August 22, 2024
In the summer of 1966, activist Father James Groppi & the NAACP Youth Council led a series of Civil Rights marches in Milwaukee and Wauwatosa. As writer and historian John ...
January 3, 2024
People do a lot to make the best of Wisconsin’s brutal winters. Some strap on some snowshoes or hit the sledding hills. The extremists participate in Polar Plunges. As Milwaukee ...
June 6, 2023
Cities inevitably change through the decades. People move in and out. Businesses come and go. Often times, these shifts are most obvious in your own neighborhood. Author and historian John ...
March 7, 2023
There’s a peninsula just off Lake Michigan in Milwaukee that has lived many lives. Today, Jones Island is home to a sewage treatment plant, piles of salt and rail cars. ...
August 1, 2018
People are flocking from across the state to West Allis this week for the Wisconsin State Fair. The best in show will be on display: from cows and pigs, to ...
June 6, 2018
Festival season unofficially kicks off in Milwaukee this weekend. Thousands of people will flock to the Henry Maier Festival Park along the lakefront to celebrate Pridefest. Later this summer, they’ll ...
May 16, 2018
Baseball season begins once again this week. It’s a sport with a long history in Milwaukee. Historian John Gurda brings us the story of one of the city’s oldest traditions. ...
January 24, 2018
It was a crop that required no seeds. No one had to turn over a single furrow of earth or pull a solitary weed. Year after year, it was simply ...
December 1, 2017
Thousands of Milwaukeeans will clog the freeways to watch the Green Bay Packers take on Tampa Bay at home this Sunday. They’ll travel on roads nearly as wide as football ...
September 20, 2017
Fall is harvest time in Wisconsin. It’s a time of year that reminds historian John Gurda of his own family ties to the land and the ways that farming has ...
April 28, 2017
A beautiful spring day can feel like the last day of school when you’re a kid – an unbelievable release into the world we didn’t even realize how much we ...
January 23, 2017
Wisconsin winters are known for being cold and harsh. But John Gurda reminds us of the 19th century settlers who toughed it out on the edge of the world. Wisconsin ...
December 23, 2016
It seems like the back to school sales are barely over when the Christmas trees start to appear. The commercial drive of the holidays may seem like a modern problem ...
November 2, 2016
The Brewers may have had a losing record this year, but it wasn’t always this way. Historian John Gurda recalls his lifelong love of baseball and the 1957 that defined ...
August 26, 2016
Few jobs were as miserable and hot as work in a 19th century iron mill – especially in the summer. We may be sweating now but historian John Gurda tells ...
July 29, 2016
It’s wedding season and while wedding trends come and go, elaborate, one-of-a-kind affairs have long been in fashion. Milwaukee historian John Gurda tells us about the 1881 wedding deemed the ...
June 29, 2016
The world’s largest music festival starts this week in Milwaukee. But while it may be the biggest, it isn’t Milwaukee’s first lakefront music festival. Historian John Gurda tells us about ...
May 6, 2016
In the 1880s, the eight-hour day emerged as the prime focus of the labor movement. Historian John Gurda reminds us of the tragedy that accompanied the fight in Milwaukee’s Bay ...
March 16, 2016
While we tend to associate Germans with Milwaukee, the Irish were the city’s first major immigrant group. Historian John Gurda describes the Celtic imprint on Milwaukee. On St. Patrick’s Day, ...
February 12, 2016
Valentine’s Day was not, you’d guess, a high point in the lives of Milwaukee’s pioneers. If their photographs are any clue, the city’s early settlers were a cheerless lot, doomed ...
November 3, 2014
U.S. entry into WWI in 1917 fueled a wave of anti-German sentiment across Wisconsin and across the nation. The fervor was particularly acute in Milwaukee, the most German city in ...
