Showing 221-240 of 440 Entries
Author: David Schroeder
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…
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Author: Bill Reck
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,…
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Author: Brian Mueller
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…
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Author: Jenna Himsl
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…
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Author: Thomas J. Jablonsky
John Martin Henni, the first Catholic bishop of Milwaukee, came to his adopted city in 1843 with several ambitions. Among them, he wanted to open a college. The biggest difficulty with this part of his plan was the absence of an intellectual culture in Milwaukee conducive to such an enterprise. The village—Milwaukee was not even…
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Author: Jenna Himsl
Founded in 1847, Marshall & Ilsley Bank, or M&I, was Milwaukee’s oldest and largest bank before being acquired by Toronto-based BMO Harris Bank in 2011. At the time of acquisition, M&I had $49.6 billion in assets, making it the largest Wisconsin-based bank. From headquarters at 770 North Water Street, the bank employed 9,100 people, nearly…
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Author: William I. Tchakirides
Mary Blanchard Lynde (circa 1820-1897) moved from upstate New York to Milwaukee with her husband, William Pitt Lynde, in 1841, a few weeks after their marriage and about a year after her graduation as valedictorian from the Albany Female Academy. In addition to raising seven children with William, a successful politician and founding partner in…
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Author: Karen W. Moore
According to transit historian Zachary Schrag, mass transit “generally refers to scheduled intra-city service on a fixed route in shared vehicles.” Since 1860, opposing political and economic forces significantly shaped the provision of transit in the Milwaukee metropolitan region. These forces included changes in available and economically viable technologies, advocates for public versus private ownership,…
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Author: Jenna Himsl
Headquartered in Oak Creek, Master Lock Company, LLC, is a subsidiary of Illinois-based Fortune Brands Home and Security, Inc. The Master Lock Company, including its Master Lock, American Lock, and SentrySafe brands, had net sales of $552 million in 2015. At its height in the 1980s and 1990s, Master Lock employed 1,300 workers at its…
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Author: Ellen Engseth
Mathilde Franziska Giesler Anneke was an internationally known educator, women’s rights advocate, journalist and publisher, poet, author, and arts critic who immigrated to Milwaukee in 1850. Over her life in the city she became involved in major liberal political battles of her day, and in her later years she ran a renowned women’s school in…
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Author: Joseph B. Walzer
Although now much smaller in scale, meatpacking was one of Milwaukee’s leading industries through much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the most prominent form of food processing in the city. The industry and city grew together as firms slaughtered, processed, and packaged livestock—particularly hogs and cattle—from hinterland farms, distributing products for regional, national,…
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Author: Alexander Belovsky
The Medical College of Wisconsin has its origins in private, for-profit Milwaukee medical colleges that opened in the late 1800s. One of these enterprises, the Milwaukee Medical College, became affiliated (educationally, though not financially) with Marquette College in 1907. Five years later, a group of local physicians urged the University to strengthen its oversight and…
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Author: Brian Mueller
Meta Schlichting Berger won election to the Milwaukee school board in 1909, seven years after women could vote in such an election, and a decade before women earned the right to vote in the 19th Amendment to the Constitution. Berger remained on the school board for another 30 years. In this and other prominent public…
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Author: Jenna Himsl
Since the 1830s, Methodists have been worshipping in Milwaukee. This faith tradition encompasses a variety of denominations, including many congregations that have traditionally served particular ethnic, racial, and linguistic groups. Some of these denominations exist today, including many historically black churches, while others have merged into larger communions. The largest Methodist denomination in the nation…
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Author: Gregory D. Squires
The Metropolitan Milwaukee Fair Housing Council (MMFHC) promotes fair housing and creation of racially integrated communities in the Milwaukee metropolitan area and throughout Wisconsin. Fair housing refers to the opportunity to secure housing and housing-related services such as mortgage loans and home insurance free from discrimination based on race and other protected classes that several…
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Author: Antonio Guajardo
Mexican Fiesta is a three day celebration of Mexican and Hispanic culture held on the third weekend of August at the Milwaukee Summerfest Grounds. Mexican Fiesta was originally organized in 1973 by LULAC Council #9990 as a street festival to celebrate Mexican Independence and raise money for Latino students pursuing a college education. In 1977…
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Author: Joseph A. Rodriguez
Many of the earliest Mexicans to settle in Midwestern cities of the United States arrived from Mexico in the late 19th century to work maintaining the tracks for U.S. railroads. In Milwaukee, the earliest known Mexican resident was Rafael Baez, a musician who arrived from Puebla, Mexico in 1884 and was the organist and music…
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Author: Marcus White
Milwaukee Inner-City Congregations Allied for Hope (MICAH) was founded in 1988, launching locally a new generation of congregation-based community organizing. An affiliate of the national Gamaliel Foundation, MICAH draws its organizing principles from the tradition of Saul Alinsky and his Industrial Areas Foundation. MICAH’s approach is to organize through member congregations (rather than the umbrella…
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Author: Joseph B. Walzer
The Miller Brewing Company is one of Milwaukee’s historic brewing giants, operating in the city from 1855 to the present. A relatively late bloomer compared to other local rivals, Miller was an important innovator in national beer marketing, a significant developer of light beer, and the last of the city’s brewing giants remaining from the…
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Author: Diana Belscamper
Miller Park serves as the home of the Milwaukee Brewers and bears the name of its primary sponsor, the MillerCoors brewing company. Located west of downtown, Miller Park features North America’s only fan-shaped retractable roof and houses a retro-style asymmetrical playing field designed to benefit hitters and baserunners. Miller Park was the site of the…
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