By Amy Rabideau Silvers ![]() More than a decade before the 19th Amendment gave American women the right to vote, Meta Berger was elected as one of the first women to serve on the Milwaukee School Board. She came to politics through her famous husband, Victor Berger, a leader in the Socialist Party. That was not enough to prepare her when the party nominated her as a candidate in the 1909 school board race, just seven years after women in Wisconsin won the right to vote in school board elections. She was, in her own words, “surprised, shocked and frightened.” Meta wired her husband, asking him what to do. “Do nothing, except to accept the honor,” came the answer. “You won’t be elected anyway.” But win she did, part of a wave of Socialist victories that put her reform-minded party in control of local politics. She ran again despite her husband’s reservations. “When I am alone and thinking the matter over—then it always comes to me again that I don’t want either you or the children to take a prominent part in public life,” he once wrote. “You are not adapted to it at all … although (I am sorry to say) that you have acquired a little taste for it through your work on the school board. When your term is over I don’t want you to run again.” Meta ran and won reelection, going on to serve 30 years on the board, including as its president from 1915-1916. She also apparently won her husband’s acceptance of her political role, evident in a letter he wrote to one of their daughters. “Sometimes I wonder whether you girls sufficiently prize the fact that your mother is the first women in America who has ever achieved the honor of being elected president of a school board. And the first Socialist president at that … man or woman.” Through it all, Meta lived her Socialist values. “As a school director, Meta supported progressive measures such as playground construction, 'penny lunches,' free textbooks, and medical inspection of schoolchildren,” according to Kimberly Swanson in the introduction to a memoir written by Meta in the last year of her life. It was published as A Milwaukee Woman’s Life on the Left / The Autobiography of Meta Berger, edited by Swanson and published by the Wisconsin Historical Society Press in 2001. “She was also a teachers’ advocate and worked for their tenure, a firm salary schedule, and a pension system,” Swanson continued in her introduction. “Though she was not always successful in her efforts—she failed, for example, in her attempt to provide free textbooks—her fellow school directors nonetheless respected her ‘clear thinking, fresh interest and enthusiasm.’” One victory came at her very first school board meeting. “My fear left me even before the close of the meeting over a question which had aroused my interest and indignation,” Meta wrote in her memoir. “The board was going to discriminate against women by ruling that no woman, no matter how qualified, could become the head of a department in any high school course and was going to replace a woman who had served in such a capacity for a number of years. … “I forgot everything except that I must defend women and their rights, so made my first speech in the school board. It must have been pretty good for I won the fight and women there-after could hold positions equal in rank with men.” Early life—and a political awakening Meta was born in 1873 to a Milwaukee couple, Bernhard and Matilda Schlichting, who came to America from Germany as children. Her father briefly served as a Republican in the state Legislature and then in an appointed position with the Milwaukee schools. Perhaps most importantly in Meta’s life, he also hired a young immigrant, Victor Berger, to teach German classes. Victor proved a friend to the family after Bernhard’s death in 1883. The family struggled financially, with her mother taking in boarders. Meta graduated from the Wisconsin State Normal School, a forerunner to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, in 1894. She taught for three years before resigning her position to marry Victor, 13 years her senior, in 1897. Their marriage proved a loving relationship but not without its struggles, emotional and otherwise. Victor was an opinionated, sometimes volatile man. The family’s finances were often precarious at best, including as Victor struggled to keep his newspapers afloat and accomplish the work of the Socialist Party. “Soon a change in my life took place,” Meta wrote in her memoir. “My husband came home saying he was to attend a Socialist national convention in Chicago (in 1904) within a few days. Again I felt I was left behind. … without saying a word I determined to attend that convention too. I didn’t know quite yet how it was to be managed, but go I would.” She managed to do just that, turning up much to her husband’s amazement. “The convention was a turning point in my life,” she wrote. “I was so interested, so excited, so fired with enthusiasm when I heard those scholarly speeches and arguments, some of which I understood and some I didn’t. But the general drift of the purpose of the convention slowly drifted into my consciousness.” Meta resolved to attend all conventions with her husband, becoming increasingly active, which led to her school board nomination. Other notable roles followed, including appointments to the Wisconsin State Board of Education (1917-1918), the Wisconsin Board of Regents of Normal Schools (1927-1928), and the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents (1928-1934). Meta grew in confidence, someone who would voice her own opinions in all kinds of settings, as she did at her first meeting as a normal schools regent. Budgets, she then said, were being figured too closely, schools allowed to deteriorate. The board was “trying to shield the poor legislators by not being too hard on them in our requests.” “I for one would go before them and put the responsibility squarely on their shoulder. If we maintain a fire-trap then the refusal for the money to repair such conditions must be theirs,” the new regent told her fellow board members. “I guess I threw a bomb alright enough. The whole board was up in arms at once and didn’t know just what to do with such an unruly member.” She was actively involved in the suffrage and peace movements, although she sometimes felt a level of scrutiny for her Socialist ways and found those activists to be “well meaning but not courageous.” “Socialist women—even those of middle-class origin, like Meta—identified with the working class and questioned economic arrangements … (and) social traditions,” Swanson said in her writing. “She demonstrated her commitment to expanding women’s roles through her educational and suffrage work, for example, by defending the right of married women to teach,” according to Swanson. “She once criticized a fellow Socialist for making a ‘purely moral’ argument in favor of woman suffrage, meaning that she disapproved of arguments for change based solely on supposed moral differences between men and women. A firm proponent of equal rights, Meta may have sensed that emphasizing differences hindered rather than furthered women’s integration into public life.” Washington and wartime politics In 1910, Victor Berger was elected to the U.S. Congress on the Socialist ticket, necessitating the family’s move to Washington, D.C. “My husband had to resign as alderman in order to represent the Fifth District of Wisconsin in Washington,” according to Meta. “Now not only local problems but national problems were brought into the home. … Naturally everyone in the whole country wanted to know who this lone Socialist congressman elect was and what he was like.” He served until 1913 but was elected again in 1918. Nothing about that victory proved simple. Victor was elected after his indictment under the Espionage Act of 1917, passed soon after the U.S. entered what is now called World War I. His fellow congressmen refused to allow him to take his seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. Victor and four other defendants were tried in federal court in Chicago. Victor was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Then they learned the conditions for bail pending an appeal. Each man would be released only on $100,000 bond, secured by unencumbered real estate in Illinois. The bail would have to be raised within hours, by the end of the day, or they would be taken to prison. Meta and their Socialist Party friends began raising money. “We began at once to telephone friends and known liberals,” Meta wrote. “I had to call up perfect strangers and say something like this … ‘I am the wife of Victor Berger who was sentenced to serve twenty years in the penitentiary. My husband and the four other defendants must go to prison tonight unless we can raise the sum of $500,000 in unencumbered real-estate. I am told that possibly you would be willing to sign for part of the bond. Will you? Will you keep five men out of prison, pending an appeal of the case?’” The effort worked, with supporters helping to raise more than the $500,000 needed. “We finally got back to the office