A Reflection on History as Conducted by a Historian

Guest post by Arcadia Rose Schmid

Primary source research for this course was among my favourite that I have ever had the pleasure of conducting. For all of the larger assignments, I used archival sources – most of them, if not all, primary – to find out information on what I was researching. This specifically included Frank Zeidler, Emil Seidel, and J.M. Klotsche, all of whom had files in the UWM Archives department. I utilized online searches and finding aids to determine what UWM offered in terms of sources, and was able to use two digitized projects to view files on Zeidler and Seidel. The Oral History Project at UWM has had transcripts of some of their interviews, along with the audio, made available, and all of the Emil Seidel papers are online. The greatest joy was found in requesting nine different boxes from the Archives from the Chancellor’s Records, however. I spent hours sorting through files that contained letters from Klotsche, newspaper clippings – my personal favourite was finding a diary that he kept from his time in Brazil. I prefer the physical archives because it is easier to come across something that was not of original interest but was found to be extremely useful; particularly, in Klotsche’s case, newspaper articles about him that gave valuable insight into public opinion of him.

This research differed from work that I had done previously: Much of the work I have done as a historian relied heavily on synthesis of secondary sources, with a few primary sources scattered in between. This was the first time that I relied heavily on primary sources, by analyzing them, drawing connections and ideas from them, and then used them as a foundation for original ideas that I came up with. I distinctly recall being distraught that I could not find secondary sources on the topics I researched but can confidently confide that my work with primary sources has allowed me to make new discoveries and has made me a better historian – and a better learner.

The Processes of Writing in the Voice of Fred Harrington

 Guest post by Nathan Brown

When conducting the primary source research for the reenactment, I knew that a lot of source material was available to me. Fred Harvey Harrington left an enormous paper trail from his life, especially while he was president of the University of Wisconsin. It would have required too much time to sift through all the primary source material and then pick interesting events to add to the reenactment. An outline was necessary to guide what information I wanted to find in the primary sources. I was able to use multiple secondary sources to create a general outline of Harrington’s career. Once I had this outline, I could direct my search into the primary sources.

The main primary sources that I used were the archives of the minutes from the meetings of the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents. Fortunately, these minutes were digitized by the University of Wisconsin-Madison, so I did not have any trouble accessing them. My strategy for finding specific references to events in these minutes was to use keyword searches based on the outline I created earlier. Once I performed the keyword search, I could then narrow down the results based on the date of the meeting. With the correct document that discussed the event relevant to the reenactment, I could create a post from Harrington’s perspective.

However, there were several instances in my research that strayed away from my outline. An example would be when I conducted a simple Google search about Harrington and received a search result from the CIA. This source consisted of a newspaper clipping that the CIA kept in its archives that covered the controversy over their contracts with the University of Wisconsin. While this was not mentioned in the secondary sources that I used, and was not on my outline, I knew that I stumbled upon an excellent source that would bring depth to the reenactment of Harrington and add more context to the setting.

One area of primary research that was disappointing was that I could not search through the Fred Harvey Harrington papers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. This would have consisted of all the documents created by and sent to Harrington. An analysis of these sources would have greatly helped with my reenactment. Unfortunately, these sources were not digitized and there would have been difficulty accessing them. However, the other primary sources I utilized provided a great picture of the events in this reenactment from Harrington’s perspective.

Developing Fredric Neubauer

Guest post by Ryan Janowski

            I enjoyed my experience conducting primary source research for the re-enactment of the UWM Planetarium. I conducted all my research at the Golda Meir Library on the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee campus. The sources I used either were found there or online. I used search terms like “Milwaukee public schools,” “Milwaukee teachers,” “Milwaukee state teachers’ college” and others to conduct my initial research for sources. These terms brought many sources to my attention that I could use. I found old school directories, old yearbooks, surveys, and reports from the Milwaukee Public School system. I initially gathered around 15 sources to look through while formulating my re-enactment posts. I really enjoyed the researching portion of the re-enactment. All the sources I gathered came to life while analyzing them and I gained the perspective of each source as I read it. This helped when creating the language used for my re-enactment posts. The main source I used for the re-enactment posts was surveys of teachers’ attitudes and opinions in the central city of the Milwaukee Public School district.[1] These sources provided insight into the way my character, Fredric Neubauer, might have carried himself. The more challenging aspects of the re-enactment for me were creating posts that connected to real life events. Connecting my characters’ perspective to events provided a fun challenge to my creativity and historical imagination. A few things that were missing or that I could not find were first-hand accounts from teachers in the Milwaukee Public Schools and images to accompany my posts.

