Sheboygan Paper Covers Sundown Town Question

http://www.sheboyganpress.com/story/news/2016/07/10/go-home-welcome-home-sheboygan-man/86911414/

Was Sheboygan a sundown town?

Census data dating back to 1860 shows that the black population of Sheboygan did not reach double-digits until 1970, peaking with nine in 1910. Through the 1920’s and 30’s, there were no black residents in Sheboygan, with one in the 1940 census and eight in the 1950 census.

The following is an excerpt from a very interesting recent newspaper article in the Sheboygan Press...I am going to be using in my thesis:

According to research by Professor James W. Loewen, who taught race relations for 20 years at the University of Vermont, there is evidence to suggest Sheboygan may have been a “Sundown Town” – a place where people of color were forced to leave the city after sunset.

Loewen compiled an online map allowing people to find out more about the racial history of their towns, identifying thousands of likely and confirmed sundown towns across the U.S.

Sheboygan is labeled as having possible sundown status. It is unknown whether there was an ordinance or sign specifically prohibiting black people from staying, but the testimonials he lists indicate a certain amount of racial animus.

Loewen received a report of a black social worker from Madison’s state office had to stay at a smaller hotel outside of Sheboygan in 1976 because she couldn’t stay in Sheboygan’s main hotel.

Other testimonies to Loewen showed similar patterns.

“’I recall being told when I moved to Sheboygan in August 1970 that in previous years blacks had not been allowed to stay in the city overnight. There was no generalized policy in that regard by 1970, but I suppose reminisce[sic] of the one-time prohibition might have been carried on informally.

“’We lived on the city’s south side initially and later on the southwest, mostly in the working class section. And I saw no evidence of blacks being prohibited per se, that the black population was quite low.

“’We had a black mailman between 1970 and 1975, but at the junior high school I taught at in those years, also on the south (side), I don’t recall any black students,” Loewen said he was told by Donovan Walling, a former Sheboygan resident, in 2002.

Loewen’s testimonies are remembered, secondary accounts. The Sheboygan Press archives also tell a story of discriminatory local discourse and policy.

The very rumor of a sundown ordinance prompted then-Mayor John Bolgert in 1959 to outright deny that Sheboygan had any sundown laws. He cited as proof that black people we able to live in the city when they were playing baseball for the local minor league team. The same story reported a local pastor as saying there was no prejudice toward black people because there were none here.

Four years later in September of 1963, Professor Spencer Hildahl, then chair of the sociology department at Lakeland College spoke to the Sheboygan Evening Optimist Club about welcoming “negroes” into the city.

"Negroes are coming to Sheboygan just as surely as Christmas is coming next December,” Hildahl said. "We have to assume, whether people accept the fact or not, that Sheboygan is going to have a population that includes Negroes and other minority groups in the not too distant future.”

One of the unnamed Optimists present asserted that an ordinance existed that prohibited black people from living in Sheboygan.

“The same Optimist asserted that present city officials deny that Sheboygan has an ordinance preventing Negroes from living in Sheboygan. But, he claimed, Sheboygan adopted such an ordinance in 1887 —‘that no Negroes will be housed in Sheboygan — and it is still on the books,’” the Press reported.

Confirming ordinances or signs that explicitly gave a town sundown status is difficult because ordinances are revised and recodified.

The city clerk’s office has only two old ordinance books, both of which were from 1976. One of those has been updated. The city attorney’s office has a 1975 book that was updated in 1998 and a 1965 copy that was updated in 1975. The Sheboygan County Historical Research Center also has a 1928 copy of the ordinances, but it is abridged. No such ordinance is mentioned in any of those copies.

Even if the ordinance never officially was on the books, it is still possible that sundown policy was institutionalized here, according to Loewen.

“It’s typically difficult or impossible to actually find copies of the ordinances. Matter of a fact, most towns, you might ask the clerk to show you the double-parking ordinance,” he said. “I bet they can’t find that, but if you double-park you’re going to get a ticket. So the issue typically is many sundown towns never even claimed to have passed an ordinance.”

Marshfield Teacher Embraces Truth: Tries By Teacher Boldly...

Japanese Sundown Sign

http://mrslavongsaenglish.weebly.com/uploads/2/7/6/7/27674481/foreigner_in_marshfield.pdf