of the bonding clerk to discover the room filled with people, the legal looking deeds to their property held in their hands or protruding from their pockets,” she said in her writing. A few quick postscripts are in order here. Congress declared Victor’s seat open, necessitating a special election late in 1919. He won with even more votes, but again Congress refused to seat him. Yet another election followed, and Milwaukee voters finally choose a non-Berger candidate to be represented in Washington. In 1921, the conviction was voided by the U.S. Supreme Court, which found that the judge, who had publicly made anti-German and anti-Socialist remarks, should not have heard the case. Victor ran again for Congress, serving from 1923 to 1929. The final chapters Meta became a widow during the summer of 1929. Her husband was struck by a streetcar while crossing the street outside his newspaper office. He died of his injuries three weeks later. Victor Berger’s body lay in state at Milwaukee City Hall, and 75,000 people came to pay their respects. In the following decade, Meta did not hew to the official Socialist Party lines. She explored Communist affiliations and friendships, even traveling to Russia, though she never joined the Communist Party. While the Socialist Party had long had its own philosophies and factions, Meta’s actions were no longer acceptable. In 1940, after she was asked to withdraw from “communist-front” organizations, she instead chose to resign from her longtime party. She died in 1944 at a family home in Thiensville. “Meta Schlichting Berger served her community and her country, as well as her husband and family, by helping to shape her century for the better,” wrote historian Genevieve G. McBride in the forward to Meta’s memoir. “There is no better testament to a life lived well, nor to the lessons she left for the next generation.” This project is supported by grants from
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By Amy Rabideau Silvers ![]() No doubt Mabel Watson Raimey could identify with the Negro College Fund’s famous slogan declaring that “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.” The iconic slogan first appeared in 1972. In the early decades of her life, Raimey was repeatedly told that women and Black people could not do the kinds of things she wanted to do. She finally became a lawyer, establishing her own legal practice proudly serving both Black and white clients in probate and business matters. She grew up in Milwaukee, the daughter of Nellie Cora Watson Raimey and Anthony Van Leer Raimey, with roots to one of the first African American families in the city. Her great-grandparents, Sully and Susanna Watson, freed slaves who fled pre-Civil War Virginia, settled in Milwaukee and bought property by 1851. Mabel was born in 1895 and graduated from West Division High School at age 14. When she told the family physician that she wanted to be a doctor, that early diploma apparently meant little. As Raimey later recalled, he told her that “medicine would be too hard” and “women couldn’t handle the studies.” Young Mabel instead began preparing for the more traditional profession of teacher, first attending the Milwaukee Normal School, a forerunner of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, before transferring to the University of Wisconsin in Madison. She graduated in 1918—believed to be the first African American woman to graduate from the university—and soon accepted a teaching position with the Milwaukee schools. The job lasted three days. Raimey, who was very light-skinned, was called into the principal’s office and asked if she was a Negro. She was summarily dismissed by an administrator who seemed more amused than apologetic about the hiring “mistake.” If that was not enough of an insult, Raimey heard a secretary giggle and turned to find the principal making a face behind her back, something she would never forget. She found new employment as a legal secretary for a downtown lawyer. In 1922, Raimey enrolled in night classes at Marquette University Law School, but continued to work her day job. While historians now believe that she was the first Black woman to complete law school in Wisconsin, she later acknowledged keeping her silence on the subject of race. “Nobody asked me,” she said. “I never told.” “Thus, we have the potential law student, Mabel Raimey—discouraged from medicine because of sexism—prevented from teaching because of racism,” wrote Phoebe Weaver Williams, Marquette University emerita law professor, in a piece about Raimey. “Upon entering law school, she had already experienced the double jeopardy faced by women of color.” For Raimey, gender may have proved a more obvious and formidable barrier than race. She continued working as a legal secretary before beginning to practice law in that office. She was admitted to the Wisconsin Bar in 1927 and, over time, developed her own practice. (A quick historical note: It would be decades before the second black woman was admitted to the Wisconsin Bar. That was Vel Phillips, who graduated from the University of Wisconsin Law School in 1951.) Nothing about that career path was easy to navigate in Raimey’s time. “When she entered law school, there were few white women practicing law in the state,” according to a State Bar of Wisconsin legal history, “Pioneers in the Law: The First 150 Women.” “There were fewer, if any, African American male lawyers, and there were no African American female lawyers,” it continued. “In 1911 the American Bar Association had barred Blacks from membership, a barrier it would not remove until 1943.” Wrote Williams: “During interviews and speeches she repeatedly admonished younger women to set high goals, and ‘never [use] sex or race as an excuse not to attain these goals.’” Raimey also served as a leader in the community, including as a founding member and longtime board member of the Milwaukee Urban League. She served on the YWCA board and was a founder of the Milwaukee Northside YWCA. She became a charter member of the Epsilon Kappa Omega Chapter of the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority. In more recent decades, Raimey’s role in Wisconsin legal history has been recognized in public and permanent ways. A historic marker stands on the Marquette University campus. “Professionally, it was always my intention to serve all people, regardless of race, color, creed, or economic ability, in a fair and just manner,” Raimey said, as she accepted an award from the Black Law Students Association at Marquette. “If my acceptance and completion of law school at Marquette University in the 1920s has inspired or encouraged anyone to enter the field of law, I am pleased. If any accomplishment that I may have made has had any influence on any young people, I am pleased more.” She continued working until suffering a stroke in 1972. It happened while she was bathing, alone in her apartment. Friends found her after five long days that she survived by drinking water from the tub. She died in 1986. In September 2022, members of the sorority chapter gathered for a special ceremony at Raimey’s grave at Forest Home Cemetery. She was the last surviving member of her family, and the burial site had never been graced with a headstone. Her sorority sisters, dressed in white, dedicated a two-sided monument complete with her portrait and accomplishments. “As Alpha Kappa Alpha women, our chapter considers today a true honor to pause and place an exclamation point on Raimey’s service, community impact, and trailblazing legacy,” declared Debra Brown-Wallace, chapter president. “Now with a proper headstone, Raimey can be an inspiration of future generations to come.” This project is supported by grants from