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[1] Attitudes and Opinions of Milwaukee Public School Teachers in Central City Schools (Milwaukee, Wis: Milwaukee Board of School Directors, Special Committee on Equality of Educational Opportunity, 1965).

Research Reflection

Guest post by Bennett Ryan

For me, doing primary source research for course work in this class was mostly done through online resources such as the UWM Digital Collections and the Wisconsin HistoricalSociety Digital Collections. The benefit to doing my research using these platforms was the convenience of not having to go to a separate building. Additionally searching using keywords can make it easier to a wider range of sources about specific topics. However, this method of research is not without its drawbacks. For instance, there are certain items that could only be found within physical archives because they have not, or cannot be digitized. Additionally, while it is certainly convenient to be able to search by topic within digital collections, sorting items by location of origin can allow you to stumble upon interesting information that may pertain to your research, but doesn’t contain keywords that make the connection obvious. It takes more effort to find a wide diversity of sources on digital collections because you are searching based on keywords contained within the source; therefore, if you do not make sure to search multiple different keywords you risk making the research you conduct have too narrow of a focus. Doing research for my primary source presentation at the Milwaukee Public Museum, I found that it was easier to use these resources to find information on institutions, especially within Milwaukee, such as the physics department or UWM, but it was much more difficult to find information on specific people and events in their lives. It was very difficult to find any information on Manfred Olson, even when you would expect information to be available. I was expecting there to be something talking about his time as planetarium director, maybe something in a student newspaper talking about a demonstration he put on, but I couldn’t find anything like that. Maybe this is something that I would have had more luck with had I gone to the archives to research him, but searching for that kind of information requires knowing where to look in the first place.

History is Odd and Uneven: My Toe Tap into Primary Source Research

 Guest post by Bryan Rogers

For the museum tabling I spent a good amount of time in the March on Milwaukee digital archives, mostly poring through Lloyd Barbee’s seemingly endless papers. I also travelled to America’s Black Holocaust Museum and the Wisconsin Black Historical Society, not so much on a specific line of research as for general inspiration.

Last month, we had to take the Clifton Strengths assessment for a sustainable peacebuilding course and I discovered that my number one strength is called Input and involves the collecting, absorbing, classifying, and archiving of information. In other words, viewed through the Clifton framework, I’m a natural archivist and curator of information. Conducting primary source research for this course allowed me to discover the advantages and disadvantages of being, essentially, a wanton glutton for facts and figures. On the pro tip, it makes for wonderfully dense and compelling connections across themes, eras or geographies. On the downside, the process of distilling that ever-widening web of curiosity into something digestible, metabolizable, can feel at times Sisyphean.

Also, in the development of the historical composite character, Leonard Grant Jr., I ended up purchasing a trial for Ancestry.com so I could view photocopied yearbooks from North Division High School classes of 1961 - 1965. They’re stunning.

When I was living in Santiago, Chile I would visit the Museum of Memory & Human Rights at least once a month. They had this exhibit on the second floor, panel after panel after panel, fully composed of letters written to General Pinochet by loved ones of the disappeared. Kissinger just died and I always wondered how his resolve would’ve held up if he had had to walk through the museum. If he’d had to read a tear-soaked plea from a grandmother searching for her only living relative, a thirteen-year-old boy whose name happened to be Henry. For all the sleep Kissinger claims not to have lost while condemning millions to death by carpet bombing and the many millions more to displacement and desperation, it’s hard to imagine this kind of primary source material failing to produce at least a second thought, a widening regret, a reflective pause on the utter tragedy of our human tendency to destroy each other.

Coming into direct contact with the words, images, and people of the past - and especially the contradictions therein - makes a very compelling case for the idea that historical facts and the production of history are two very different yet interdependent phenomena. In all, my brief foray this semester into primary sources felt phenomenal and I see myself doing more of it when the time for history presents itself.

