African-Americans

1. “Snapshots From the Family Album: Milwaukee Labor After World War II” [Special Issue]. Milwaukee History: The Magazine of the Milwaukee County Historical Society. Milwaukee, Wis.: Milwaukee County Historical Society. Vol. 22 (3 & 4), p. 77-124, 1999 (Autumn/Winter). Notes: “Special issue based upon the exhibition Snapshots from the Family Album: Milwaukee Labor After World War II, organized and presented by the Wisconsin Historical Society”– table of contents page.”This issue sponsored by the Wisconsin Labor History Society and the Milwaukee County Labor Council”– table of contents page.CONTENTS: “Snapshots from the Family Album: Constructing a Public History Exhibition” by David B. Driscoll (p. 78-94). “Milwaukee Labor After World War II” / by Darryl Holter (p. 95-108).  “Viewer Responses to the Exhibition” / introduction by Robert T. Teske (p. 109-110).  “Contributors” (p. 110-112).  “Smith Steel Workers” / by Paul C. Blackman (p. 113-114).  “UAW Local 75 Christmas Party” / by Carol Casamento (p. 115).  “Labor Day Parade” / by David Driscoll (p. 116).  “Streetcars, Socials and Strikes” / by Ken Germanson (p. 117-119).  “Chipping Castings at Crucible Steel” / by John Goldstein (p. 120).  “UE Local 1131 Officer Installation” / by Helen Hensler (p. 121).  “Bronzeville Bombers Bowlers” / by Nellie Wilson (p. 122).  “Janitors Picket at City Hall” / by Frank Zeidler (p. 123-124).  “Authors” (p. 124).
2. Buchanan, Thomas R. “Black Milwaukee, 1890-1915”; 1973.  Notes: M.A. thesis, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 1973. 150 leaves.
3. “Blacks in Milwaukee’s Labor Force”. Historical Messenger (Milwaukee County Historical Society). 1972; 28(2):131-140.
4. Geib, Paul. “From Mississippi to Milwaukee: A Case Study of the Southern Black Migration to Milwaukee.” Journal of Negro History. 1998 Autumn; 83(4):[229]-248. Notes: The author cites “Joe Trotter’s pathbreaking book, Black Milwaukee: The Making of an Industrial Proletariat, 1915-1945 (1985)” and “Richard Thomas’s work, Life for Us Is What We Make It (1992)” and states that this article “is an attempt to strengthen and complement Trotter’s earlier work and build on Thomas’s notion of empowerment through the unionization of the black industrial workingclass” [p.230].
5. Imhoff, Clem. “The Recruiter”. Southern Exposure. 1976; 4(1/2):83-87. Notes: The Reverend D.W. Johnson, was interviewed at his Beloit, Wisconsin, home on February 29, 1976, regarding his work with as a labor recruiter for Northern corporations.
6. Jamakaya. Like Our Sisters Before Us: Women of Wisconsin Labor—Based on Interviews Conducted for the Women of Wisconsin Labor Oral History Project. Milwaukee, Wis.: Wisconsin Labor History Society; 1998. 93 p. Notes: Ten female union leaders of Wisconsin, including one African-American, are profiled and at least one photograph of each is provided; the women were most active from the 1940s through the 1970s. This volume also includes a list of the over thirty interviewees of the Women of Wisconsin Labor Oral History Project of the Wisconsin Labor History Society (p. 89-93); all of the project’s audio recordings and additional supporting materials from the interviewees are available to researchers through the Archives Division, State Historical Society of Wisconsin.CONTENTS: Evelyn Donner Day, Milwaukee (Int’l Ladies Garment Workers Union; United Auto Workers), p. 1-8. – Alice Holz, Milwaukee (Office and Professional Employees Int’l Union), p. 9-16. – Evelyn Gotzion, Madison (Federal Labor Union No. 19587; United Auto Workers), p. 17-22. – Catherine Conroy, Milwaukee (Communications Workers of America), p. 23-34. – Nellie Wilson, Milwaukee (United Steel Workers of America), p. 35-45. – Doris Thom, Janesville (Int’l Association of Machinists; United Auto Workers), p. 46-54. –Lee Schmeling, Neenah (GraphicArts Int’l Union; Graphic Communications Int’l Union), p. 55-61. — Helen Hensler, Milwaukee (Office and Professional Employees Int’l Union), p. 62-71. — Joanne Bruch, Whitewater (Int’l Union of Electronic, Electrical, Salaried, Machine and Furniture Workers), p. 72-80. — Florence Simons, Milwaukee (Int’l Association of Machinists; United Auto Workers; Allied Industrial Workers), 81-88.