Wisconsin legal historian Joseph Ranney joined WJI at its virtual June Salon for a fascinating talk on post-Civil War civil rights laws across the nation and in particular here in Wisconsin. Ranney is an adjunct professor at Marquette Law School and the author of several books and articles on Wisconsin and American legal history, including Trusting Nothing to Providence: A History of Wisconsin's Legal System and Wisconsin and the Shaping of American Law. He is working on a history of civil rights law in the Northern and Western states from colonial times to 1968. Ranney's talk relates to WJI's Unsung Heroes blog series on women and people of color whose impacts on Wisconsin legal history deserve more attention. Ranney discusses, among others, two men profiled in the series: Ezekiel Gillespie, who fought for the right to vote for Wisconsin's Black men, and William T. Green, who as an attorney worked to enforce civil rights. Unsung hero: Belle Case La Follette fought for suffrage, civil rights and progressive reforms4/20/2023 By Amy Rabideau Silvers ![]() While Robert “Fighting Bob” La Follette may now be the more familiar name to Wisconsin ears, his wife should be regarded as an equally remarkable person in Wisconsin law and progressive politics. Her name was Belle Case La Follette. In 1885, she became the first woman to graduate from the University of Wisconsin Law School, starting law school after she was already a wife and mother. She earlier helped husband Bob with his studies and then with legal briefs, including one brief in the 1890s “that broke new legal ground and won his case before the state’s supreme court,” according to an article by historian Nancy Unger in the Wisconsin Historical Society’s Wisconsin Magazine of History. “Justice William P. Lyon complimented Bob on the brief,” Unger explained, speaking in an interview with the Wisconsin Justice Initiative. Bob La Follette proudly and matter-of-factly told the court that his wife had written it. Belle La Follette never formally practiced law, but she practiced plenty of activism. She wrote, lectured and agitated for progressive causes, including women’s suffrage, child labor reform and racial justice. In 1909, her husband began La Follette’s Weekly, later La Follette’s Magazine and now The Progressive. Belle La Follette served as its first editor and as columnist, expanding the boundaries of what was considered appropriate for women readers. Her writing was nationally syndicated as brief “Thought for the Day” articles in newspapers in 20 states. “She was a tremendous voice for women’s suffrage,” Unger says. “She was instrumental in women getting the vote and changing minds.” In 1912, that included testifying before the U.S. Senate Committee on Women’s Suffrage, where she declared that suffrage was “a simple matter of common sense.” “You know how Lincoln defined government at Gettysburg. ‘Ours is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people,’” she said. “And are not women people?” That same year, she went on one of her barnstorming tours for suffrage, giving 31 speeches in 12 days across 14 Wisconsin counties. In 1914, she spoke for 63 consecutive days in states including Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Michigan. Belle La Follette and friends listened from the Senate gallery as the Nineteenth Amendment was approved on June 4, 1919. Her next action was likely one of the reasons that Wisconsin became the first state to officially ratify on June 10, 1919. She sent telegrams to representatives back home with the news. Once ratified, then-Sen. Bob La Follette announced Wisconsin’s vote and had it read into the Congressional Record. (For the record, Illinois technically passed a resolution first, but that was found to be invalid.) “And it was no mere state pride that caused me to thrill with joy when Mr. La Follette made the announcement in the Senate,” she later wrote in La Follette’s Magazine. “It was the conviction that a great service had been rendered. With Wisconsin as an example—an object lesson—ratifying so speedily, almost unanimously, the opposition was beaten at the very beginning of the race—left dashed and hopeless at the very start!” The Nineteenth Amendment became law in 1920. “And now the 17 million women of the United States are fully enfranchised,” Belle La Follette wrote in celebration. “… For the first time in American history, women may vote in every state in the Union for candidates for all offices ... and women may hold any office now held by men, whether appointive or elective.” The new constitutional amendment meant that the University of Wisconsin’s first female law graduate could finally vote. She was 61. A progressive family tree Belle Case was born in 1859 in Summit, Wisconsin, the daughter of Anson and Mary Nesbit Case, and grew up in Baraboo. Her mother was moved by a lecture on women’s suffrage and spoke to her children about such matters. Her parents valued education, including for their only daughter. An eager and brilliant student, Belle was accepted at the University of Wisconsin, which was where she caught the eye and heart of a student named Bob. After graduation, she taught for two years before agreeing to marry in 1881. At Belle Case’s request, the Unitarian minister omitted the word obey from their marriage vows. They were true partners in life and progressive politics. During his long career, her husband served as Dane County district attorney, congressman, private attorney, three-time governor of Wisconsin, and U.S. senator, as well as founder of La Follette’s Weekly and as a Progressive Party presidential candidate. Belle La Follette is credited with some measure of his success, sharing her progressive arguments, legal skills and political savvy through the years. She was, Bob La Follette declared in his autobiography, his “wisest and best counsellor.” He also spoke of “when we were governor.” “And though she did not enjoy all of the trappings that came with being a politician’s wife (she particularly hated Washington small talk), she saw great value in women becoming politically aware,” according to Unger, a professor at Santa Clara University, who has written extensively about the La Follettes, including two books that received Book of Merit Awards by the Wisconsin Historical Society. “She urged all women to recognize that the problems they thought of as personal were in fact political and therefore required women’s political activism.” After her husband’s death in 1925, La Follette was asked to finish his term in the U.S. Senate, which would have made her the first woman to actually serve as senator. (Rebecca Latimer Felton, 87, of Georgia, was sworn in as a member of the Senate in 1922. She served just one day. No woman would be elected until 1932.) La Follette declined and son Robert La Follette Jr. ran instead. For the ever-practical and political Belle, it made sense to have someone younger take up the family’s progressive banner. Robert Jr. served more than 20 years in the Senate; another son, Phil, was elected Wisconsin governor three times. She also encouraged her daughter-in-law, Isabel “Isen” Bacon La Follette, to give her opinion of a draft platform by husband Phil as he began running for governor, according to an article by historian Bernard A. Weisberger in the Wisconsin Magazine of History. Belle La Follette did not buy Isen’s argument that she knew nothing of politics. “You are an intelligent woman,” Belle La Follette told Isen. “If what Phil writes doesn’t appeal to you, rest assured it will not appeal to others.” True to her convictions La Follette continued her writing and speaking, advocating on a wide variety of issues for the rest of her life. For reasons of health and comfort, she gave up corsets and stays and told other women they should, too. She believed in exercise for all, including women. Women should not, La Follette contended, have to change their names when they marry. She decried racial injustice, speaking before and in support of Black communities and making headlines for it. “She Defends Negroes—Wife of Senator La Follette Denounces Segregation—Says U.S. Government Errs,” read a 1914 front-page story in The Washington Post. “It seems strange,” she once wrote, “that the very ones who consider it a hardship to sit next [to] a colored person in a streetcar, entrust their children to colored nurses, and eat food prepared by colored hands.” Civil rights activist Nannie Helen Burroughs introduced her as “the successor of Harriet Beecher Stowe.” La Follette also supported rights and respect for American Indians. La Follette especially deplored violence in all forms, from corporal punishment for children to capital punishment for crime. She was a founder of the Women’s Peace Party, which later became the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. Former President Theodore Roosevelt was outraged by its public stance, writing a scathing assessment of the WPP and calling it cowardly and foolish. Unger tells what happens next. “Belle La Follette fired back in La Follette’s Magazine that Roosevelt assumed ‘that War is the only means of settling international differences and moreover that War is bound to settle them right. … History demonstrates that [even] imperfect and temporary plans of mediation, conciliation, and arbitration have been more effective than war in securing justice ….’” “Was Christ cowardly? How long did the agitation against human slavery last before it was abolished?” La Follette wrote. A legacy hailed and then long forgotten Belle La Follette died in 1931. She was 72. She rated obituaries in newspapers across the country, including The New York Times, which called her perhaps “the most influential of all American women who have had to do with public affairs in this country.” Mostly, though, her life was told through the lens of “the little woman behind the great man,” according to Unger. “Only a few go so far as to recognize her as an important reformer in her own right.” In 1993, the State Bar of Wisconsin’s charitable arm, the Wisconsin Law Foundation, began its Belle Case La Follette Awards in recognition of her accomplishments. The annual awards now honor three bar members working in Wisconsin and representing underserved populations, one each from the UW Law School, Marquette University Law School and an out-of-state law school, said Joe Forward, communications director for the State Bar. La Follette was, at heart, a bit of a homebody and somewhat shy, but she believed in standing up and speaking out, something she thought all citizens should do. Perhaps more than her politician husband could, she claimed a measure of greater freedom in pushing progressive ideas, says Unger. “She’s a bit like Eleanor Roosevelt,” Unger says. “She wielded tremendous influence as a journalist and public speaker, and the nation improved because she did. She didn’t pull any punches in her sweet ladylike way.” This project is supported by grants from