Researching Henry W. Maier

Guest post by Avarie Daly

While researching Henry W. Maier for both the first tabling activity and the final re-enactment, I explored 3 places to find primary sources. The first was the UWM library digital collections, where I found videos and audio of press conferences, photos, and digitized documents. The digital collections contained Maier’s State of Emergency Proclamation, which was the foundation of my presentation, and I found an interview with an NAACP demonstrator. I originally didn’t plan on finding an interview with someone on the “opposition” of Maier’s interests, but it ended up supplementing the documents quite well and allowed me to explain the situation better than if I just used my own description.

For the re-enactment, I first visited the library to check out Maier’s autobiography. The book helped me write blog post #1. There were only physical copies available, so I had to flip through the book until I found a chapter that would possibly contain the information I was looking for. It was good for information about his mayorship, but not for details about his life. I decided to look in the physical archives to see if I could find out about his time at UWM. People in the archives suggested looking through a few of his boxes, which I did, and it was interesting to see copies of messages to other major figures in Milwaukee history, including Joe Klotsche. However, primary sources here were also limited to career-related events. I found that his autobiography was a better indicator of his personality than these official documents. I ended my archives trip by looking through UWM yearbooks from the time he supposedly attended grad school for his M.A., but there was no proof that he went there. Overall, it was still cool to see old newspaper clippings, memos, photos, and yearbooks – I even noticed that the final pages of the 1960s yearbooks contained job advertisements for big companies that I researched for my research paper on deindustrialization, like A.O. Smith and Allis Chalmers!

 

References

Maier, Henry W. The Mayor Who Made Milwaukee Famous: An Autobiography. Lanham, MD: Madison Books, 1993.

 

Semester Evaluation

 Guest post by Brady Steinbrecher

For my research on this course, I feel that I took a different approach than most of my peers. Each project we completed required the selection of an idea, event, or person and then complete a copious amount of research regarding our selected topics. However, one thing that I did differently from most of my peers was relate the topics I chose, connecting all my research with the culmination of the re-enactment.

From the beginning of the class, I was planning out my re-enactment, with the original idea being to portray a former chancellor of UWM. I was working through my research for our presentation in the museum when I began to get enthralled by the history of Manfred Olson. By working with the UWM archives and utilizing the scrapbook curated by Olson, I was able to begin to develop an in-depth profile of the construction of the planetarium as well as Professor Olson himself.

I really enjoyed doing research through the UWM archives, looking through the old school yearbooks and photos, as well as looking at online publishing about Professor Olson. I was able to cobble together my semester’s long research into one final reenactment. By beginning with the planetarium as my subject, I was able to get an introduction to Olson, then I worked backwards through his life. I think that the biggest tool I used to construct his life was the UWM Post and yearbook archives available from the school. Professor Olson was very involved with it, as well as the construction, and it really allowed me to build a good profile of my character.

Through this project I was able to learn not only about the construction of the planetarium, but also the mind behind it. I enjoyed the fact that all my research culminated at the end of the semester, I think it helped me get a much more in-depth understanding of Olson’s life because I spent so long working on it. With the history project at the beginning of the semester I was able to plot out the end of Olson’s life through his work on the planetarium, then working backwards for the final project, I felt like I had a good foundation to build my re-enactment.

My Experience Conducting Primary Source Research

 Guest post by Ethan Christensen 

I had an excellent experience conducting primary source research for the poster I presented at the tabling event. I found all the sources online as I could not find anything in person. There was very little I could find on both Armand Spitz and his A3P Projector, as there is not very much scholarship on both of them. I found my primary source photographs on the University of Milwaukee’s archives website and my information on Armand Spitz through Google and Google Scholar. Very few websites had information about Spitz and his life, but I was fortunate enough to find an excerpt from an article about his life and a journal with stories written by his daughter. I wish there were more readily available information about Spitz and his projector. Still, there was a sufficient amount for me to gather and put into a presentation. I disliked that I could only learn about an overview of his life; I would love more detailed accounts of the events of his life like there are for so many other historical people.

