Innholdsfortegnelse for Spring 2024 i Wisconsin Magazine of History

As you open this issue, you may, like me, be waiting to see the first stubborn signs of spring: the crocus, early daffodil, or skunk cabbage. Like these early spring ephemerals, each of the articles in our Spring issue has in common an individual or group that pushes through the firm soil of conventional thinking to emerge in open air and bloom. In a provocative personal essay, Zibiquah Denny (Potawatomi and Ho-Chunk) writes about the secrecy surrounding her naming ceremony and the deep dive she took to understand it. As a descendent of the ceremonial community at Skunk Hill, she was told from childhood about the religious traditions that led her grandfather to break away from the Kansas reservation and resettle in central Wisconsin. But as an inquisitive ten-year-old who…

The following selection comes from Wisconsin for Kennedy: The Primary That Launched a President and Changed the Course of History, written by B.J. Hollars and released in Spring 2024 from the Wisconsin Historical Society Press. In early 1960, presidential hopeful John F. Kennedy faced an uncertain path to the Oval Office. So he did something no winning candidate had done before: he leveraged the power of state primaries, appealing directly to the people to help clinch his party’s nomination. Wisconsin for Kennedy shares the history-making events of the 1960 Wisconsin primary and how Kennedy’s nail-biting win propelled him all the way to the presidency. Author B.J. Hollars brings this story to life by going behind the scenes with the people who made it happen—Wisconsinites from all walks of life who…

Every season, my family—two brothers, two sisters, Mom, and me—climbed into Uncle Tommy’s Ford and rode north for three hours, mostly in silence. We were heading from Milwaukee to Wisconsin Rapids for the Potawatomi Drum Dance ceremony. Sitting still in a cramped car for three hours can be torture for five kids, but if we acted up, Mom’s warning—her long arm with a fist at the end of it—would be the only thing we needed to see before we all shut the hell up. The car ride was just the beginning of sitting still. Once we got there, we would have to sit still for two more days in the dance ring. Since I was the youngest and smallest I got to sit up front between my mom and Uncle…

On the evening of Friday, October 17, 2003, more than five hundred concertgoers packed into the Todd Wehr Auditorium, a performance space on the campus of the Milwaukee School of Engineering (MSOE). They had come to see a series of alternative music acts, including Minneapolis-based Motion City Soundtrack and an up-and-coming band hailing from Chicago, Fall Out Boy. Fall Out Boy’s debut album, Take This to Your Grave, had been released in May 2003 and was in the process of finding its way into the hands of underground music fans. For many in attendance that fall night, it seemed Fall Out Boy was coming into its own. To show promoter Marc Solheim, the band was “starting to get some national attention, but they were not the Fall Out Boy they…

Praise for the Winter Issue I read Matt Blessing’s wonderful story about Hal Bradley, from the Winter 2023 issue, with delight. I met Hal Bradley at the Sierra Club headquarters in 1964, where I had spent the day reading an as-yet unpublished manuscript [about the Hetch Hetchy controversy, for a graduate seminar at Stanford] that led within months to my decision to research the career and thought of Aldo Leopold. As the staff was closing the office, they invited me to join them that evening at a reception for board and staff members of the club, where I met many of the old-timers, including H.C. Bradley. We had a memorable conversation about our connections to UW–Madison, including Hoofers, of which I had been an enthusiastic member as an undergraduate. My…