Foreigner in Marshfield by Nina Revoyr

Japanese Sundown Sign

Foreigner in Marshfield 
by Nina Revoyr

      I moved to the United States from Japan when I was five years old, after my parents divorced. My arrival in my father's hometown of Marshfield, Wisconsin, was announced in the daily paper -- Jack Revoyr, the prodigal son of Ronald and Mildred, had returned with a half-breed child. Most people in Marshfield already knew I existed -- twice, when they were married, my father brought my mother home to visit, and for many of my grandparents' neighbors and friends, she was the first Asian that they'd ever laid eyes on. I'd come along on one of those two-week trips, when I was a baby, but in 1974 I was brought there to live. My father left me with my grandparents while he went to work in New York, making me the newest, most reluctant citizen of Marshfield. To my knowledge, I was the only person of color in the entire town of 14,000 people. Almost all the things I know about the workings of race I learned in the time that I spent there.
I lived in my grandparents' house for a little over two years. And I did live, mostly, in the house, looking out at the neighborhood from my father's old room, making up stories to pass the time. Marshfield scared me -- a small, isolated town in the middle of Wisconsin, it seemed untouched by the social upheavals, the movements and debates around racial and sexual equality, that opened up the collective mind of the rest of the country in the 1960 s and 70s. The town itself was unspectacular, but it was surrounded by beautiful farmland and forest, dotted here and there with clean, clear lakes and small, slow-moving streams. The smells of beer and bratwurst seemed to linger in the air, always, mixing with the scent of fresh-cut grass. Most of the people who lived in Marshfield worked there, too, for the meat processing plant, or the cheese manufacturers, or the factories that made hunting clothes and shoes. For those who were born there, the town was both trap and protection. Almost all of my father's classmates got factory jobs right out of high school -- or sometimes before-- married and had families by the time they were twenty. For a few, like my father, Marshfield was a place that needed to be escaped, although he was warned by his teachers not to leave and go to college, because the outside world was sinful and corrupting. And for outsiders, like me, people who tried to make some kind of home there, Marshfield was excluding, impenetrable.
Moving to a small, white, Midwestern town from the huge, bustling, international city of Tokyo was a tremendous shock to my system, and while my English was fluent -- I'd gone to an American school in Tokyo -- it still didn't come as naturally as Japanese. Marshfield, for its part, was no more ready for me, and the townspeople made it clear I wasn't welcome. They hadn't approved of my father's departure, and they'd been scandalized by his marriage; now, in their eyes, he was flaunting evidence of his bad behavior; he was inflicting on them the terrible fruit of his sins. But because they couldn't punish him directly, they focused their disapproval on his child. Both adults and children glared and sometimes swore at me if I passed them on the sidewalk. No one would sit next to us when my grandparents took me to church. Young boys used me for target practice when I rode around town on my bike, and I discovered that apples, if thrown accurately and hard, can hurt just as much as rocks. When the occasional child -- out of sympathy or boredom or plain curiosity -- made some preliminary gesture of friendship, their parents would soon put a stop to it. Because of the war, the children would tell me, and I didn't understand until much later what they meant. Many of the town's fathers and grandfathers had served in World War II, and to them, I wasn't just a foreigner: I was the Enemy.
When school started, things only got worse. I couldn't hide in my grandparents' house anymore, and school was a string of disasters. I got beat up in the bathroom so many times that I developed a huge and resilient bladder, which could go an entire school day without needing to be relieved. Strange kids would call me "Jap" or "Nip" or "Yellow-bellied murderer." Groups of older students would corner me in the hallway, force me to count to ten in Japanese, and then mockingly try to imitate my words. Sometimes teachers, walking by, would put a stop to this. More often they just kept walking.
Simply getting back and forth from the elementary school -- which was about a mile away -- was like picking my way through a mine field. Certain kids would chase me or try to make me late, and while there were several of them, both boys and girls, one girl remains distinct in my memory. Her name was Jean -- I don't recall her last name -- and she lived at the vertex of a V in the road about halfway to the school. Both sides of the V eventually crossed the street where the old brick building stood, flanking the school on either side with straight, separating arms, so it didn't matter which way I took. But every morning, as I approached, I'd see Jean waiting. She was a couple of years older than me, and about twice as big, with dark, curly hair and an olive complexion. When she saw me coming, she'd brighten up, and yell out some curse or warning. She'd tell me I wasn't going to make it past her that day, or she'd announce that I had to get off her road. Often, she'd ask the question posed by kids all over town. "Hey, weirdo," she'd say. "What are you?" I wouldn't answer -- perhaps because I was trying to figure that out myself -- and besides, in that moment, simple survival was more important than reflection. I'd make some fancy foot move, fake and jab, and then cut to one side of the V. After a few forays in each direction, I realized that I naturally seemed to go left -- a characteristic that followed me all the way through my college basketball days. The road to the left was slightly longer, with cracked, uneven sidewalks, a dramatic jut uphill. But it was the road I preferred. Sometimes Jean managed to head me off completely, and I had to take a more roundabout way to school. But sometimes, despite the fact that she overplayed that side, I got past her and ran down the left side of the V, Jean yelling that she'd get me tomorrow.
While the rest of the kids in Marshfield acted like hassling me was a game, Jean's treatment was different, more personal. My grandparents told me she was Jewish, and it took me years to appreciate the significance of this detail -- she, too, was unaccepted in the entirely Christian town, but with my arrival, she moved up one notch in the town's totem pole, and she wanted to make sure I knew where I belonged.