By Amy Rabideau Silvers ![]() I am a Menominee Indian. That is who I was born and how I have lived. I am tall like the trees that blanket my reservation in northern Wisconsin, and my skin is brown like their bark. Although I have not lived there in years, my roots grow deep in that rocky soil. That soil has anchored me during tumultuous times. I have roots elsewhere—geographically, ancestrally, and intellectually—and they too produced and nurtured the person I have become. But my taproot is Menominee. Ada Deer began her memoir — Making a Difference/My Fight for Native Rights — with those words. Now 87 and living in the Madison area, she is most proud of helping to restore tribal status and rights for her people, and helping other tribes. As a girl and young woman, Deer saw her mother, Constance “Connie” Wood Deer, fight congressional efforts to terminate the Menominee tribe and end its historic relationship with the federal government. The Menominee, poor but with rich timber resources, were considered a prime candidate for the new policy called termination. “Termination sought to end federal supervision, dissolve reservations, and assimilate individual Indians into the American mainstream,” Ada Deer wrote. “Termination involved abolishing tribal governments, allotting tribal land to individuals, removing the protections of trust status, closing the tribal rolls, and divesting of tribal resources.” Despite a flawed vote and later challenges, the Menominee Termination Act was passed by Congress and signed by President Dwight Eisenhower in 1954. Termination was set for 1958, with the date later delayed until 1961, when it became a reality. Deer remembers the shock of realizing that, legally, she and her people were no longer members of a federally recognized tribe. “One day we were Indian, and one day we were not,” Deer said, speaking in an interview with the Wisconsin Justice Initiative. “People did not understand what termination was. It was a cultural, economic and political disaster.” “We thought of ourselves as an Indian tribe and as Menominee people, but Congress had taken away our status as Indians without informed consent,” she wrote in her memoir. “Termination left Menominees wondering who they were. It was a period of confusion, despair, and frustration.” In anticipation of termination, the state created Menominee County from the former Menominee Reservation land. After termination, complicated legal arrangements meant families that had long lived on reservation land — land held in common by the tribe — had to buy their homes and pay taxes. Many lost their homes. Many jobs at the tribe’s lumber mill were cut, with new supervision geared toward profit-making, not sustaining the forest and its people. That forced families to leave what had been Menominee land. Against the wishes of many tribal members, a legal trust began working with a development company, building homes and selling land to nontribal members. In some ways, legal termination and its ramifications were not unlike other troubling chapters of Menominee history. In the 19th century, the federal government tried to force the tribe to move farther west. Chief Oshkosh refused, finally signing a treaty in 1854 that guaranteed the tribe’s right to Wisconsin reservation land. Decades later, Menominee leaders rejected the idea of allotment, which called for individual plots of land, instead insisting on the right to hold their land in common. Other policies born of prejudice brought their own social consequences and suffering. Joe Deer, Ada’s father, was a student at a Catholic boarding school, where children were punished for speaking their native language or using their Indian names. Ada Deer grew up mostly on the reservation, the oldest of five children born to Joe and Connie Deer. The family lived in a log cabin on the bank of the beautiful Wolf River. They did not have indoor plumbing, electricity or a telephone. Joe worked at the tribal lumber mill, also hunting and fishing for his family. Her mother, a white woman, was a nurse who came from a well-to-do Philadelphia family with Quaker roots. While never a member of the Menominee tribe, she was an outspoken rabble-rouser who lived most of her life on the reservation. She took her young children to the meetings where the daily life of the tribe and later its fate were debated. “She was a leader and she was a fighter,” said Deer. “You were put on this earth for a purpose,” Deer’s mother would tell her. “You are here to help people. You are here to help your people.” Finding her purpose To do that, Deer decided she needed all the education she could get. In 1957, she earned a bachelor’s degree in social work, the first Menominee to graduate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She next went to Columbia University, becoming the first American Indian to earn a master’s in social work. Deer loved social work but later felt drawn to make a difference on a more macro policy scale, especially for her people and other Indian tribes. She began law school at UW-Madison but soon decided that the problem of termination was more important. She listened and learned at gatherings of Menominee people. “It struck my heart that we could lose our land, and it all came together what it meant,” she told WJI. “People were suffering. People were dying. There was no medical care.” In interviews and her memoir, Deer said that around 1970 she reached out to Joseph Preloznik, director of Wisconsin Judicare, previously involved in tribal legal issues. In meetings with Preloznik, she realized that if the situation was created by an act of Congress, a law was needed to “uncreate” the problem. “We have to change this,” she declared. “What can we do?” “You have to get a law through Congress,” replied Preloznik. For Deer, her people’s difficulties suddenly had a path to a different kind of future. Preloznik also joined meetings with Menominee people. Listening sessions included tribal people living in Milwaukee and Chicago, and they led to the creation of a grassroots group called DRUMS, short for Determination of Rights and Unity for Menominee Shareholders, the name proposed by Deer’s sister. Deer suggested the word restoration for the new concept of reversing termination. DRUMS received assistance from the Native American Rights Fund, which assigned attorneys Charles Wilkinson and Yvonne Knight to the case. And when the tribe needed someone to live and lobby in Washington, Deer agreed to represent her people. Supporters came to include Sens. Gaylord Nelson and William Proxmire from Wisconsin, and Sen. Ted Kennedy. As a lobbyist, Deer took advantage of any opportunity to talk restoration legislation. Once while on an airplane flight, she spotted John Conyers Jr., a Michigan congressman and a founder of the Congressional Black Caucus. She strode up to his first-class seat, introducing herself and the subject of tribal restoration. “I’m working on the repeal of termination,” Deer told him. “This is the Menominee Restoration Act, and it is as important to Menominees and to Indians nationwide as Brown v. Board of Education was to you.” “Come to my office,” he replied. The Black Caucus joined the bill, which gained near unanimous support in both houses. A legal victory — and historic first Almost 20 years after Congress voted for termination, the Menominee tribe was officially reborn. The Menominee Restoration Act was signed into law by President Richard Nixon on December 22, 1973. “The Menominee Restoration Act was the first time that a tribe’s legal status was restored after being terminated,” said NARF attorney Wilkinson, speaking to the Wisconsin Justice Initiative. While many were involved, Deer is considered the driving force behind the success. “Ada was the leader,” Wilkinson wrote in the foreword to Deer’s memoir. “The adoption of the Menominee Restoration Act announced the end of termination and the beginning of the tribal self-determination era. Without question, the single most important person in this transition was Ada Deer.” Deer was elected the first woman to chair the tribe, serving from 1974 to 1976, helping her people chart a new course and reestablish relations with federal, state and neighboring governments. Deer served in other roles during her working life, including as a lecturer with the American Indian Studies program and the School of Social Work at UW-Madison, returning to serve as American Indian Studies director. Called to service in Washington In 1993, appointed by President Bill Clinton, she became the first American