7. Jenkins, Williams ‘Blue’. “Oral History Interview with William ‘Blue’ Jenkins, 1974.” 1974. 8 tape recordings, with transcript, abstract, and, related documents . Notes: This oral history of William ‘Blue’ Jenkins, a leader of the labor movement, as well as of the African-American community, in Racine, Wisconsin, consists of seven-and-one-half hours of tape recorded during two days of interviewing conducted in January 1974 by George Roeder of the Wisconsin Historical Society’s staff.Location: Archives Division, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison; consult the online catalog, ArCat (the Archives Computer Catalog), to find a link to the extensive on-line register to the entire interview, at URL: http://arcat.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=617. A biographical summary of his life, along with a detailed description and index of the content of the interview, is included in the on-line register. Additionally, a full transcript–in paper format only–of this entire interview is available to be consulted by contacting staff in the Archives Reading Room at the headquarters building of the Wisconsin Historical Society in Madison; duplicates of the tapes and the papers of this collection (with the exception of the interview transcript) are also available in the Parkside Area Research Center located at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside.RLIN Number: WIHVJ450.
8. Loew, Patty. “The Back of the Homefront: Black and American Indian Women in Wisconsin during World War II.” Wisconsin Magazine of History. 1998 Winter-1999 Winter; 82(2):82-103. Notes: Based on oral histories conducted between 1992 and 1994 with seven Wisconsin minority women (three Ojibwe and four African-Americans) about their experiences on the homefront during World War II, this article describes how Native-American and African-American women in Wisconsin met the challenges they faced in trying to support their families during the war. While jobs for minority women before the war had generally been restricted to the domestic service sector, during the Second World War some better-paying opportunities did open up for them and Loew carefully discusses those changes. Some factory jobs even became available to minority women in larger cities and Nellie Wilson of Milwaukee, who worked in the A.O. Smith Corporation’s steel factory as a precision inspector during the war, is one of the women featured in this article. Even during the war, however, minority women in rural areas faced an incredibly narrow range of job opportunities; on the Native-American reservations, for instance, often the only work available for paid wages was the seasonal harvesting of crops, such as cranberries, blueberries, and wild rice.
9. Mouser, Bruce L. For Labor, Race, and Liberty: George Edwin Taylor, His Historic Run for the White House, and the Making of Independent Black Politics. Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press; 2011. 253 p.
10. Noyes, Edward. “White Opposition to Black Migration into Civil War Wisconsin.” Lincoln Herald. 1971; 73(3):181-193.
11. Ozanne, Robert W. The Labor Movement in Wisconsin: A History. Madison, Wis.: State Historical Society of Wisconsin; 1984. 290 p. Notes: A general history of the development of the labor union movement in Wisconsin from the 1840s almost up to 1980; special note is made of a seventy-page section devoted to the unions of Wisconsin’s paper-making industry and also a section on “Blacks and the Labor Movement” (p. 161-165).Reviewed: Dubofsky, Melvyn (reviewer). Wisconsin Magazine of History, v. 69, no. 1 (Autumn 1985), p. 69-70. Reviewed: Zieger, Robert H. (reviewer). American Historical Review, v. 90, no. 5 (December 1985), p. 1288-1289. 2 Another edition: Ozanne, Robert W. The Labor Movement in Wisconsin: A History. Madison, Wis.: Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2011, c1984. 304 p. ISBN: 978-0-87020-495-1 (pbk.)
12. The Negro in the Farm Equipment and Construction Machinery Industries. Elsa Kemp, With the assistance of. Philadelphia, Pa.: Industrial Research Unit, Wharton School of Finance and Commerce, University of Pennsylvania; distributed by University of Pennsylvania Press; [1972]. 115 p. (The Racial Policies of American Industry; report no. 26). Notes: Two Wisconsin companies and the unions representing their workers are featured in this study: United Auto Workers Local 180 at the J.I. Case company in Racine, Wisconsin, and United Auto Workers Local 248 at the Allis-Chalmers company in West Allis, Wisconsin (a suburb of Milwaukee).