Things got easier in Marshfield my second year, which was when my grandfather taught me to fight. Ronnie Revoyr -- known as "Frenchie" because of his French-Canadian parents -- was a first-rate hunter and marksman who'd worked his whole life in a shoe factory and then a chicken-slaughtering plant. He was a bigoted man -- he used racial epithets freely, and had refused to attend my parents' wedding -- but it enraged him that the town did not embrace me. When a group of teenagers chased me home, my grandfather went out to the yard in his work pants and undershirt and challenged them all to a fight. When my grandmother's cousin told me I was going to hell because of my dirty yellow blood, my grandfather threw her out of the house. I've always wondered what it was like for him to see his only grandchild subjected to the racism which he himself perpetuated. Because my grandfather, for all of his faults, loved me. One day, while he was spraying Bactine on my knees after someone had knocked me off my bike, he bit his lip and his eyes filled with tears. He told me then, voice shaking with anger, not to run away anymore; to stand up to the kids who were mean to me, and fight. He taught me how to punch, how to defend myself against incoming blows, how to throw rocks back with accuracy and strength. They were lessons I made use of in the following year, and the irony strikes me only now: it was my grandfather, the uneducated, racist, small-town white man, who taught me how to survive as a person of color.
Just before I left Marshfield forever, something incredible happened -- a young black couple, the Millers, moved into town, drawn by work at the growing regional clinic. They moved, in fact, right onto my grandparents' block, just a few houses up and across the street. The intense, swirling hatred that had surrounded me for two years was transferred, at once, to the Millers. This change was not remarkable to me; even when I was seven, I knew what the people of Marshfield thought of blacks. What was remarkable was that suddenly, I was included in the discussion. The same kids who'd informed me that I was "the enemy" now spoke of the dangers embodied by the Millers. The same parents who had crossed the street to get away from me now instructed me to cross the street to avoid the Millers. But my memories of my own experiences were far too fresh; unlike Jean, who welcomed a limited acceptance as soon as it was offered, I couldn't replicate, onto someone else, the things I had endured. So I took what, for me, seemed like radical measures -- I smiled at the Millers whenever I saw them, said hello when they passed me on the sidewalk. I learned, at seven, a lesson I've known ever since: that I had more in common with the Millers than with the people who were suddenly trying to include me -- the people who'd tormented us both.
I carry scars from my two years in Marshfield, and the absence of things that are irretrievably lost. My first language was Japanese, but, through willful denial and disuse, I'd mostly forgotten it by the time I left Marshfield. Close to each of my parents in Japan, I felt disconnected from them both in America -- my father because he was white, and my mother because she never experienced racism until she moved here as an adult, and because when people did refer to her as Jap, or Chink, or Gook, she had the strength to tell them -- as I couldn't as a child -- to at least get the country right and to go to hell.
But there were positive elements to my experience in Marshfield, too. The hours I spent locked inside, reading, or making up stories, or listening to my grandfather's tales, were training time, apprenticeship, for my eventually becoming a writer. And the town made clear, in no uncertain terms, the workings and significance of race. It let me know exactly where I stood, and when my father moved us, thankfully, out of Wisconsin, there was never any question -- as there might have been if I'd lived in a more accepting environment -- that I was a child of color. I learned to take pride in what made me different -- to define that difference rather than letting someone else define it for me. And so Los Angeles, when I moved there, was nothing less than heaven -- I heard Japanese again, and ate Japanese food for the first time since I'd come to America. But it wasn't just being around Japanese Americans that pleased me. Los Angeles is a smorgasbord of color and culture -- and if L.A. is a city of racial division and strict boundaries, it's also a place where those boundaries are constantly being blurred; where accepted terms are redefined daily. In my high school in Culver City, over forty different languages were spoken. Asian kids listened to hip-hop and jazz. African American kids were fluent in Spanish. I took my black and Chicano basketball teammates to Japanese dances in the Japanese-American town of Gardena. In L.A. I also met a number of mixed-race children, and it was the first place where I experienced the simple comfort of finding others who looked like me. There, people still made racial assumptions about me, but they were somehow less insidious, sometimes charming. An old woman on my block regularly addressed me in Spanish, refusing to believe I didn't have Mexican blood. Someone would ask me at least once a week if I was Native American. Occasionally, when I had a tan in the summer, and especially when I went through my regrettable pseudo jheri-curl stage, people even thought I was a light-skinned black girl. And there were also those who assumed I was white, and who couldn't understand why I didn't take that as a compliment. But there, in Los Angeles, it was clear I belonged, even if no one knew quite where to place me. In L.A. I never felt like what I always was in Marshfield -- the only Asian kid, the enemy, the freak.
I would never want to relive the years I spent in central Wisconsin, or to wish them on anyone else. But I'm grateful for the time I spent there. One's piecing together of one's own identity is a lifetime proposition in any case, but for me, the project was both complicated and simplified by the two years I lived with my grandparents. When I came to this country, with my white father, and into a white community, my identity could have developed in one of many directions. But because of those punishing experiences in Marshfield, I learned first-hand that this country's thoughts and fears about immigration are inextricably linked to race; I know that there are clear demarcations between whites and everyone else; and I know which side of the fence I belong on. I remember Jean, who waited for me at the vertex of the V, making me choose to go one direction or the other. I chose the side that was more difficult, but it was the one I leaned toward naturally. And I've also come to realize that there really was no choice -- no matter which way I decided to go, the two roads ended at the same destination.

