Ethnic Stories

German Milwaukee

Photo credit: Milwaukee County Historical Society

Milwaukee’s first German settlers arrived in 1839, just four years after the region’s first public land sale. By 1860, they formed a majority of the city’s population, and Milwaukee became the most German large city west of Berlin. Although they lived in all sections of town, the immigrants’ particular stronghold was the area west of the Milwaukee River. North Third Street was their “downtown,” and some merchants reportedly put signs in their windows to reassure non-Germans that they could find “English Spoken Here.”

The German community’s key quality was its internal diversity. The newcomers ranged across a broad spectrum of economic, religious, and political backgrounds. Perhaps the most colorful sub-group was the Forty-Eighters, who had fled the homeland after a failed revolt against royal rule in 1848. Well-educated, idealistic, and decidedly liberal, the Forty-Eighters organized musical societies, arts and theater groups, Turner clubs, and other cultural institutions that made Milwaukee the “German Athens of America.”

The Germans maintained their distance from the dominant Yankees at first, but in time they exercised a dominance of their own in culture, politics, and industry. The roster of Milwaukee’s leading employers was filled with Teutonic names: Harnischfeger, Falk, and Heil in manufacturing; Pfister, Vogel, and Gallun in tanning; and Pabst, Schlitz, and Miller in brewing. It was the prevalence of German-owned breweries that made Milwaukee the “beer capital of the world.”

The wave of anti-German hysteria that crested during World War I nearly washed away the German cultural establishment, and the slow process of assimilation moved the community still further from its roots, but Germanism continues to shape Milwaukee’s character. In 2000, nearly 38 percent of the metro area’s population claimed at least some German ancestry—still the highest proportion in urban America. Residents of all backgrounds share an appreciation for Gemütlichkeit—the feeling of comfort, coziness, and community that remains one of Milwaukee’s most distinctive civic virtues.

African-American Milwaukee

African Americans have been part of Milwaukee since before the city existed. Joe Oliver arrived in 1835, taking a job with fur trader Solomon Juneau and voting in the infant settlement’s first election. He was followed by scores of others, including the family of Sully Watson, a former slave who purchased his own freedom and moved to Milwaukee in 1850. By 1869, there were enough African Americans to support a church, and St. Mark African Methodist Episcopal was established on Fourth and Kilbourn. The congregation continues to thrive on Sixteenth and Atkinson.

Photo credit: Wisconsin Historical Society

Although their roots were deep, it was not until the Great Migration of 1910-1930 that Milwaukee’s African Americans reached a critical mass. Drawn by jobs in the city’s booming industries, their population soared from 980 to 7,501 during the period. A number of important community institutions came to life, including the Milwaukee Urban League, the local chapter of the NAACP, Columbia Building and Loan, and an impressive variety of churches.

There were opportunities in the urban North, but African Americans also found substandard employment, substandard housing, and entrenched prejudice. Despite the problems, the continuing promise of jobs fueled another migration in the years after World War II. African Americans surged from 8 percent of the city’s population to 15 percent during the 1960s.

As their numbers grew, so did their resistance to the prevailing inequities. The civil rights movement came to Milwaukee in the 1960s, expressed first in opposition to segregated schools and then to segregated housing. Forward progress was marred by violence in the 1967 riot, but more doors opened with each passing year.

In 2000, African Americans made up 37 percent of Milwaukee’s population. Although the loss of well-paying factory jobs created serious economic challenges, the community has continued its rise to a place of central importance in the city’s cultural, economic, and political life.