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Henry Louis “Hank” Aaron became one of Milwaukee’s first major sports icons when he helped lead the Milwaukee Braves to their only World Series championship in 1957. Born in Mobile, Alabama, on February 5, 1934, Aaron began his baseball career with the Mobile Black Bears, a semi-pro team, at the age of seventeen. After briefly… Read More

Born on Milwaukee’s North Side in 1912, Reuss utilized his Harvard law degree locally before serving in Europe during World War Two. Afterwards, he turned his attention to electoral politics, enduring several unsuccessful city and state campaigns. In 1954, Reuss finally won Wisconsin’s Fifth Congressional seat. Achievements in his twenty-eight year House career included advocating… Read More

Over 6,000 Hindus worshipped in the greater Milwaukee area in 2010. Thanks to increased immigration from India in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, Milwaukee’s Hindu community has rapidly expanded. While the Milwaukee Hindu community includes congregations of converts, the majority of the region’s Hindus are first or second generation immigrants from India. For… Read More

Like people all over the United States, by the late 1960s, Milwaukeeans were disillusioned with the continuous construction and expansion since World War II and were beginning to rediscover the value of older buildings. Historic Milwaukee, Inc., which is dedicated to education about and advocacy for the city’s architectural heritage, grew out of this movement… Read More

The Hmong came to the United States as political refugees from Laos beginning in the mid-1970s. As a result of their involvement with American military and humanitarian personnel during the war in Southeast Asia, more than 130,000 settled in the U.S. The 2010 census reported the U.S. Hmong population had risen to over 260,000. Almost… Read More

Hungarians migrated to Milwaukee in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, and in a small refugee migration following World War II and the Hungarian revolt of 1956. In 1910, almost 8000 Milwaukeeans, or about 2 percent of the population, reported that their mother was born in Hungary. However, in the same census, only 1,306,… Read More

In 1970, three Oneida women—Marjorie (Powless) Stevens, Marge Funmaker, and Darlene Neconish—took it upon themselves to offer an alternative education for disillusioned Native youth in Milwaukee. Born of their frustrations with the public school system, discrimination against Native American students, and a lack of cultural direction, the Oneida women opened their homes to indigenous children… Read More

Held at Henry Maier Festival Park on Milwaukee’s lakefront each September, the Indian Summer Festival is one of the largest celebrations of Native American culture in the United States. Approximately 45,000 people attend this three day event. Butch Roberts, a Milwaukee police detective and an Oneida Nation member, started the festival in 1986 to celebrate… Read More

In 1959, Mayor FRANK ZEIDLER called a public conference and assembled a group of community activists and researchers to discuss the “Social Problems of the Core of the City.” The group’s final report was issued on April 15, 1960. Titled “Mayor’s Study Committee on Social Problems in the Inner Core Area of the City” but… Read More

Forming in the years prior to the city’s charter, Milwaukee’s insurance industry became a key part of the city’s economy while several Milwaukee insurance firms grew into significant regional and national industry leaders. The area’s insurance companies not only provided important protection against calamitous loss of life, property, wages, and other investments, but also played… Read More

Approximately a dozen leaders of major faith traditions in the metro Milwaukee area founded the Interfaith Conference of Greater Milwaukee in 1970. This religious diversity—Protestant, Roman Catholic, Jewish, Quaker, and Unitarian-Universalist—was unusual at a time when most ecumenical efforts were Protestant-only in their composition. Initially called the Greater Milwaukee Conference on Religion and Race, and… Read More

For almost a century, the International Institute of Wisconsin has had the mission of helping immigrants establish themselves in the Milwaukee community. The International Institute of Milwaukee County was founded in 1923 in Milwaukee by Edna H. Merrell under the auspices of the YOUNG WOMEN’S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION (YWCA). It was also later affiliated with American… Read More