Works Cited

Spitz-Rice, Verne, Joyce Towne, and Chadds Ford. "Who Was Armand Spitz? Father, Husband, Educator, Innovator." Planetarian, December 1, 2013. https://cdn.ymaws.com/www.ips-planetarium.org/resource/resmgr/pdf-pubs/Rice_and_Towne_Armand_Spitz_.pdf.

DiAbbatantuono, Brent P. "Armand Spitz—Seller of Stars." International Planetarium Society, August 1994 - March 1995. https://www.ips-planetarium.org/page/a_abbatantuono1995.

Primary Source Research – Interview with J. Martin Klotsche

Guest post by Daniel Bauman

Most of my research conducted for this course centered around Johannes Martin Klotsche. I selected Klotsche as a subject for my tabling exercise at the Public Museum, wrote about Klotsche for my graduate research paper, and chose him as a character for the class re-enactment. Joe Klotsche left behind many writings, delivered many published speeches, books and peer reviewed articles based on his thoughts or research. I had intended to, and hoped to, spend time looking directly in the archives, discovering useful and interesting letters and records but confronted a wealth of Klotsche’s own words, whether as primary or secondary sources, available online or in the library stacks. What at first felt like an unfair advantage in terms of accessible sources sometimes seemed daunting, forcing me to decide which pieces to look through and place my focus. Between the various projects done around Klotsche, I found and incorporated more sources, and still didn’t get to everything.

The most helpful source throughout my work was Frank Cassell’s ‘Interview with J. Martin Klotsche’, conducted in 1981 as part of the UW-Milwaukee Oral History Project. I found that hearing Joe Klotsche speak gave me a good deal of confidence in trying to imagine Joe Klotsche the person, while conducting my research. His words seemed more organic and less planned than those in his published memoirs, articles and carefully crafted speeches. Furthermore, there seemed to be a good deal of comfort between the interviewer and interviewee, such that Klotsche was not guarded in this exchange. Occasionally the two would share some laughter and briefly touch on anecdotes otherwise omitted. In the course of writing my paper, I actually found myself needing to pull back from citing this particular interview, and incorporate more thought-out reflections from Klotsche in other sources, for certain events. Hearing the recording of Klotsche, frozen in time, represented an auditory alternative to discovering a physical source in the archives. 

References

Klotsche, J Martin. “Oral History Interview with J. Martin Klotsche”. Interview by Frank Cassell. UW-Milwaukee Oral History Project Records, 1981-1990. April 21, 1981. https://collections.lib.uwm.edu/digital/collection/uwmoh/id/56/rec/1.

 

The Constant Search: Growth in Research Ability

Guest post by Grant Thomas

Overall within the realm of historical research one finds the misconception of extreme difficulty when finding sources or the sheer amount of time when wading through boxes of materials or slivers of information. However, this does not have to be the case in the grand scheme of the concept of historical research. I would say that this class aided in making my research mentality far more resilient and allowing for the utilization of more primary sources. One of the more significant aspects of anthropological writing and research is the fact we use secondary sources such as theory or other aspects of the craft with most primary sources being our own notes or field examinations; in contrast to historical research, I found it far more enjoyable working with primary sources as it was the aspect of holding a literal piece of history.

Concerning my own work, I used the online resources through the UWM library archive system when working through not only the Museum pillar exercise, but also greater context for our reenactment. I also would use interviews for the reenactment, as my character was based on my great-grandfather, prompting interviews with my mother, Kara, and grandmother, Carole. These tactics and context would give greater context to our period of study, but also a more integral meaning behind the images and stories which I had been told or shown as a child. When thinking about aspect which were missing, I would say that the more general stories of average people; this idea comes in how we typically save documents from the rungs of power and only have small documentation or family histories to draw on for these actions. Overall, this semester's research was extremely enjoyable and a perfect precursor to further work in the coming semesters moving deeper into my thesis work.

J. Martin Klotsche, First Chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

 Guest post by Arcadia Rose Schmid

I introduce you all to Johannes Martin Klotsche, a man with an extraordinary mind whose powerful personality and determination became an essential foundation of the creation of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He will be portrayed online as @j.m.klotsche, which will detail both his public and private lives; this will provide historical context for the man who was essential to creating the conditions that allowed UW-Milwaukee to exist and expand into what it is today, a 104-acre campus with approximately 22,000 graduate and undergraduate students and a planetarium.