Indian woman to direct the Bureau of Indian Affairs. On her watch, the federal government established government-to-government relationships with 226 Alaska Native villages and tribes, expanded self-governance to many other tribes, and approved the recognition of four tribes. She recalled in her memoir how, during a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing, Sen. Slade Gorton, a Republican from Washington state, asked her how long these welfare payments to Indians were going to continue. “Excuse me, Senator,” Deer replied. “These are not welfare payments. As you know, this country was built on Indian land with Indian resources, and treaties lay out the nation’s obligations to Indians, and treaties are the supreme law of the land. These are permanent obligations and will continue.” “I could hear the air being sucked out of the room,” she wrote. Connie Deer’s daughter was not going to let the welfare myth go unchallenged. In the case of the Menominee, tribal homeland once encompassed 10 million acres. Twentieth century descendants had fought to restore the tribe’s claim to some 235,000 mostly forested acres. “Few individuals have had as profound an impact on U.S. Indian policy as Ada has had,” wrote Theda Perdue, the historian and friend who, says Deer, co-authored the memoir. Running like a Deer Deer also ran for public office, twice for Wisconsin secretary of state, as well as for Congress against then-State Rep. David Clarenbach (the subject of another WJI Unsung Hero feature and someone she described as “a good guy”) in the 1992 Democratic primary. She beat Clarenbach but lost in the general election. Her campaign slogan was “Nothing Runs Like a Deer.” When the John Deere company threatened to sue, the campaign said go ahead. Company officials apparently reconsidered how it would all look because no lawsuit materialized. More recently, she served as a consultant on the American Indian exhibit at Chicago’s Field Museum. While no longer as active, Deer remains interested in social issues, including mass incarceration, adequate substance abuse treatment, and protecting the environment. Education and involvement, she said, remain the true paths to social justice and change. “There are many opportunities to serve,” said Deer. “I want everyone to get a decent education and get involved, depending on their interests. And vote. I think every citizen should vote, and it should be an informed vote. We should appreciate our country and all that it offers.” This project is supported by grants from
Unsung hero: David Clarenbach worked to secure equal rights for gay and lesbian individuals10/20/2022
By Amy Rabideau Silvers Forty years ago, with the addition of just a few words to its nondiscrimination statute, Wisconsin became the first state in the nation to declare that gay and lesbian citizens were entitled to equal rights in housing, employment and public accommodations. It was, the law stated, “the right of all persons to have equal opportunities … regardless of their … sexual orientation.” The bill was signed by Republican Gov. Lee Dreyfus on Feb. 25, 1982. Wisconsin became known as “The Gay Rights State.” ![]() The successful legislation was largely credited to State Rep. David Clarenbach, a Democrat who still lives in Madison. The victory came with the radical strategy of not arguing about homosexuality but instead arguing for equal rights, he said, speaking in an interview with the Wisconsin Justice Initiative. Bipartisan support was crucial. Crucial to that support was winning the blessings of Wisconsin religious communities, including from Protestant, Jewish and Catholic leaders. “The Wisconsin Baptist convention voted to support AB 70,” Clarenbach said. “That was the beginning of the religious right movement, the so-called moral majority, and we were able to isolate the moral majority as the fringe movement that they are.” The effort included identifying what legislative members – both Democrat and Republican – needed political cover to vote for the antidiscrimination bill. “We would go to that person’s local Democrat and Republican clubs. We would go to that person’s minister or priest and talk about what was the moral thing to do,” Clarenbach said. “We didn’t ask them whether being gay was good or bad, to be encouraged or discouraged, whether it was sinful or not sinful. We asked whether bigotry and discrimination could be tolerated against any group in our society. And when that is the question, the answer is a resounding no.” Gay and lesbian activists supported the effort, though within the community there was debate about what should be the first goal – a bill to decriminalize sexual conduct or a bill banning discrimination in areas like housing and employment. Playing the long game New to the State Assembly, Clarenbach joined forces with Rep. Lloyd Barbee (D-Milwaukee), who had long proposed similar bills. Clarenbach, too, began playing the long game, formally introducing bills every year for eight years. Along the way, the language morphed from “sexual preference” to “sexual orientation” in the nondiscrimination bill. The other bill, renamed the Consenting Adults Bill, became the canary in the coal mine, gradually winning greater support, while the antidiscrimination “gay rights” bill stayed in committee. “We weren’t going to bring it out of committee until we had the votes,” he said. “By the ’81-’82 session, we knew we were really close. In 1981, the Consenting Adults Bill lost in the Assembly by one vote, defeated 50-49.” It was time to bring the antidiscrimination bill out for a vote. Not all Democrats voted for it, but the long campaign had won over enough Republicans to win approval. “The bill would not have passed in either house without the support of Republican legislators,” Clarenbach said. Gov. Dreyfus did not have to sign it but chose to do so. “It is a fundamental tenet of the Republican Party that the government ought not intrude into the private lives of individuals,” Dreyfus said. “And there is certainly nothing more private nor sensitive than who you love or how you love.” Winning consensus for consent Then it was back to the matter of the Consenting Adults Bill. The measure was next offered as a budget amendment and approved by the Democratic Assembly caucus. That should have cleared a path for approval. Instead, a few Democrats said they couldn’t vote for the budget bill because of it. Clarenbach made the difficult decision to withdraw the amendment. It was later reintroduced as a standalone bill in the next session of the Legislature, and despite pressure from the conservative right it won bipartisan approval. “In retrospect, I am certain that withdrawing the earlier amendment was one of the things that contributed to getting the Consenting Adults Bill passed,” Clarenbach said. “Suddenly I was seen in a different light and that next session I got elected speaker pro tem.” Democratic Gov. Tony Earl signed the Consenting Adults Bill into law on May 5, 1983. Once again, the right words helped make the case for the change. The issue was cast as one of “sexual privacy” – including for married heterosexual couples – rather than the repeal of what was known as the anti-sodomy law. It all made for some interesting debate. Clarenbach remembers quipping that “95% of the adults in Wisconsin have violated the law and the other 5% have no imagination.” Lest anyone think Wisconsin was going too wild, the final version of the bill included a disclaimer that “Wisconsin does not approve of sexual conduct outside of the institution of marriage.” The Consenting Adults Law ended an unusual legal situation created by the passage of the nondiscrimination bill, as the late Dick Wagner, a longtime gay advocate, activist and historian, once explained in an Our Lives article. Consider, Wagner declared, the “strange anomaly that for a year homosexual acts were technically illegal but you could not discriminate against people for them.” Clarenbach later won other legislative victories, including on bills banning discrimination in health care and insurance for patients with HIV/AIDS, signed into law by Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson. ![]() Growing up political Clarenbach was born in St. Louis, Missouri, to politically progressive and involved parents. His mother, Kathryn Clarenbach, was a founder and the first chairwoman of the National Organization of Women (NOW). His father, Henry Clarenbach, who worked in real estate, served as a delegate to the Democratic Convention in 1968 and was active in the anti-war movement during the Vietnam War. Clarenbach has proudly and matter-of-factly talked about being raised in a feminist household. “My own involvement in civil rights and against the war in Vietnam was really part and parcel of what she was doing as a feminist leader on the front lines of that struggle,” he said in an interview for the Veteran Feminists of America Pioneer Histories Project. “So, we really were taught and believe that it’s all part of the same movement. It’s the humanist approach to society – that all of us are