~Foreigner in Marshfield by Nina Revoyr

The Shaping of Social Stratification: Wisconsin Sundown Towns

      Robert C. Nesbit and William F. Thompson noted in the last chapter of Wisconsin: A History that up until World War II, Wisconsin had given the impression that the state didn’t have race relation problems. Wisconsin is often painted with the broad and sweeping brush of abolitionism. This brush swept clean and colored bright any real racial struggle leading up to and through the Civil War. The conventional wisdom of many historians is that race relation problems were associated with states in the South only. There is a definite role that race played in shaping the early development of Wisconsin. The social, cultural, political and economic framework of the state was influenced greatly and ultimately molded by the racial climate of the time.

     The issue of race was as crucial to the early development of Wisconsin as any other. The two most important factors that trace back as underlying causes of racism from the colonial period to the Civil War were the reactions to the Black Hawk War and the Underground Railroad. The idea that white men were superior is a unifying philosophy that serves as the foundation on which Wisconsin was built.

The Black Hawk War resulted in the “American” claim on Native American lands. The U.S. government killed many of the Sauk, Fox and Winnebago (now Ho-Chunk) to obtain it. Chief Keokuk and Black Hawk were adversarial warriors who led the tribes. Chief Keokuk gave up land to Governor Clark. He led a portion of these tribes west of the Mississippi, but not before many were slaughtered. Black Hawk on the other hand, sought alliance with the members of tribes who chose not to follow Keokuk. Black Hawk and his Ho-Chunk, Sauk and Fox followers surrendered. Black Hawk said that the “Rock River was a beautiful country. I loved my towns, my cornfields, and the home of my people. I fought for it. It is now yours. Keep it as we did.”[1]

      What right did the government have to their land? We were in a period of time where the white race felt superior to any other and would go to any length to acquire what they desired. Even Abraham Lincoln appeared to make light of the battles being fought with Native Americans during the time he was Captain. He believed they were “savage” and he is quoted as saying that if “General Cass went in advance of me in picking whortleberries, I guess I surpassed him in the charge of wild onions. If he saw any live, fighting Indians, it was more than I did; but I had a good many struggles with the mosquitoes.”[2] This was an example of future president Lincoln’s ambivalence towards issues of race. This was in stark contrast with how history has so fondly remembered him.

      With the development of the Underground Railroad in the years from 1850 to 1860, it could be seen that there were abolitionists in Wisconsin.[3] There were also those who were not tolerant at all. The effects in the years to come later would be staggering. By the 1920s, interest in the KKK heightened. Continuing this trend, the 1960 census shows that Marshfield (population 14,153) and Wisconsin Rapids (population 15,042) did not have a single African American resident listed. It could be argued that the very thing that helped African Americans in the North, the Underground Railroad, was the very reason that hate groups such as the KKK saw membership reach as high as 75,000.[4]

     Race relations would actually become worse after the Civil War and Reconstruction beginning around 1890. This fact was beginning to take root by 1860 because as Nesbit reports, “the rapid population increase of 154 percent, from 305,00 in 1850 to 776,000 in 1860, multiplied the strains of ethnic and religious difference” and that “such rapid growth and movement contributed, along with the ethnic, religious, and political divisions, to the instability of the society.”[5] Race was also obviously very much a factor in the societal discord that would become Wisconsin by time the Civil War had erupted in the 1860s. Nesbit called it “statehood in an unstable union” from 1846-1865 and reminds us that the Civil War failed to unite the state.[6]

     Colonial Wisconsin was said to be a new opportunity to many immigrants of numerous national origins and religious affiliations. At the same time, the Milwaukee Seebote warned emigrants to choose Russia or Turkey rather than the United States, ‘the country of the Lords of New England, where Germans and Irish must be annihilated, to make room for the negro.”[7] In The Waukesha Freeman, an article by Mrs. Dora Putnam appeared September 26^th, 1907 and was read earlier that month on the 12^th at a meeting of the Waukesha County Historical Society. Her article read, “This was the history making epoch of the state of Wisconsin. The inrush of white settlers in 1836 saved the state from being set aside as an Indian territory, the exclusive home of the red man. Those same settlers saved the state a second time from the stigma of upholding slavery of the black man.”[8] This article exhibits the lack of cultural competence by even those calling themselves abolitionists. Wisconsin was viewed as an abolitionist state and it was host to portions of the Underground Railroad. Abolitionists did not necessarily believe African and Native Americans were equal.

     One must keep in mind that the Underground Railroad was designed to go through Wisconsin with the desired destination for freed slaves being Canada. The Underground Railroad, while very good for those fleeing slavery in the South, was very influential and formative in setting the stage for backlash against African Americans. In Mrs. Putnum’s article, she recalls a “jingle” that was composed in “honor” of the founder of the Platteville Normal (which would later come to be known as the University of Wisconsin – Platteville) in remembrance of a neighborhood near Platteville that was referred to as “Abolition Hollow” that went like this: Abolition Holler, Three feet wide, A n----r in the middle, A McCord on each side. Where no one heard the whistle, Nor the rumble of the cars. As the d-rkies rode to freedom, Beyond the stripes and stars.”[9] One can see examples that are of extreme importance in truly understanding racism in Wisconsin during the formative years before the Civil War. The key words of note in this jingle are three. The first two are “n----r” and “d-rkie” which are extremely offensive racial slurs and the last is “beyond” which makes it clear to African Americans they were not welcome to stay. While Mrs. Putnum was very much in favor of ending slavery, she did not appear to believe that African Americans were created equal.

Platteville was a prominent city in 1860 that boasted a population of 2,865. The city had 7 African Americans listed as residents in the 1860 census. In 1900, Platteville had grown to 3,340, but was down to just one African American resident. Platteville was quite a big city during the turn of the twentieth century. As Nesbit notes, there were only thirteen cities with populations over 5,000.[10] By looking at the 1930 and 1940 censuses, one can see that there were no African Americans living in Platteville during those decades. The population had swelled to over 4,000 by 1930 and almost reached 5,000 by 1940.

     The scope of the Constitution of 1848 was exclusive and prejudiced against those thought to be inferior. The rights of Native Americans to their land were ignored as was their rights of any involvement in the new state government.[11] African American suffrage was put to referendum and even though passed was ignored and argued as not being a legal right. [12] It is clear why Nesbit would characterize Wisconsin as a much fragmented and divided society.[13] The point is hard to argue. It also can be a bit deceiving. There was for the most part much unity for those in power, influence and authority. The lines drawn in early Wisconsin were along racial divides. African and Native Americans were repeatedly denied opportunities, rights and property. The Black Hawk War and the Underground Railroad had a very profound effect on crafting Wisconsin into a very socially stratified state by the 1860s.