“Joe,” which was the name nearly everyone knew him by, or Johannes, the name nearly no one was aware of, was a brilliant child – he graduated from high school at age thirteen and then from college at the mere age of seventeen. After receiving his PhD in history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he began his teaching career at the Wisconsin State Teacher’s College-Milwaukee, and eventually was named its president. The name and function of the college was later changed, which led to him becoming the Provost of the Wisconsin-State College-Milwaukee in 1951. Though he was initially opposed to the creation of UWM, he later discerned that it was the answer to Milwaukee’s overburdened and somewhat lackluster higher educational opportunities: UW-Milwaukee would be a major urban research university. Klotsche advocated greatly for the ideals that came along with such a distinction, as he wanted the university and the city of Milwaukee to be closely intertwined. Klotsche’s charismatic personality and careful precision in his work carried him well throughout his tenure as Chancellor of UW-Milwaukee, and his efforts would leave a long-lasting legacy on the campus and the people who attended and worked there. Some of those accomplishments can be found in UW-Milwaukee’s library, both in the Archives department and on the shelves. The Archives contain nearly 70 boxes of papers from his own personal life and from official records while he was Chancellor, and seemingly all of the books published during his life, including Confessions of an Educator , The Role of the United States in World Affairs, and The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee: A Historical Profile, 1885-1992.

Stewart Dent Blog Introduction

Guest post by Bennett Ryan

The character that I will be reenacting is named Stewart Dent, but he goes by Stew, and he is a composite character of a student at UWM in the 1960s when the planetarium finished construction and opened its doors. He was born on August 9, 1945, and is a Junior during the setting of the reenactment. He was born and raised in Shorewood; his family heritage is mostly English or Yankee with some German mixed in as well. He was raised with a Protestant religious background, but his family was not especially religious. While his family was not extremely religious they were still rather conservative, which Stewart began to rebel against when he moved out to go live at the college dorms. He went to Shorewood High School and graduated in 1963. He enrolled at UW-Milwaukee with the intention of majoring in Geography, but switched to Urban Studies in 1964, since the school only recently began offering in 1963. Learning about Urban Studies introduced him to problems that plague urban societies and made him think about possible solutions to them. During his time in college, he began reading the Kaleidoscope student newspaper at UWM and began to immerse himself in the counterculture movement. Off campus he enjoys going to rock concerts and festivals, or he is at the Downer Theater where he works at the concession stand. On campus he is involved in various student demonstrations, protesting the Vietnam war and pushing for the removal of ROTC on campus. His temperament could be described as cynical with disdain for authority figures. The instagram handle I’m using is @uwmstewdent.

Stanisław Wojcik

 Guest post by Ian Netwal

Stanisław Wojcik is a fictional composite figure whose real name has been classified due to the nature of his work. For clarification, Stanisław Wojcik is not the character's “real” name, however in an attempt to stay with the general theme of the character, his true name is left unknown. Stanisław was born August 6th, 1945 in a small mining town in the Ural mountains. Being born in the Soviet Union, Stanisław was raised during a time of rapidly rising tensions. During his education in 1959, his test scores were brought to the attention of the KGB, who then began training and preparing him to act as an agent in a foreign country. His training consisted of learning multiple languages, namely Polish, German, and English, as well as learning how to appear as a member of a certain niche of a population. By 1963, Stanisław was ready to receive his orders: he was to assume the identity of Polish national “Stanisław Wojcik” a political dissident who sought to defect to West Germany, where he would then seek to emigrate to the U.S. where he had family. Utilizing the intricate web of spy networks on both sides of the Berlin wall, Stanisław succeeded in his goals and made it to his “family” who resided in the South Side of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Having accomplished phase one of his mission, he then began phase two: enrolling in and studying the methods used in an American university. As Stanisław had a very generous and wealthy “family,” he was able to secure enrollment at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in the fall of 1965. Given the parameters of his mission, Stanisław decided to join the many clubs and activist groups that he encountered; he was after all supposed to compile an overarching report on the way an American college operated. While Stanisław diligently prepared the logistics of his mission, countless other operatives in different parts of the country were tasked with the same mission, and at their completion all the reports would be compared, for reasons unknown to the operatives.

