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Laura Ross Wolcott (1834-1915) was the first female doctor in Wisconsin and an important leader of the woman suffrage movement in Milwaukee. She was born in Maine, educated in Boston, and graduated in 1856 from the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. She came to Milwaukee in 1857, opened a private practice, and later… Read More

The Layton Park neighborhood is on the south side of the City of Milwaukee. The 1970 Metropolitan Milwaukee Fact Book defined its boundaries as Lincoln Avenue from 16th Street to 24th Street, Becher Street from 24th Street to 35th Street, and Howard Avenue from 16th Street to 35th Street. However, the City of Milwaukee’s Neighborhood Identification… Read More

The League of Milwaukee Artists (LMA) was founded in 1944. The original members of the LMA were local artists Ted Kraynik, Rosemary Kraynik, Annette Hirsch, Jack Weaver, Jack Madison, Mary Gerstein, Jack Friedman, Sam Bernfeldt, Dick Ells, Clarence Bohn, and Melvin Tess, but its most famous founder was the acclaimed artist Fred Berman. Friedman served… Read More

Although now merely a shadow of itself, the production of leather and leather goods was once a key part of Milwaukee’s industrial history. The leather industry and city grew together as firms tanned, curried, and finished animal hides as well as manufactured a variety of finished products. Milwaukee matured into a leading national and international… Read More

The Legal Aid Society of Milwaukee is one of America’s oldest, continuously-operating law firms providing free legal services to the poor. Its creation was suggested in a 1910 letter from Professor John R. Commons, renowned University of Wisconsin economist, to Victor L. Berger, Milwaukee alderman-at-large and head of the Socialist Party. When successive bills in… Read More

Milwaukee has generated many social movements and controversies throughout its history. The following controversies have produced legal changes of lasting importance. The Booth Cases (1854-60): In 1850, the U.S. Congress enacted a Fugitive Slave Act that imposed harsh penalties on persons who helped slaves escape to freedom. The Act was deeply unpopular in Milwaukee and… Read More

Lawyers appeared in Milwaukee almost simultaneously with the first settlers: Hans Crocker (1836), John H. Tweedy (1840), future Wisconsin Supreme Court justice Abram Smith (1842), and William Pitt Lynde (1843) were the first Milwaukee attorneys admitted to practice before the Territorial Supreme Court. Law in early Milwaukee, as elsewhere in frontier America, was a highly… Read More

Les Paul changed the nature of twentieth century popular music by inventing the Gibson Les Paul electric guitar and his innovative work in recording studios. The “Wizard of Waukesha” was born Lester William Polsfuss in June 1915 in Waukesha, Wisconsin. While he was at Waukesha High School, his orchestra, the “Red Hot Ragtime Band,” played… Read More

The composite designation “LGBT” functions as an acronym to describe lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Milwaukeeans who, since the 1960s, have challenged the city and metropolitan region to end gender and sex based forms of discrimination. In the process, they have demonstrated vibrant activism and artistry bifurcated by the politics of gender and race. By… Read More

Wladziu Liberace, or “Mr. Showmanship,” once said, “don’t be misled by this flamboyant exterior. Underneath I remain the same—a simple boy from Milwaukee.” He was born in West Allis in 1919 to a Polish-Italian family and, when he was four, began playing the piano. Liberace quickly outpaced his family’s basic piano lessons and began his… Read More

As industrial and agricultural development spurred trade in the nineteenth century, cities along Lake Michigan became major shipping ports. Lighthouses aided navigation and improved maritime safety as lake traffic increased. Although modern navigation tools made most lighthouses obsolete, many are still maintained for educational purposes. Built in 1838, Milwaukee’s first lighthouse was intended to mark… Read More

Looking Back The history of literature in Milwaukee can be traced back to nineteenth century German immigrants. During this time, Germans published a variety of newspapers and periodicals. The Wisconsin Banner, edited by Moritz Schoeffler in 1844, was the first German-language newspaper in Milwaukee. The Sentinel started a German paper (which became The Banner und… Read More

Lizzie Black Kander’s life experience coincided with the emergence of industrialized cities, rapid urbanization, and the massive immigration of her coreligionists from Eastern Europe. Elizabeth, “Lizzie” Black was born in Milwaukee on May 28, 1858 to John and Mary (Perles) Black. The Blacks lived on Milwaukee’s South Side, having moved from Green Bay in 1844.… Read More

Lloyd Barbee (1925-2002), born in Memphis, came to Milwaukee in 1962. An African American attorney committed to equal rights for all, in 1973 Barbee began a sustained drive to integrate Milwaukee’s racially segregated public schools. The Barbee-led movement of blacks and whites used educational picketing, marches, non-violent civil disobedience, and three school boycott campaigns, but… Read More

Lutherans have been part of Milwaukee’s fabric from its earliest years. But the American Lutheran controversy—the tension between Americanization and maintaining religious identity—is at the core of the Lutheran experience in Milwaukee. Historian Mark Noll described the attempt to maintain an inherited faith in the context of Americanizing as “steering between the Scylla of assimilation… Read More

Milwaukee’s population from Luxembourg played important roles in the development of several towns in the metropolitan area. Like the Germans, from whom their language descended, the Luxembourgers settled along Lake Michigan from Chicago through Milwaukee and northward through Ozaukee County and into Sturgeon Bay in the middle of the nineteenth century. In the nineteenth century,… Read More

The Lynden Sculpture Garden (formerly the Bradley Sculpture Garden) is an outdoor sculpture garden located at 2145 West Brown Deer Road. The forty-acre property is home to over fifty sculptures, a three-acre lake, gardens, woodlands, and a renovated 1860s farmhouse. The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation administers the garden. In 1928, Harry Lynde Bradley, co-founder… Read More

Mabel Raimey (circa 1900-1986) earned the right to practice law in Wisconsin in 1927, making her the first African American woman to hold such a distinction. She would practice law until she suffered a stroke in 1972. Prior to her admission to the bar, she became the first black woman known to attend law school… Read More

Milwaukee’s malting industry grew out of its iconic brewing industry. Beginning in the mid-to-late nineteenth century, a variety of firms emerged in the city that processed barley and other cereal grains into malt, a key ingredient in the brewing of beer. As Milwaukee became a national leader in brewing, it also grew into a significant… Read More

Headquartered in downtown Milwaukee, ManpowerGroup, Inc. is one of the world’s largest staffing and workforce development agencies. ManpowerGroup has over 2,900 offices in eighty countries. In 2015, the company placed 3.4 million people in temporary or permanent jobs, averaging over 600,000 employees per day. The company employs about 27,000 permanent employees, of which in mid-2016… Read More