1] Robert C. Nesbit, Wisconsin: A History (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1973, 1989), 99.

[2] Ibid., 99.

[3] Dora Putnam. “The Underground Railway in Wisconsin,” [September 26, 1907]: 1-4, http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/wlhba/articleView.asp?pg=1&orderby=&id=14407&pn=1&key=&cy= [accessed April 10, 2009].

[4] Robert C. Nesbit, Wisconsin: A History (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1973, 1989), 467

[5] Ibid., 242-243.

[6] Ibid., 260.

[7] Ibid., 210.

[8] Dora Putnam. “The Underground Railway in Wisconsin,” [September 26, 1907]: 1-4, http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/wlhba/articleView.asp?pg=1&orderby=&id=14407&pn=1&key=&cy= [accessed April 10, 2009].

[9] Ibid.,1-4.

[10] Robert C. Nesbit, Wisconsin: A History (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1973, 1989), 342.

[11] Ibid., 96-100.

[12] Ibid., 215-224.

[13] Ibid., 242-243.

"The Tragedy of Our Commons: A Wisconsin Idea We'd Like to Forget"

    According to Wisconsin historian Robert C. Nesbit, John R. Commons should be at the top of any list of professional scholars that shaped the legislation and administration furthering Progressivism. This is a very unfortunate component of Wisconsin history. While Progressivism is sold as something Wisconsin should be proud of, the jury is still out as historians sort out what it really is, rather than what it sounds like. Professor Commons was a white supremacist first and an economist second.
Progressivism gave rise to two crucial philosophies that shaped the modern development of Wisconsin after the Civil War. The Eugenics movement and “The Wisconsin Idea” had catastrophic impacts on race relations and resulted in limiting the growth of Wisconsin’s cultural, political and economic landscape. Racism hid behind the mask of “progress.”
    By 1890, when the Progressive era began, nearly 2,000 African Americans lived outside of the city limits of Milwaukee. This equates to about 20% of the African American population living almost everywhere around the state. By 1930, after the extreme acts of harassment and violence that were at a high during the “Roaring 20s,” that percentage changed drastically to about 72%. James W. Loewen, who studied and later confirmed many “sundown towns” in Wisconsin, wrote that “the so-called Progressive movement was for whites only” and any “reforms removed the last local black leaders from northern city councils in favor of commissioners elected citywide.” Common’s work and the influence of his mentor, Richard T. Eli and their scientific racism would have an impact on Wisconsin, which changed municipal government structure resulting in exclusion of African Americans from many cities.
This is also where the so-called Wisconsin Idea and the Eugenics movement work together to influence municipal government as well. Local level progressivism was being felt in terms of bringing in more “qualified” appointed (rather that elected) officials in the form of city administrators or managers. Progressivism called for “at-large” alderpersons rather than representative districts and governing boards that were entirely appointed. Good examples of these seen today are Utility Commissions, Library Boards and Police and Fire Commissions. These governmental bodies are in complete control of how to spend money budgeted by a city’s common council. This, of course, disenfranchised African Americans and other undesirables by keeping “the good ole’ boy networks” in power.
Professor Commons was very influential on elected officials. The most notable was “Fighting Bob” Lafollette. The position of professor at the University of Wisconsin included recommending policy because of their expertise in a particular discipline. Economics was a pretty powerful discipline and remained high on the totem pole. There was a strong dose of eugenic theory in economic and social policy. The University of Wisconsin school of thought was not only shaping Wisconsin, but the whole United States as well. Progressives felt that the undesirables were not smart enough to govern themselves let alone anyone else. Commons wrote legislation that was good and bad. The good being that he really knew a lot about economic theory and was very valuable as he helped write legislation to improve the conditions of workers. He and the Progressives were very much in favor of white unions. Commons felt that African Americans and other “lower class immigrants” were a threat to “native white workers” because wage “competition has no respect for the superior races and because of this the “race with the lowest necessities displaces others.”
    In Commons book, Races and Immigration in America, a chapter entitled, “The Negro” is written in a very scientific manner. The term “scientific racism” could be applied in this case. He argued for increased wages, shorter workdays and weeks, and just better working conditions in general. These arguments made there way into law. That is what The Wisconsin Idea by Charles McCarthy was all about. The book served as “the manifesto for the progressives’ technocratic vision of professional experts guiding (indeed writing) legislation.” Unfortunately, the benefits were going to exclude those thought to be “unemployable” meaning African Americans, immigrants and women.
Commons influence would be felt throughout the state rather than just the university campus. There are honorable mentions of him in the sociology and economics department facilities today. At the UW the name lives on in the John R. Commons Room on the 8th floor of the Sociology building, and the John R. Commons Club in the Economics department. In 1962, leading up to the year of the march in 1967, the mayor and common council of Milwaukee, had refused to adopt an open housing ordinance. They had worries that it was a problem the entire county shared and if the city shouldered the burden alone it would create “white-flight” to the suburbs.
    The population between 1940 and 1960 grew to 74,500 and by 1980 it reached 182,500. That increased 15 times in 40 years. In 1967, Father Groppi leader of the Milwaukee, WI NAACP, marched with 200 members in support of open housing. 3,000-5,000 whites were there to stop them. The angry whites pelted them with whatever they could find to throw. Milwaukee struggled with the bulk of civil rights violence and militant protest because that is where most of the African Americans lived. The fact that elected officials that would make their voice heard did not represent the huge African American population in Milwaukee is obvious. Nesbit reports, even though the African American population grew very rapidly the city’s elected officials remained indifferent to their cause.
    The Eugenics movement was interwoven into the fabric of Wisconsin society. The KKK had membership numbers reaching as high as 75,000. According to Nesbit, “the areas of Klan strength are significant,” concentration of Klan membership was in Milwaukee, Kenosha and Racine counties. These areas had most of the Polish and Italian Catholics and Russian Jews. “The Klan also won active support in the Fox River Valley, in Dane, Green and Rock counties in south-central Wisconsin, and in Eau Claire and La Crosse counties.” Rusk County was also Klan territory with a large number of Polish newcomers. The KKK “found fertile soil in Wisconsin society.” Nesbit did refer to the Wisconsin Idea as indefinable. Perhaps the connection of the Progressives and the Eugenics movement can eventually lead us to a definition. It does really call into question what is really meant by the term “progressive.”