Stanisław Wojcik’s role in the re-enactment is to illustrate the Cold War tensions of the time. There is no intention for Stanisław Wojcik to be viewed as an actual person/parody of an actual person; the intention is to portray a very real fear many people had during the time, that fear being the idea of Soviet spies infiltrating American society. The Instagram handle for Stanisław Wojcik is averagestudent1965.

List of sources used

1. Image of a newspaper reporting on President Kennedy’s assassination- https://www.newyorker.com/news/hendrik-hertzberg/friday-november-22-1963
2. Image of Berlin Wall- https://www.dw.com/en/berlin-wall-now-down-for-as-long-as-it-once-stood/a-42456108
3. Soviet map of Milwaukee- https://collections.lib.uwm.edu/digital/collection/agdm/id/15517/rec/9
4. Mary’s bookstore (2 images used)- https://www.jsonline.com/story/life/green-sheet/2017/01/17/milwaukee-bookstore-made-fbi-chief-see-red/96611154/
5. First use of UWM post- https://collections.lib.uwm.edu/digital/collection/uwmpost/id/4119/rec/1
6. Klotsche goes to Brazil- https://collections.lib.uwm.edu/digital/collection/uwmpost/id/4822/rec/1
7. DOW chemical protest February 14, 1967- https://collections.lib.uwm.edu/digital/collection/uwmpost/id/5137/rec/26
8. Snippet referring to the Milwaukee 14- https://collections.lib.uwm.edu/digital/collection/uwmpost/id/6101/rec/3
9. Image of a snowy campus outside Mellencamp, ~1965- https://collections.lib.uwm.edu/digital/collection/uwmphoto/id/493/rec/3
10. Image of the UWM student union, ~1965- https://collections.lib.uwm.edu/digital/collection/uwmphoto/id/589/rec/1
11. Image of Manfred Olson being interviewed by the planetarium- https://collections.lib.uwm.edu/digital/collection/uwmphoto/id/562/rec/262
12. Image of students studying in the library- https://collections.lib.uwm.edu/digital/collection/uwmphoto/id/442/rec/15
13. Nixon Warned- https://collections.lib.uwm.edu/digital/collection/uwmpost/id/1322/rec/27
14. Article referring to Kent State incident- https://collections.lib.uwm.edu/digital/collection/uwmpost/id/1434/rec/43
15. Illustration of Nixon- https://guides.library.uwm.edu/c.php?g=56372&p=362683 (Illustration from UWM Post, February 12, 1971)
16. Image of the UWM physics building, ~1970- https://collections.lib.uwm.edu/digital/collection/uwmphoto/id/541/rec/54

 

Fredric Neubauer

Guest post by Ryan Janowski

My reenactment character will be Fredric Neubauer. The Instagram handle I will be using for the reenactment @MrNeubauer2749. The relationship my reenactment character has with the theme of this reenactment is as an audience member of the Planetarium shows as a teacher. He will be a fictional composite character. He was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1927. Fredric graduated from the Wisconsin State Teachers College of Milwaukee in 1949. He was a member of the Social Committee there, helping set up dances and events at the college. After graduating, Fredric would go on to teach at different city public schools until landing and settling at Roosevelt Junior High School at 800 W. Walnut Street, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

After the Planetarium was built, his class made a trip to the Planetarium to see a show and learn a little more about astronomy. Fredric has always been kindhearted and an understanding individual and expresses this through his passion for teaching. His favorite subject to teach is science and provides a period throughout his class to discuss current events in science and nationally circulated magazine issues, tying them into the curriculum. He often gave space to speak on local papers and issues as well. Born and raised in Milwaukee, Fredric loved his community and resided near the school he taught at. He understood the situation around him during the late 1950s and 1960s and did his best to educate his students with the materials he had. Although he did not participate, he supported Lloyd Barbee and MUSIC during the Freedom Day Boycotts on May 18^th, 1964. He was a major supporter of the movement to integrate schools in Milwaukee throughout his career.