equal and should be treated as individuals who have equal opportunities. And we were shown that and that’s how we lived.” His parents moved their family back to Wisconsin in 1960. Clarenbach attended public schools and then the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It would be years before Clarenbach officially stepped out of the closet, publicly acknowledging his own sexuality. More than anything, the political dynamics were an early version of don’t ask-don’t tell. “I knew I was gay from my high school days and also knew that I wanted to be involved in public service,” Clarenbach said. “I was first elected at a time when openly gay and lesbian officials didn’t exist, less than three years after Stonewall took place,” he said, referring to the 1969 harassment and events that sparked the gay rights movement. “To predict that Wisconsin would pass the country’s first gay rights law would have been absurd.” At 17, he decided to run for the Dane Country Board of Supervisors. In 1972, he became the first 18-year-old elected to public office in Wisconsin, just months after the 18-year-old vote began that January. Other races followed. In 1974, Clarenbach was elected to the Madison Common Council, and then to the Wisconsin State Assembly at the age of 21. He served as speaker pro tem from 1983 until 1993. Indeed, his only unsuccessful campaign came in 1993 when he ran for Congress, hoping to represent Wisconsin’s 2nd District. Clarenbach went on to head The Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, based in Washington, D.C. The group, now the LGBTQ Victory Fund, works to elect openly gay and lesbian candidates to public office. Politics and perspectives today These days, he’s a self-described “recovering politician,” still passionately interested in the politics of social and economic change. With the recent Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, he said, there’s a “clear and present danger to a whole range of privacy-related precedents, including gay marriage and contraception.” “It’s a slippery slope,” Clarenbach said. “This is the McCarthy era all over again, and there are clear parallels to 1933 Germany …. There is a lot of work to do. Fundamental issues of civil rights and equality are at risk. “The challenge we have today is that the struggles are not over. Still today, the statutes don’t mention the transgender community. Still today, more than half the states don’t have LGBTQ protections. It’s hard for me to think that some Idaho legislator thinks it’s OK to fire someone, not for job performance, but for who they love. Or for someone to say, you can’t rent a house because you’re a lesbian, and that’s what the majority of states are still saying.” Wisconsin’s gay rights law continues to make a difference. The state Department of Workforce Development, for example, receives some 100 complaints a year regarding possible discrimination cases. “It’s a law that affects the real lives of real people. It’s not theoretical,” he said. “I’ve had people come up to me and say, ‘I moved to Wisconsin because of the law’ and ‘I came to the University of Wisconsin because I felt I could be safe here.’ Laws don’t change attitudes but they are a means to an end.” Is that what he is most proud of? Clarenbach laughed, saying he expects “the civil rights bill will be the lead to my obit.” “But I’m most proud of living a life that my parents would be proud of,” he said. He remembers his last day in the Legislature, presiding one final time as speaker pro tem. “I said my goodbyes and I received a standing ovation from both sides,” Clarenbach said, speaking with emotion. “I’ve tried to be an honest and decent person who treats others with civility, including those with whom I disagree.” This project is supported by grants from
Joshua Glover escaped from slavery and started a power struggle between two supreme courts12/9/2021
By Margo Kirchner Second of two parts Beginning shortly after his escape from a Milwaukee jail in 1854, Joshua Glover was the catalyst for Wisconsin judicial and legislative declarations that the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was unconstitutional and void. “The real emphasis of Glover’s escape comes in the court actions after,” said Clayborn Benson, executive director of the Wisconsin Black Historical Society. Those decisions took the “Glover incident” to a national level, reported in newspapers across the country, he said. As described by author H. Robert Baker in The Rescue of Joshua Glover: A Fugitive Slave, the Constitution, and the Coming of the Civil War, “[t]he rescue of Joshua Glover became a six-year struggle not only to determine whether the Fugitive Slave Act was unconstitutional but to determine the substance and meaning of the Constitution itself.” Within days of the Glover jail break, Sherman Booth, the publisher of the Free Democrat abolitionist newspaper who helped whip up the crowd that freed Glover, was arrested and charged with aiding the escape of a fugitive slave in violation of the act. Booth appeared before the federal commissioner on March 21 and was released on bail until formal indictment and the next district court trial date in July. He kept reporting in his newspaper about his own case. In late May, the federal court commissioner sent Booth back to jail in the custody of U.S. Marshal Stephen Ableman. Booth applied to Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Abram Smith for a writ of habeas corpus, arguing that his imprisonment by Ableman was illegal because the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was unconstitutional and his warrant was defective. Smith granted the writ, ruling that the act was unconstitutional. Ableman complied with Smith’s order for Booth’s release but appealed the decision to the full Supreme Court, then consisting of three justices: Smith, Chief Justice Edward Whiton, and Justice Samuel Crawford. On July 19, 1854, in a two-to-one decision, the Wisconsin Supreme Court affirmed Smith’s decision to discharge Booth from custody. Whiton and Smith found that the state court had the power to protect the state’s citizens from illegal restraint, the warrant for Booth’s arrest failed to charge a crime, and the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was unconstitutional.
Whiton wrote the Act illegally conferred power on appointed commissioners, rather than judges. Second, he said, it denied the alleged fugitive the right to have his or her case tried to a jury in violation of the right to due process. Whiton focused on the danger to a free citizen of being taken into slavery when the evidence determining whether the person was a slave was presented in the state of the slave owner, with no opportunity for cross-examination of witnesses or submission of contrary evidence. The certificate of that court was then taken as conclusive in the state where the person was captured, causing the commissioner to order the person’s return. “We are at a loss to perceive how this proceeding, by virtue of which a freeman becomes a slave, can be justly called ‘due process of law,’” Whiton wrote. Smith concurred in a lengthy opinion based on the Constitution’s reservation of rights to the states. States, he wrote, retained the right to determine their own process for a slave owner’s claim. “In Virginia he may be, indeed, a chattel; but in Wisconsin he is a MAN. . . the laws of Wisconsin regard him as a person here,” Smith wrote. Moreover, he said, there was no basis for federal law enforcement or court officials’ involvement in the return of slaves. He continued: Had the Northern States imagined, that by assenting to this clause of the Constitution, they were thereby conferring upon the federal government the power to enter their territory in pursuit of a runaway negro, . . . to subject their houses to search, and to override their own laws and municipal regulations, and that they were parting with all power to regulate the mode of procedure by which that clause was to be carried into effect; does any sane man believe that they would ever have assented to it? Crawford dissented, writing that the Wisconsin courts should decline to interfere with federal custody and that Congress had the constitutional power to pass the act. The dissent is thought to have caused his loss to Orsamus Cole in the 1855 election. Ableman, the marshal, sought review in the U.S. Supreme Court. The state Supreme Court clerk forwarded the record to the U.S. Supreme Court when ordered. This is the second of two posts about Joshua Glover. Read the first one here. Meanwhile, in July 1854, Booth, and two other men who assisted Glover were indicted on criminal charges of aiding a fugitive slave in violation of the 1850 act. One, John Messenger, who had spirited the just-escaped Glover to a abolitionist's home in Waukesha, died shortly after his arrest and release on bail. The other, attorney John Rycraft, who had created a "vigilance committee" to ensure Glover's rights were protected, was tried and convicted in November 1854 and sentenced to ten days in jail and a fine of $200. Booth’s criminal trial took place in early January 1855. The jury found him guilty, and Miller sentenced him to one month of imprisonment and a fine of $1,000, with Booth to remain in custody until the fine was paid. A few days later Booth and Rycraft applied to the Wisconsin Supreme Court for writs of habeas corpus, arguing that the federal court trial proceedings were void. The Wisconsin Supreme Court held, this time 3-0, that Booth’s and Rycraft’s convictions were illegal and ordered them discharged from imprisonment. All three justices agreed that the indictments in the cases failed to charge and the evidence at the federal trial failed to prove any offense within the jurisdiction of the federal court. Unsung hero: Joshua Glover – His escapes from slavery and the law sparked state abolitionist action12/3/2021 By Margo Kirchner First of two parts The capture and escape of Joshua Glover in southeastern Wisconsin in 1854 sparked an abolitionist outcry and an attempt by the Wisconsin Supreme Court and Legislature to nullify federal slavery law. Two years earlier, Glover had escaped from slavery in St. Louis and established a life in freedom in Racine, but federal deputy marshals captured him in his home under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Outraged citizens of Milwaukee and Racine broke Glover out of jail and sent him on the Underground Railroad. Glover eventually reached safety in Canada. Although Glover departed Wisconsin by mid-April 1854, his legal impact here had just begun. His escape from custody led to a struggle between state and federal authorities and the state’s defiance of the U.S. Supreme Court. Benammi Stone Garland purchased Glover, then known only by his first name, on January 1, 1850, on the steps of the St. Louis Courthouse. In May 1852, Glover escaped from Garland’s farm and crossed the Mississippi River to Alton, Illinois. Garland placed a reward notice in a Missouri newspaper on May 19, 1852, and ran the notice for about two weeks. Glover traveled about 350 miles to Racine, arriving in late spring or early summer. Racine was a bustling community of 5,000 people due to its trading post, harbor, and plank road to Janesville. About 60 Black or mixed-race adults were recorded in the city’s 1850 census. Glover found a job at a sawmill on the Root River a few miles out of town. He chose his last name and had his own home, where he lived freely for two years. Wisconsin’s antislavery movement was active by the early 1850s. The Burlington Liberty Association, the first antislavery society in the state, had been around since 1844. Sherman Booth published an abolitionist newspaper in Milwaukee called the Free Democrat. Chauncey Olin published the abolitionist American Freeman newspaper in Waukesha. The Underground Railroad (UGRR) stopped in Waukesha and elsewhere. And, as described by authors Ruby West Jackson and Walter T. McDonald, Racine was a “hotbed of abolitionist sympathizers.”* Clayborn Benson, executive director of the Wisconsin Black Historical Society, said in a recent interview that abolitionists were motivated by several reasons. Some opposed slavery on religious grounds, while others opposed slavery for political purposes as part of the developing Republican Party. Some were European immigrants with ancestors who had been enslaved, while “free-soilists” did not want to compete against the South’s unpaid labor when it came to agriculture. Although Wisconsin’s antislavery movement was vigorous, Blacks nevertheless were not close to being treated equally with Whites. They had the right to assemble and act as jurors, said Benson. But Blacks were still denied the right to vote, and Whites did not want Blacks living nearby. In 1850 Milwaukee, about 100 Blacks lived in a city of 20,000. Political battles raged in the nation over slavery in territories and newly formed states. Sentiment ran strongly in Wisconsin against slavery and its reach northward, and there was strong opposition to returning escaped slaves who had become Wisconsin residents. Many people in Wisconsin wanted “no part of enslavement,” said Benson. Slavery’s reach from the South, however, found support in the U.S. Constitution and federal law. Article IV, section 2 of the U.S. Constitution provided that a slave in one state would not be discharged from service by escaping to another state and would be delivered back to his or her owner on demand. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 established a process for slave owners to reclaim runaway slaves, but in southern eyes it did not have teeth. As part of the Compromise of 1850 between northern and southern states, a new fugitive slave act beefed-up the rights of slave owners to recover escaped slaves. A slave owner could obtain a court order in his home state confirming the status of a slave, then proceed to find and arrest the escapee with the assistance of federal marshals. A U.S. commissioner, rather than a regular district judge, could determine the fate of the person. Notably, the commissioner received a larger fee for sending a fugitive to slavery than for releasing him or her. The alleged fugitive slave was denied a jury trial or any other opportunity for testimony or defense. Moreover, the act created criminal penalties for citizens who helped escaped slaves or interfered with their return. This is the first of two posts about Joshua Glover. Read the second one here. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 “brings fire” to northern abolitionists and made them determined to help fugitives reach Canada, said Benson. Wisconsin politics included disagreements regarding whether the state had to defer to the federal government’s efforts to enforce the 1850 act. From 1850 to 1860 “there is turmoil,” Benson said. Garland remained intent on reclaiming Glover under the 1850 act. He somehow learned that Glover was in Wisconsin and provided a St. Louis court with proof of his ownership and Glover’s escape. The court ordered Glover’s removal from Wisconsin. Garland arrived in Milwaukee in early March 1854 with a St. Louis police officer and the Missouri court order. He swore out an affidavit and presented his paperwork to U.S. District Judge Andrew G. Miller, who issued a warrant for Glover’s arrest. Deputy U.S. Marshal Charles Cotton accompanied Garland and the St. Louis police officer to Racine, where they were joined by another federal deputy marshal. Garland and the officers surprised Glover at his home on Friday, March 10, 1854. After a physical struggle the officers subdued Glover and led him away in shackles. Several reports indicate that Glover was bruised and bloodied during the capture. Possibly because of the small size of the Racine jail or the abolitionist forces in Racine, the captors transported Glover to Milwaukee County’s larger and stronger jail located in Courthouse Square (now Cathedral Square). Jailing Glover in Milwaukee also facilitated a quicker hearing because the commissioner and federal judge were located there. The one courthouse contained the federal district court, Milwaukee County courts, and county jail.
News of Glover’s capture spread through Racine. The editor of the Racine abolitionist newspaper printed a story in his Saturday edition and telegraphed word of the “kidnapping” to Booth in Milwaukee by early Saturday morning. Unsung hero: William T. Green, lawyer and activist, author of the state's first civil rights law9/8/2021 ![]() By Gretchen Schuldt Fewer than 30 years had passed since the end of the Civil War when Canadian-born William T. Green graduated from the University of Wisconsin Law School in 1892, one of the first Black people to do so. He was by then 31 or 32 years old. Law degree in hand, he settled in Milwaukee, where he became the city's first and only Black attorney. By that time, he already had authored the state's first civil rights bill. Green's enrollment in law school was fortuitous, according to a September 1893 Milwaukee Journal newspaper story. The short, one paragraph account announced a benefit for Green, "a colored lawyer of the city, who was stricken with paralysis some time ago." "Years ago he was an errand boy in Milwaukee, but later obtained a position about the state university building," the newspaper reported. "He was without money and although eager to learn was unable to provide himself with an education. One of the professors one day found him with his ear to the keyhole listening to a law lecture. Attracted by the lad's earnestness to learn the professor helped him through college and he graduated a year or two ago with high honors." Green, as a young man, watched as the country moved away from its commitment to civil rights. In 1883, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a federal law prohibiting discrimination in public accommodations. The move had ramifications in Wisconsin. Black people were turned away from taverns and other public places; some attending a teachers' convention in Madison were not allowed to register at hotels, according to the summer 1966 issue of the Wisconsin Magazine of History.
