Innholdsfortegnelse for Summer 2020 i Wisconsin Magazine of History

IN THESE STRANGE WEEKS of preparing this issue amidst a global pandemic, I’ve been pondering this: when does the past become most relevant to the present? Change, whether expected or not, begs comparison; it can elicit a deep desire to understand the hows and whys that led to this moment, to go down the myriad rabbit holes of cause and effect. So it is with history. When we don’t know what to expect, we look to precedents, to what happened before. It is ironic, then, that the greatest historic precedent for today’s pandemic, the 1918 flu, has been largely ignored by history. Whether this amnesia is the result of the crisis being overshadowed by World War I or because those who survived it simply didn’t wish to revisit this bleak period…

“The fiction of the future will realize angels in the commonplace. It will clarify the beauty of much that we are accustomed to pass by.”—Zona Gale, Portage, Wisconsin and Other Essays (1928)1 “IS THERE A SCHOOL OF WISCONSIN WRITERS?” WROTE Zona Gale. It was 1895, the state’s entry into the Union was not yet half a century old, and Gale was a distinguished but unknown student of English literature at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. The youthful hubris of her undergraduate thesis question is palpable—even more so given the answer implied in the paper’s title: “The So-called School of Wisconsin Authors.” Gale’s critical review profiles fifteen writers bearing names now largely forgotten, including those of novelist Hamlin Garland, humor writer William Nye, poet Ella Wheeler Wilcox, and historian Charles King. Her…

ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO, the roaring twenties ushered in the last great decade of vaudeville entertainment. Beginning in the 1860s, vaudeville took shape from minstrel shows and encompassed a variety of live performance types, including dance, ventriloquism, burlesque, comedy, acrobatics, and magic. By the turn of the century, vaudeville had become a cultural phenomenon—and a massive industry. Jessie Kennison of Baraboo, Wisconsin, entered the vaudeville circuit while living in Chicago around 1900. In 1905, she married prominent hotel owner Fred A. Flom of Madison and moved there shortly afterward. In Madison, Jessie continued her career as a performer. Her success may have inspired her husband to open the very first vaudeville stage in the city; he fixed up a store basement to host the local talent. After this humble beginning,…

THE MARCH 2019 ANNOUNCEMENT BY THE ​Democratic National Committee that it planned to hold the party’s 2020 national convention in Milwaukee drew a distinct line of criticism from leading Wisconsin Republicans. “No city in America has stronger ties to socialism than Milwaukee,” Wisconsin Republican Party director Mark Jefferson asserted. “And with the rise of Bernie Sanders and the embrace of socialism by its newest leaders, the American left has come full circle. It’s only fitting the Democrats would come to Milwaukee.” Republican senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin said the Milwaukee convention would provide a “firsthand look” at “the risk of Democrat socialistic tendencies.” Democrats laughed off the jibes, noting that almost sixty years had passed since the last Socialist Party mayor of the city, Frank Zeidler, had finished his tenure…

The following excerpt comes from Hmong in Wisconsin, released this spring by the Wisconsin Historical Society Press as the latest addition to the People of Wisconsin series. Here, author Mai Zong Vue shares the story of Sia Vang, one of the first Hmong refugees to relocate to Wisconsin from Thai refugee camps following the Secret War in Laos. As I drove to Appleton to meet with Sia Vang at his video store, I thought a lot about my years in Kaukauna and Appleton. I knew and worked with Vang’s older cousin and had helped his uncle a few times due to my father’s connections as a clan leader. But I could not remember any interaction with Vang himself besides at community picnics we had both attended at High Cliff State…

ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO, the roaring twenties ushered in the last great decade of vaudeville entertainment. Beginning in the 1860s, vaudeville took shape from minstrel shows and encompassed a variety of live performance types, including dance, ventriloquism, burlesque, comedy, acrobatics, and magic. By the turn of the century, vaudeville had become a cultural phenomenon—and a massive industry. Jessie Kennison of Baraboo, Wisconsin, entered the vaudeville circuit while living in Chicago around 1900. In 1905, she married prominent hotel owner Fred A. Flom of Madison and moved there shortly afterward. In Madison, Jessie continued her career as a performer. Her success may have inspired her husband to open the very first vaudeville stage in the city; he fixed up a store basement to host the local talent. After this humble beginning,…

When I saw your article on a meteorite strike in Clark Co. I hoped that it would confirm a story my father told of his childhood. Unfortunately, the dates do not match. Sometime between 1928 and 1935, my father and his family were sitting on their farm porch in the Town of Lynn, some thirty miles south of Colby, after evening milking. They observed a streak of light in the sky followed by a loud bang as an object fell into the woods less than one-quarter mile from their home. The next day they went to the woods and found broken tree branches and an unusual rock partially buried in the ground. They dug it out, hauled it home, and placed it under some pine trees in their front yard.…