Armand Spitz (1904-1971)

Guest post by Ethan Christensen 

The character for the re-enactment is Armand Spitz, a planetarium designer who was born in Philadelphia in 1904. He attended public schools and was enrolled in both the University of
Pennsylvania and Cincinnati but never received a degree. He then began to work as a journalist and reporter to create his newspaper. He achieved this goal by saving up to purchase the Township News in Brookline, Pennsylvania, and founded the Spitz Publishing Company. The venture was short-lived as the wrath of the Great Depression caused Spitz to lose his company. His interest in the stars followed while he was working on a freighter and learned celestial navigation, he then created a sextant out of a water-filled dish pan, a board, and a toothpick. This ignited the spark and he began his fascination with creating simplified astronomical instruments.

He then served as an assistant astronomer and lecturer at Haverford College but was never able to become a faculty member where he lectured due to his lack of a formal astronomical education degree. As a result, Spitz referred to himself as an “interpreter of science.” His passion and love for astronomy led him to create many astronomical projects, including an accessible, low-cost planetarium and planetarium project to show everyone the wonders of astronomy. This project had its roots in Armand showing star shows to his daughter at their home. He saw the awe of everyone at planetarium shows but felt it was a shame that only those who lived close to a city or had the money to house the expensive equipment of the time could see them. In the words of astronomy historian Jordan Marché, “Spitz’s accomplishment enacted the single greatest transformation of the American planetarium community.” During the re-enactment, I will be acting as Mr. Spitz since one of his successful low-cost, accessible Spitz A3P projectors has been used in the Manfred Olson Planetarium since 1965. Spitz passed away in 1971, his legacy lives on through his incredibly successful planetarium and projector designs. In a final message sent to the planetarium community he summed up his life with the following "The fact remains that into a sea of relative placidity, I was privileged to drop the proverbial pebble and the ripples have been moving outward ever since."

For further information and more detailed accounts of Spitz’s fascinating life, please reference the works cited below!

 

Works Cited

 

"Armand Spitz." Wikimedia. Last modified July 11, 2023. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armand_Spitz.

DiAbbatantuono, Brent P. "Armand Spitz—Seller of Stars." International Planetarium Society, August 1994 - March 1995. https://www.ips-planetarium.org/page/a_abbatantuono1995.

Dixon, Mark E. "Exploring Armand Spitz’s Love for Stars." Main Line Today, March 27, 2014. https://mainlinetoday.com/life-style/exploring-armand-spitzs-love-for-stars/.

Fortier, Rénald. "Blessed Be the One Who Brings the Wonders of the Cosmos to the Multitude: Armand Neustadter Spitz and His Planetarium Projectors, Part 1." The Ingenium Channel, May 29, 2022. https://ingeniumcanada.org/channel/articles/blessed-be-the-one-who-brings-the-wonders-of-the-cosmos-to-the-multitude-armand.

Fortier, Rénald. "Blessed Be the One Who Brings the Wonders of the Cosmos to the Multitude: Armand Neustadter Spitz and His Planetarium Projectors, Part 2." The Ingenium Channel, June 1, 2022. https://ingeniumcanada.org/channel/articles/blessed-be-the-one-who-brings-the-wonders-of-the-cosmos-to-the-multitude-armand.

Spitz-Rice, Verne, Joyce Towne, and Chadds Ford. "Who Was Armand Spitz? Father, Husband, Educator, Innovator." Planetarian, December 1, 2013. https://cdn.ymaws.com/www.ips-planetarium.org/resource/resmgr/pdf-pubs/Rice_and_Towne_Armand_Spitz_.pdf.

Leonard Grant, Jr.

Guest post by Bryan Rogers

For this historical re-enactment, I’ve chosen to create a fictional composite figure. My character is Leonard Grant Jr., an eighteen-year-old high school graduate grudgingly in search of employment during the construction of the Manfred Olson Planetarium on the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) campus. He would have rather been studying astronomy as a freshman at UWM, but a combination of economic pressures and racial discrimination prevented his enrollment. The eldest of nine children born to Gloria and Leonard Grant in 1947, Junior carries more than just his father’s name. He carries the weighted expectations of a harsh, emotionally distant father to sacrifice his educational aspirations to instead earn a steady paycheck to support his younger siblings following his father’s abrupt job loss. Junior ends up working on the construction crew that helps build the state-of-the-art planetarium instead of working towards an undergraduate degree in aeronautical engineering.