Robert C. Nesbit, Wisconsin: A History (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1973, 1989), 426.
James W. Loewen, Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism (New York: The New Press, 2005), 68.
http://www.princeton.edu/~tleonard/papers/expertocracy.pdf, 16 [Access May 10,2008].
Robert C. Nesbit, Wisconsin: A History (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1973, 1989), 532.
Robert C. Nesbit, Wisconsin: A History (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1973, 1989), 465-467.

"Literature Review: Marshfield, WI History is a Popular Subject"

     Marshfield’s history of racism and social class struggle is an important subfield of Wisconsin history.  Local histories are very telling in that the reader (usually someone that lives or lived there) is given an opportunity to find out what happened “here.”  All history is local. Marshfield went through the early years leading up to Wisconsin statehood.  Marshfield went through all the wars and continues in the present in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Marshfield went through Reconstruction, the Nadir Period and the Great Depression.  What happened in Wisconsin and in U.S. history, happened in Marshfield.  There are several books and one revealing essay that need to be read in order to create a picture of understanding of Marshfield history.  The city’s story is unfolded in these monographs that reveal a glimpse into the struggles faced in other parts of the state and country, but also have significant aspects that make the city unique.  That is not to say that everything discovered about Marshfield is positive.  There are a great many events in Marshfield’s history that cast a shadow of discrimination and inequality on perhaps an otherwise “progressive” society.

            A quite famous writer by the name of Nina Revoyr spoke to this issue in an essay entitled “Foreigner in Marshfield.”  It appeared in a collection of writer’s memoirs about growing up in America.  She recalled that Marshfield “scared” her because the city “seemed untouched by the social upheavals, the movements and debates around racial and sexual equality, that opened the collective mind of the rest of the country in the 1960s and 1970s.”[1]  This says so much about what life was like in the mid 70s in Marshfield.  This city seemed to have a force field affect around it, which seemed to filter out and temper the information regarding the Civil Rights Movement.  Some residents may have felt they were not affected because Marshfield was all white.  Many of these residents were affected by the loss of family and friends in foreign wars.  The interesting part is, many cities were affected this way.  Why was Marshfield indifferent to civil rights?  There are many accounts in the literature reviewed here, which would explain that resentment did exist against people of color and social class.

            Marshfield is a city that was greatly influenced and shaped by these issues. The elements of the wars fought and resulting ideologies could be seen as the driving force.  Marshfield chose to exclude those that were not white and those that were lower class.  A layered social class existed; including transients which rode the boxcars of the railways, to Mary Eileen Trimble’s accounts of her own economic limitations, to the higher class of citizens who are glorified for their part in the development of Marshfield.

            Marshfield may have been a “sundown town.”  According to James W. Loewen, author of Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism, “a sundown town is any organized jurisdiction that for decades kept African Americans or other groups from living in it and was thus ‘all-white’ on purpose.”[2]  This book must also be read to understand Marshfield history even though Marshfield is never mentioned.  Because the book focuses on American racism in Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin, it is an important tool in approaching history in any Wisconsin city.  This is an essential skill when studying the history of Wisconsin.  Everything that is read after reading Loewen’s work will cause question as to where, when, who and why did this happen in Wisconsin.  Was Marshfield a sundown town? 

            By reading A Bridge from Here to There by Mary Eileen Trimble, two volumes of The Marshfield Story and novelist Nina Revoyr’s work in Dream Me Home Safely: Writers on Growing Up in America, one can easily frame the picture of racism and class struggle in Marshfield’s history.  While reading the literature on Marshfield history makes a case for social stratification and racial exclusion, there is need for much more research to prove Marshfield was enforcing informal covenants restricting integration.

            It is not hard for me to verify racism cited by the authors because I’ve lived in Marshfield since I was 4 years old.  I know that it was commonplace to hear the word “Nigger.”  I remember only one African American in my high school in the mid 80s.  I wondered why African Americans and other people of color were degraded when our city was void of them.  What did these people have against them and why?  African Americans were everywhere when our family visited Milwaukee, but only one or two families at any one time in Marshfield.  It is easy to see that this ideology had a strong hold on Marshfield.  Dr. Jeff Kleiman, longtime history professor at the UW Marshfield/ Wood County, reports in The Marshfield Story of a KKK recruiter that came and spoke to 600 people 50 years earlier in October of 1924.  Where this KKK event met is of particular significance to the racial climate in Marshfield. Kleiman refers to the facility as the “Wildwood Pavilion” at “Wildwood Park.”  He makes no mention of this being originally named the “White City Pavilion” at the “White City Park.”[3]  The question is: Who was in charge of renting out the pavilion for a KKK rally, the Eagles, the American Legion or the City of Marshfield?