The small Black population (304 people in 1880) began pushing for a state law that would do what federal law no longer did. Then in 1889, Owen Howell, a Black man, bought a ticket to a play. When he went to the Bijou Opera House in Milwaukee, he was denied his seat and an usher instead directed him to the gallery. Howell sued in Milwaukee County Circuit Court. Black leaders in the city, including Green, held a convention to show off their increasing political strength – the city's Black population was by then about 449 – and to push for a new civil rights league, which was indeed established. Green also helped organize a meeting to censure the Bijou's owner. The meeting drew about 75 people – about 17% of the city's Black population. Howell won his case and was awarded $100 and costs. Law student Green, meanwhile, was busy with his civil rights bill. It was drafted in late 1889, and introduced in January 1891 by a one-term legislator, Orren T. Williams. Republicans at the time were the advocates for civil rights. They also were in the legislative minority that term. The bill would have provided equal access to a variety of public accommodations, including restaurants, saloons, barber shops, theaters, and transportation conveyances. Violations would be punishable by fines of $25 to $500 and incarceration for up to one year. The debate in the Judiciary Committee was overtly racist. "Where is the man on this floor who will say the colored man is the equal of the white man?" Assemblyman John Winans asked. "God did not create them equal." First the bill was watered down. Then it was defeated. "Mr. Williams, who introduced it, wanted it killed because it had been limited to hotels and common carriers," The Milwaukee Journal reported. ![]() By Margo Kirchner Chief Buffalo was instrumental in the transfer of approximately one-third of Wisconsin from Indigenous Americans to the United States while retaining his people’s rights to live on reserved land and to hunt, fish, and gather. Chief Buffalo (also known as Great Buffalo, Kechewaishke, Gitchi waisky, or Pezheke) negotiated and signed a series of land-cession treaties between the Lake Superior Anishinaabe (also known as the Chippewa or Ojibwe) and the United States between 1837 and 1854. By the mid-1800s, Chief Buffalo was chief of all Lake Superior Anishinaabe and their lead treaty negotiator. He is best known for ensuring that the Anishinaabe would stay on their lands, even if those lands were significantly reduced in size, rather than move west of the Mississippi River. His work shaped the map of Wisconsin today, as the treaties he signed passed most of northern Wisconsin into United States control and eventually to White landowners. Chief Buffalo pursued a peaceful resolution despite treachery by the U.S. government that left about 400 Anishinaabe dead. While one could argue that the Anishinaabe relinquished too much in the treaties, Rob Goslin, a tribal elder of the Red Cliff Band of Anishinaabe and a historical interpreter for the Madeline Island Museum, confirms Chief Buffalo’s favorable place in his people’s history. Goslin says that Chief Buffalo knew changes were occurring as traders and settlers moved into northern Wisconsin, and he saw the issue as how to live among the new settlers rather than how to fight their presence. Goslin points to a saying he uses as a tribal elder and historical interpreter, which sums up Chief Buffalo’s thinking: “Teaching stays the same but the culture we live in changes.” When changes occur, “we have to live as we are today,” he says, and that was Chief Buffalo’s position. Chief Buffalo did the best he could with the situation before him, says Goslin. “He did his very best to look in the interest of his people.” Born in or about 1749 at La Pointe on Madeline Island (one of the Apostle Islands in southwestern Lake Superior), Chief Buffalo was a member of the Loon Clan, from which the highest-level chieftains of the Lake Superior Anishinaabe were chosen. Chief Buffalo rose to become what Goslin calls the “first chief” or “ultimate chief.” Several sources reference Chief Buffalo’s skill as a negotiator. An obituary of Chief Buffalo remarked that he was “noted for his rare integrity, wisdom in council, power as an orator, and magnanimity as a warrior.” Anishinaabe government was based on consensus, says Goslin, so Chief Buffalo had to discuss and mediate issues with the other clans’ chiefs as well as with the United States. The Minnesota chiefs in particular did not always agree with him. But in treaty negotiations, Chief Buffalo ultimately led the discussions. “He was a talker,” Goslin says. The Anishinaabe lived by hunting and trapping; fishing in Lake Superior, other lakes, and streams; gathering wild rice; and tapping maple trees for syrup. As European fur traders arrived in what is now northern Wisconsin, Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, and Minnesota, the Anishinaabe traded and intermarried with them. While other Anishinaabe tribal leaders urged physical aggression to resist the United States’ land acquisitions, Chief Buffalo relied on nonviolent negotiations and advocated for peace. Goslin says “that was one of the unique things about him—he was against bloodshed.” In the 1837 Treaty with the Chippewas, signed at St. Peters in Minnesota, and the 1842 Treaty with the Chippewas, signed at La Pointe, the Anishinaabe ceded land in eastern Minnesota, northern Wisconsin, and the western Upper Peninsula of Michigan. The portion of ceded land in Wisconsin alone totaled more than 22,000 square miles. In exchange, the Anishinaabe received certain sums to pay debts plus annual payments in cash and supplies for 20 (1837 treaty) and 25 (1842 treaty) years. The Anishinaabe retained their rights to hunt, fish, and gather on the ceded land, rivers, and lakes. Chief Buffalo participated in the 1837 and 1842 treaty negotiations and signed both treaties as chief of the La Pointe band of Anishinaabe. Historical reports indicate that the Anishinaabe believed they had sold only rights to timber and copper rather than the land itself, permanently. Ronald N. Satz, in Chippewa Treaty Rights: The Reserved Rights of Wisconsin’s Chippewa Indians in Historical Perspective, cites evidence that the acting superintendent of Indian affairs for the area assured the chiefs at the treaty council that they would not be asked to leave ceded lands for many years as long as they were peaceful and well-behaved. In a letter to the commissioner of Indian affairs in 1850, Chief Buffalo and other Anishinaabe chiefs recalled that during negotiations for the 1842 treaty, government officials said that the United States wanted the mineral rights to the land, not to settle it, and that the Anishinaabe would be able to live on their lands for 50 or even 100 years. They believed that although they had ceded their lands, they could remain living, hunting, and fishing there. United States officials thought otherwise. A new administration in the White House in 1845 brought a new commissioner of Indian affairs who wanted to move the Anishinaabe and others to a northern “Indian colony” to assist in westward expansion. As noted by Richard D. Cornell in The Chippewa: Biography of a Wisconsin Waterway, the commissioner also suggested evicting the Anishinaabe from northern Wisconsin to promote their “civilization.” The situation became dire in February 1850, when President Zachary Taylor revoked all hunting and fishing rights in the ceded territory and ordered the Anishinaabe to move from their lands around Lake Superior to west of the Mississippi River. Such removal would have taken the Anishinaabe away from their homelands and placed them in close proximity to the Dakota (also known as the Sioux), with whom the Anishinaabe had conflicted for more than a century. Chief Buffalo and other chiefs opposed to removal sent messengers to villages throughout their lands to confirm that the Anishinaabe had committed no incidents of aggression against White communities that could have justified removal. To push the Anishinaabe west, a Bureau of Indian Affairs agent and the territorial governor of Minnesota moved the location of the annual treaty payments of cash and supplies from La Pointe, Wisconsin, to Sandy Lake, Minnesota, and set the delivery for October 1850. The officials required all Anishinaabe families to appear to receive the payments, hoping to lure them to Minnesota and strand them there for the winter and possibly permanently. At least 3,000 Anishinaabe traveled hundreds of miles westward to Sandy Lake for the annuity payment. But when they arrived they found rancid and inadequate food, few supplies, and no cash payments. The Anishinaabe suffered six weeks of hunger and terrible conditions waiting for the annuity payments (which never arrived) before walking home, as winter had set in and rivers had frozen. About 170 Anishinaabe died at Sandy Lake from disease and starvation and another 230 died on the journey home. In November 1851 Chief Buffalo and several other Anishinaabe chiefs and headmen wrote to the commissioner of Indian affairs complaining of the acts of the Indian agent in Wisconsin as a “great deception towards us,” describing the suffering at Sandy Lake, asking that future annuity payments be made at La Pointe, and asking permission to send a delegation to Washington, D.C.
Receiving no response to the request, in spring 1852, at age 93, Chief Buffalo set out to negotiate in person with U.S. President Millard Fillmore. (Taylor died in July 1850.) The party had not received permission for the journey from Washington officials, which was legally required at the time. Chief Buffalo, another leader named Oshoga, and four other Anishinaabe chiefs or braves, accompanied by translator Benjamin Armstrong (a White man who had married into Chief Buffalo’s family), traveled from La Pointe across Lake Superior in birchbark canoes. Along the way, they stopped at settlements and obtained petitions of support from the White community. When the party reached Sault St. Marie, Michigan, government officials tried to block their travel, saying Indians were not allowed to pass that point without permission from Washington. However, Chief Buffalo and his delegation persuaded the officials to let them pass. They traveled by steamer to Detroit, where another government official tried to hold them up. Undeterred, the party traveled by steamer to Buffalo, then by train and steamer to New York City and Washington. |
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