1. Pferdehirt, Julia. Blue Jenkins: Working for Workers. Madison, Wis.: Wisconsin Historical Society Press.150 p. (Badger Biographies. Notes: This generously-illustrated book for youngsters is a biography of William “Blue” Jenkins, an African-American labor activist in Racine, Wisconsin, who worked at the the Belle City Malleable foundry there between 1938 and 1968. The United Automobile Workers Local 553 represented the workers at that foundry and Jenkins was active in the union, holding a number of offices in the local union and rising in 1956 to the office of local president, and then, in 1962, being elected as the president of the 50,000 foundry workers in the Midwest represented by the United Automobile Workers.
2. Pifer, Richard L. A City At War: Milwaukee Labor During World War II. Madison, Wis.: Wisconsin Historical Society Press; 2003. 210 p. Notes: How Milwaukee workers and their families shared in the homefront efforts to win the war, while continuing to make use of labor relations for the future to come after the war’s conclusion.
3. “A Social History of the Home Front: Milwaukee Labor During World War II”; 1983. Notes: Ph.D. thesis, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1983. 515 p. The role of workers and labor unions on the homefront in Milwaukee, Wisconsin during World War II is examined. While labor fully supported the war effort and tried to balance the needs of its movement with the needs of the nation, the author found that workers and their unions fought to maintain their ability to effectively represent their union members in the workplace and in their community and that the traditional techniques of the labor movement continued to be used throughout the duration of the war as a counterbalance to the power of the corporations. For a fuller abstract, see Dissertation Abstracts International, 1984, 45(1): 279-A.
4. Shannon, Lyle W. “False Assumptions About the Determinants of Mexican-American and Negro Economic Absorption”. Sociology Quarterly.1975; 16(1):3-15.
5. Shannon, Lyle W. and McKim, Judith L. “Attitudes Toward Education and the Absorption of Immigrant Mexican-Americans and Negroes in Racine.” Education and Urban Society. 1974 May; 6(3):333-354.
6. “Mexican American, Negro, and Anglo Improvement in Labor Force Status Between 1960 and 1970 in a Midwestern Community.” Social Science Quarterly. 1974 Jun; 55(1):91-111. Notes: See Sociological Abstracts, item 75H6026 for an abstract of this article.
7. Trotter, Joe W. Jr. “African American Workers and the Labor Movement in Milwaukee, 1870-1930”. IN: Holter, Darryl, editor. Workers and Unions in Wisconsin: A Labor History Anthology. Madison, Wis.: State Historical Society of Wisconsin; 1999; pp. 93-95. Notes: The author of the groundbreaking book, Black Milwaukee: The Making of an Industrial Proletariat, 1915-1945 (University of Illinois, 1985), here provides a perceptive overview of African-Americans’ experience as part of the labor movement in Milwaukee, Wisconsin during the period from 1870 to 1930. His comments were made at the Wisconsin Labor History Society Conference on April 22, 1989, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
8. Trotter, Joe William Jr. Black Milwaukee: The Making of an Industrial Proletariat, 1915-45. Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press; 1985. 302 p. (Blacks in the New World. Notes: A revision of the author’s thesis (Ph.D.)–University of Minnesota. An impressive work of original scholarship. Reviewed: Gelber, Steven M. (reviewer). American Historical Review, v. 90, no. 5 (December 1985), p. 1288. Reviewed: Crew, Spencer (reviewer). Journal of American History, v. 74, no. 2 (September 1987), p. 543-544. Reviewed: Horton, James Oliver (reviewer). Journal of Social History, v.20 (Winter 1986), p. 388-390. Reviewed: Kusmer, Kenneth L. (reviewer), “Urban Black History at the Crossroads” [a review essay of new works by five authors]. Journal of Urban History, v. 13, no. 4 (August 1987), p. 460-470. Reviewed: Grossman, James R. (reviewer). Reviews in American History, v. 14, no. 2 (June 1986), p. 226-232. Reviewed: Gerber, David A. (reviewer). Social History = Histoire Sociale, v.19 [no. 38] (November 1986), p. 500-502.Another edition: Trotter, Joe William, Jr. Black Milwaukee: The Making of an Industrial Proletariat, 1915-45. Illini Books ed. Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1988, c1985. 302 p. (Blacks in the New World) ISBN: 0252060350 (pbk.)