            The Marshfield Women’s Club spearheaded the name change from White Pavilion to Wildwood Pavilion in 1923.[4]  On July 10, 1923, the Marshfield Women’s Club of Marshfield were successful in requesting to the City Council that the name of the both the pavilion and the park be changed to Wildwood Park and Wildwood Pavilion.[5]  

            In the same edition of The Marshfield Story there is a history that was submitted by the Marshfield Parks and Recreation Department that shows that the pavilion and park were renamed the year before.  In 1927, the Women’s club supported a charity listed as an “Industrial School for Colored Girls” and studied interracial problems.”[6]

            There is something that does not quite add up and deserves further research and investigation.  How could the American Legion have rented out the Pavilion in on a five-year lease that expired in 1923 from the Eagles when the expiration of the lease and all facilities and improvements would revert back to the city in 1923.  This is an area where some analysis would be very helpful in The Marshfield Story. This is an area that could be researched further. The information is there in different place and that is partly because there are submissions from numerous authors. The narrative written by Kleiman does not pull together the information from the Marshfield Women’s Club and the Parks, Recreation and Forestry Department. In many ways, while there is a wealth of information that the Marshfield History Project has assembled, there are as many questions that are raised as there are answered           

            The city’s “first major exposure to racial diversity occurred in 1944 because of a labor shortage in the bean canning industry, Marshfield saw the first instance of a large group of “colored” imported laborers who could not get served in restaurants or bars “either by direct refusal of owners” or “indirectly by threats of local patrons to withhold their business if blacks were served.”  This situation was the topic of some debate in the local newspaper, theMarshfield News-Herald, and in the opinion section, the editor wrote that at least they “don’t ask to come into our houses.”[7]  In 1924, The American Legion had a five-year lease on the park.

            It becomes clear that there are numerous causes to the social problems faced by Marshfield throughout its history. In 1924 a KKK rally was held at the Wildwood Pavilion. Professor Kleiman reports that Catholicism is the predominant religious affiliation in Marshfield. The KKK was hostile towards Catholics.  Kleiman mentions in his narrative “that the only thing that made this unusual was the very late date of organizing a Klan chapter and large Catholic population in the area.” Professor Kleiman’s one sentence assessment leaves future researchers many unsolved mysteries to be revealed. He makes the assertion that 1924 is a bit late to be forming a new chapter of the KKK. [8]  This would appear to be a very important idea that deserves to be expounded upon.  The reader is left with more questions than answers. Why did the desire to form a chapter in Marshfield occur so late? Was it because the city had such a high Catholic population and was not looked favorably upon by the KKK earlier? The Milwaukee recruiter indicated that the KKK was loosening its requirements for membership when he said that they would “even let a Protestant man who had married a Catholic”[9] join.

             Trimble, who at 61 penned another view of local attitude: “World War II had struck a giant blow to our small town as well as to the entire country. Parents suffered the loss of their sons and daughters in places many have never heard of before the war – places like Iwo Jima, Bougaineville[sic], Guadalcanal and New Guinea.”[10]

            “In our home, there had been eight people living normal small-town lives, and now there were only three of us still together…I had never traveled far from Marshfield except for Dad’s emigration from Canada when he was a little boy, neither had my parents.” The author complained of having chores assigned to her, which she hated, when she was an adolescent. She was “quite wrapped up in” her “own miseries and letters” written to her brother Bud, who was reported missing in action and was later confirmed dead. She describes her anger being so strong that “she turned away from her weeping mother one day when she lay down on” her bed “seeking sympathy and understanding.” She said that, “for some reason, my heart had turned to stone and I got up and left the room.”[11]

            Living in Marshfield in 1974 left its footprints on the heart of another author, Nina Revoyr.  She is an Asian American who was brought to the city by her father and cared for by her grandparents while he worked out of town.  In 2003 she wrote about the abuse she was subjected to while living in Marshfield. By looking at the early development of opinions and attitudes towards people of color and social stratification we begin to see a fostering of fear due to ignorance, anger and resentment.

            Revoyr moved to Marshfield in 1974, just before the fall of Saigon to the communists and the ultimate loss of the Vietnam War. Revoyr moved from one of the world’s largest cities, Tokyo, Japan to a town of 14,000 in Wisconsin in the mid 70s and had this to say about the transition: “Moving to a small, white, Midwestern town from the huge, bustling, international city of Tokyo was a tremendous shock to my system…Marshfield, for its part, was no more ready for me, and the townspeople made it clear I wasn’t welcome.”[12] She recalls when her father brought her mother home for the first time and writes, “My father brought my mother home to visit, and for many of my grandparents’ neighbors and friends, she was the first Asian that they’d ever laid eyes on.” Revoyr doesn’t hold back in her assessment of what happened to her in Marshfield. She credits everything she knows about the issues of race relations, she learned in Marshfield.[13]  She is a famous novelist with three novels written with her new novel on the way, which is going to be based on the issues discussed in this Literature Review.

