno-Bronco, the company cashed in on the 1950s cowboy craze that had been spurred on by television and movie Westerns. The sled supposedly gave a “rock ’n’ roll ride,” simulating the rough ride of a real bronco, with the front end able to pivot right and left on a ball joint. The high seat may have reinforced this feeling, but one rider…

Congratulations to John Nondorf, winner of the forty-ninth annual William Best Hesseltine Award for volume 99 of Wisconsin Magazine of History. His article, “Nous Vous Remercions: The French Gratitude Train,” appeared in the Winter 2016–2016 issue and received the most votes from readers for the best article of the volume year. The story opens at the close of World War II, when much of France lay in ruin and food production was minimal. The United States quickly began supplying aid to the French, but the grandest plan was hatched by syndicated columnist Drew Pearson, who invited Americans to bring food produced in their fields and their homes and pack a train car as it made its way across the country. The response was enthusiastic, as Americans, even those living near…