9. Black Milwaukee: The Making of an Industrial Proletariat, 1915-45. 2nd ed. With essays by Joe William Trotter, Jr. William P. Jones Earl Lewis Alison Isenberg Kimberley L. PhillipsUrbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press; 2007. liv, 368 p. Notes: Based up the author’s thesis (Ph.D.)–University of Minnesota. An impressive work of original scholarship.Appendixes 2 through 6 present data from the twelfth through sixteenth decennial censuses of the United States regarding the occupations of Milwaukee’s African American population from 1900 through 1940.New material consisting of five essays have been added as an epilogue for this second edition of a fine work–see at the end of the contents note below for details of this new material.CONTENTS: Prologue: The Antebellum and Civil War Roots of Milwaukee’s Black Community. — Part One, Introduction: Chapter 1, Common Laborers and Domestic and Personal Service Workers in an Industrializing Economy, 1870-1914. — Part Two, Process and Significance of Proletarianization, 1915-32: Chapter 2, Migration, Industrial Jobs, and Housing, 1915-32; Chapter 3, Emergence of the New Middle Class; Chapter 4, Race Relations, Politics, and Institutions. — Part Three, Depression, World War II, and the Precarious Nature of Black Urban-Industrial Working Class Formation, 1933-45: Chapter 5, Depression, World War II, and the Struggle for Fair Employment in Defense Industries, 1933-45; Chapter 6, Race, Class, and Politics during the Depression and World War II; Chapter 7, Proletarianization of Afro-Americans in Milwaukee, 1915-45, a Comparative Perspective. — Appendixes: 1, Occupations of Milwaukee Blacks, 1880; 2, Black Occupations in Milwaukee, 1900; 3, Selected Black Occupations in Milwaukee, 1910; 4, Black Occupations in Milwaukee, 1920; 5, Black Occupations in Milwaukee, 1930; 6, Black Occupations in Milwaukee, 1940; 7, Afro-American Urban History: a Critique of the Literature. — Epilogue: Reflections on African American Life in Late Twentieth-Century Milwaukee. — “State of the Field” / Joe William Trotter, Jr., p. [311]- 318. — “Race and Class in Urban History” / William P. Jones, p. [319]-321. — “How Black Milwaukee Forever Changed the Study of African American Urban History” / Earl Lewis, p. [322]-326. — “Transcending Ghetto Boundaries” / Alison Isenberg, p. [327]-337. — “Black Milwaukee, African American Migration Studies, and Recent U.S. Labor History” / Kimberley L. Phillips, p. [338]-345.
10. “The Making of an Industrial Proletariat: Black Milwaukee, 1915-1945”; 1980. Notes: Ph.D. thesis, University of Minnesota, 1980. 2 volumes (563 leaves).

1. Vollmar, William J. “The Negro in a Midwest Frontier City: Milwaukee, 1845-1870”; 1968. Notes: M.A. thesis, Marquette Unversity, 1968. 152 leaves.
2. Wilson, Nellie. “Nellie Wilson: A Black Woman Meets the Union.” IN: Holter, Darryl, editor. Workers and Unions in Wisconsin: A Labor History Anthology. Madison, Wis.: State Historical Society of Wisconsin; 1999; pp. 184-185. Notes: The on-the-job experiences of a pioneering African-American woman unionist, who was hired during World War II for defense work at the A.O. Smith plant in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; the Smith plant was represented by the United Steelworkers of America. Her comments were made at the Wisconsin Labor History Society Conference on April 22, 1989, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
3. Zophy, Jonathan W. “Invisible People: Blacks and Mexican-Americans.” IN: Neuenschwander, John A., editor. Kenosha County in the Twentieth Century: A Topical History. Kenosha, Wis.: Kenosha County Bicentennial Commission; 1976; pp. 51-81. Notes: A brief look at the history of two of the largest racial minority groups in Kenosha County from 1900 until about 1965; especially see p. 60-63 for discussion (and two photographs) of Kenosha’s African-American and Hispanic labor leaders, especially those involved with United Auto Workers Local 72.