            Revoyr noted that for some people, like her father, “Marshfield was a place that needed to be escaped from, although he was warned by his teachers not to leave and go to college, because the outside world was sinful and corrupting. And for outsiders, like me, people who tried to make some kind of home there, Marshfield was excluding, impenetrable.”           

            The population of Marshfield as indicated on the 1920 census showed 7394 with 2 blacks listed.  By 1930, the population of Marshfield rose to 8778 with zero blacks.  The 1940 census shows Marshfield’s population steadily rising but the African American population 20 years later still remained at zero.

            Trimble referred to her family life in the mid 1930’s as saying that they “presented a united front against outsiders.” [14]   Her family was devout Catholic and practiced self-discipline while trying to raise their standard of living.  They were loyal to Americanism and like many individuals...they sought the American dream.

To understand what these aspirations could lead to, the following excerpt from The Marshfield Story describes the climate of Americanism in the 1920’s.  Kleiman described how in 1924, a speaker at the Marshfield KKK rally held at what the year before had been called the “White City Pavilion” emphasized, “high Americanism’…lashed out at the ‘foreign born, Catholics, Greeks, Negros and Jews.”  The speaker confirmed that these groups could not join the Klan.  What is interesting is that the Catholics and the KKK, completely opposing groups, supported their country, yet there was hatred among them.

             Revoyr recalls, “The occasional child – out of sympathy or boredom or plain curiosity – made some preliminary gesture of friendship, her parents would soon put a stop to it.  Because of the war, the children would tell me and I didn’t understand until much later what they meant.  Many of the town’s fathers and grandfathers had served in WWI, and to them I wasn’t just a foreigner: I was the Enemy.”[15]  Based on Trimble’s accounts, although at no time does she describe herself as being racist, one can begin to see how negative feelings of narrow minded

residents that lost fathers, brothers, uncles and friends in the war would eventually grow up and view Revoyr as the “enemy” although it was by no means justified.

“During their entire lifetime, my parents never once owned a home, a car, or anything of much monetary value, but they were proud of the fact that they were able to keep the family going during the perpetually lean years.  Mom’s strong Catholic faith, her Irish sense of humor and fierce determination made it possible for her to raise us six children ‘with an iron hand’ (as we used to say), while dad worked away from home much of the time.”[16]

            The Marshfield history project did a great wonderful job of collecting an enormous amount of information. It is a must read for those interested in Marshfield history. The analysis could be a little more complete in some area, but the readers can do their own research just within the two volumes. Many connections can be made from different parts of the collection that make it an enjoyable task. Trimble while at times touches on possible controversial topics in Marshfield’s history, she doesn’t wrestle with the whole idea of the war.  She seems to scratch at the surface, but then continues in a positive tone forcing the reader to fill in the spaces with all kinds of angry emotions.  It makes the reader question the perspectives.  Her Catholic upbringing could have had an influence for not dwelling on the negative, but even though it isn’t written, the foundation for racist ideology is set. There really isn’t an argument being developed, but I don’t think that was Trimble’s intent. She was writing her life story, which is quite an accomplishment. These are the types of work that make an historian’s job easier and makes one wish there were more works out there like this one for, if nothing else, the historical significance.

            Trimble does a nice job of telling her life story and she does not really make any real clear historical argument and does not appear to have meant to.  Kleiman does a nice job of assembling an informative and thorough history of Marshfield. There is a great deal of analysis in the areas of economic development. It does seem like there may have been some hesitation to explore issues of race and class divisions to the satisfaction of the readers. Revoyr does an absolutely brilliant job in her indictment of Marshfield. Her upcoming novel on life in Wisconsin and what happened when an African American family tried to move in is probably the most anticipated novel of my life. My favorite novel is The Catcher in the Rye and I have a feeling that will be moving to second place in the very near future.

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[1]Susan Richards Shreve, Dream Me Home Safely: Writers on Growing Up in America, (New York: Haughton Mifflin Co., 2003), 172.

[2] James W. Loewen, Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism (New York: The New Press, 2005), 4.

[3] The Marshfield History Project, The Marshfield Story 1872-1997 (Amherst: Palmer Publications, Inc., 1997), 28.

[4] Ibid., 168

[5] Ibid.,168

[6] Marshfield History Project, The Marshfield Story 1872-1997 (Amherst: Palmer             Publications, Inc., 1997), 230.

[7]  Marshfield History Project, The Marshfield Story 1872-1997 (Amherst: Palmer             Publications, Inc., 1997), 69.

[8] The Marshfield History Project, The Marshfield Story 1872-1997 (Amherst: Palmer Publications, Inc., 1997), 28

[9] Ibid., 28

[10] Mary Eileen Trimble, A Bridge From Here To There. (Manufactured in the United States: Missouri Western Graphics and HUNTER, Ltd., 1989), 52

[11] Ibid., 50- 51.

[12] Susan Richards Shreve, Dream Me Home Safely: Writers on Growing Up in America, (New York: Haughton Mifflin Co., 2003), 173.

[13] Ibid., 172.

[14] Mary Eileen Trimble, A Bridge From Here To There. (Manufactured in the United States: Missouri Western Graphics and HUNTER, Ltd., 1989), 28.

[15] Susan Richards Shreve, Dream Me Home Safely: Writers on Growing Up in America. (New York: Haughton Mifflin Co., 2003), 173-174.

[16] Mary Eileen Trimble, A Bridge From Here To There. (Manufactured in the United States: Missouri Western Graphics and HUNTER, Ltd., 1989),10.