Innholdsfortegnelse for Spring 2021 i Wisconsin Magazine of History

As each issue of WMH comes together, I look for common themes and unexpected connections across what often seems a tapestry of disparate subjects and approaches. With this issue, however, it wasn’t difficult to see the through line. Although the articles cover a mélange of subjects, from the Confederate POWs at Camp Randall to Mayor Frank Zeidler’s plan to keep Milwaukeeans safe should the Cold War turn hot, they all bear witness to war: from the Civil War to Vietnam, the Cold War to the Secret War. And other conflicts can be found in these pages. Most influential to me is the story by Margaret Rozga, who was an active member of the Milwaukee NAACP Youth Council. Before the two hundred days of marching for open housing began in 1967,…

IN THE YEARS FOLLOWING WORLD WAR II, America's postwar prosperity was shadowed by the perceived threat of Communism at home and the possibility of nuclear war. Differing visions of the postwar order and mutual distrust between the United States and Soviet Union led to the creation of the Iron Curtain. Fighting the Red threat galvanized Americans in the common cause of fighting Communism. Invoking the moralistic language of liberty, President Harry Truman in 1947 issued domestic anticommunist measures and declared the Truman Doctrine, establishing the American policy of opposing Communist expansion abroad to protect US interests.1 That year, a Gallup poll revealed that more than 70 percent of Americans favored friendly Soviet relations; one year later, 76 percent of Americans had come to believe world domination was Soviet policy and…

It is with deepest thanks that the Wisconsin Historical Society recognizes individuals and organizations who contributed $5,000 or more cumulatively between January 1, 2020, and December 31, 2020, including pledges and gifts of membership. $25,000+ Anonymous Ruth and Hartley Barker Advised Fund through Incourage Community Foundation Angela and Jeff Bartell Black Point Historic Preservation Operation and Maintenance Fund at the Greater Milwaukee Foundation The Boldt Company The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation Mr. Craig C. Culver Robert C. Dohmen Ray and Kay Eckstein Charitable Trust Dan and Natalie Erdman The Evjue Foundation, Inc., the charitable arm of The Capital Times Pleasant and Jerry Frautschi John J. Frautschi Family Foundation Jeffris Family Foundation Ltd. Robert D. Kern Kohler Trust for Preservation Mark and Ilene* Laufman Irving & Dorothy Levy Family Foundation…

On the wide front porch, we sat talking, laughing, and eating, paper plates on our laps, small white plastic forks in our hands. On this particular July evening in 1966, one week after my twenty-first birthday, Milwaukee NAACP Youth Council members Nathaniel Harwell, Pamela MacGregor, Anne Evers, Andrew Tyler, and I enjoyed BBQ pork shoulder sandwiches from Speed Queen, then located about a mile south of the Freedom House, our office on Fifth and Brown Streets. Nathaniel and I had become friends a year earlier when we and six other students from Milwaukee-area colleges all volunteered to work on a Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) summer voter registration drive. Spending three months in Bullock County, Alabama, showed me poverty I hadn’t known existed and a hostility to voting rights that…

  MILWAUKEE NATIVE BARBARA REYNOLDS moved to Hiroshima, Japan, in 1951 with her husband, Earle, who was studying the effects of radiation on children for the US Atomic Energy Commission. Their discoveries led the Reynolds to dedicate themselves to antinuclear activism. They sailed their yacht, The Phoenix of Hiroshima, into US and Russian nuclear testing areas to protest the use of the bombs. Barbara toured nations with nuclear capabilities in the company of Hiroshima bomb survivors, known as hibakusha, to show the suffering the weapons can cause. In 1965, Barbara founded the World Friendship Center in Hiroshima as a place for people to hear the stories of hibakusha and to work for peace. Inspired by the story of Sadako, a girl who attempted to fold one thousand paper cranes so…

Our house in Kimberly is along the muddy shoreline of the Fox River, and I often stand in the backyard, close my eyes, and think about my parents, siblings, ancestors, and childhood home half a world away in the mountains of Laos. When I’m near the river, I imagine that my mom, dad, and ancestors are with me and that they’re my angels. Then I whisper, “I made it. And I’m okay.” I used to weep in sorrow. In time, however, my tears became tears of joy. Even so, because I’m far from home, and because I’ve changed so much during my life, I often ask myself, “When I die, and one of my many souls makes it to the ancestors’ world, will my parents and ancestors be proud of…