The Grants had migrated from Baton Rouge, Louisiana in 1946, drawn north by the promise of economic opportunity and away from the naked racist subjugation of the American South where Leonard Sr. and Gloria worked as sharecroppers near the same plantation where their ancestors had toiled under and escaped enslavement only two generations back. Leonard’s older brother, Julius had secured employment at the Seaman Body plant (later American Motors) on Richards and Capitol Drive, where Leonard was eventually hired as a factory worker days after he and Gloria had arrived in Milwaukee. He was fired from the assembly line in 1964, just months before the first national autoworkers union strike erupted against American Motors (which incidentally led to the last-ever union contracts signed with the company). In the eighteen years since their migration, Gloria had given birth to eleven more children, three of whom died during childbirth, and so Leonard Sr’s unemployment forced the eldest son, almost overnight, off the college path and into the job market.

The family rented a house on 17th and Meinecke in the neighborhood around North Division High School. Every Sunday they attended service down the block at the Mt. Carmel Baptist Church, which had recently been designed by Alonzo Robinson, Milwaukee’s first black architect. Junior remembered one sermon in particular where Pastor John Walton preached on the passage from Job 26:7 – “He stretches out the north over empty space and hangs the earth on nothing.” This “nothing”-ness which surrounded the earth (the image of which he had never seen) terrified Junior. When he asked his mother about the “nothing” later that same evening, Gloria led the child silently to the backyard, craned her head towards the sky until he, too, looked upward. She took his hand in hers and pointed towards the brightest star on the horizon and said softly, “honey, there may be nuthin’ up there, but this one here. This star led our people to freedom.” After his mother walked back inside the house, the little boy sat on Earth for what felt to him like an eternity, enveloped in the nothingness around him as his terror transmuted into a penetrating wonder. That night, he glimpsed a faintness of life emerging from the emptiness of space. 

From then on, stargazing became a nightly ritualed obsession for young Leonard. He learned about constellations and the ancient mythologies that connected civilizations to the stars. He became fascinated by the space race and avidly checked out all the science fiction books he could find at the public library on 26th and Center. He dreamed of being of a space explorer, an astronaut, or even an aeronautical engineer! He entered North Division High School in 1961 and by his junior year, he caught word from a cousin down in Baton Rouge about this so-called “Negro recruiter” named Charlie Smoot. Hired by NASA to attract African-American scientists and engineers to come south as part of the agency’s efforts at racial integration, Smoot had got seven black engineering students into NASA’s Cooperative Education Program. As part of the program, the students split time between their all-black Southern University–Baton Rouge and the Marshall Space Flight Center in Hunstville Alabama. That night, out back behind his childhood home, the sixteen year-old dreamt his own North star.

Leonard Jr. ran to the library the next day and begged the librarian to secure a copy of the previous week’s Chicago Defender newspaper with the headline that read “Negro College Youth To Boost First Moongoer Into Orbit?” He cut out and pasted the article’s opening lines to the inside cover of his stargazing journal, convinced that the same star which had freed his ancestors was now pointing him back to the place they’d fled.

Henry W. Maier

 Guest Post by Avarie Daly

Henry Maier was a real figure and Milwaukee’s longest serving mayor, holding the position from 1960 to 1988. He grew up in Dayton, Ohio, before moving to Milwaukee with his mother two years after his high school graduation in 1936. He served in the U.S. Navy during World War II after attending UW-Madison for his undergraduate degree. In 1948, he entered Milwaukee politics in the mayoral bid but finished in sixth place. Maier began his official political career as a Democrat on the Wisconsin State Senate in 1950, where he demonstrated leadership as the party floor leader. He ran for U.S. Senate six years later but was unsuccessful. In 1960, he won the mayoral election in Milwaukee with 58% of the popular vote. During his mayorship, he took budgetary efficiency seriously and taught his skills to other city leaders around the country, briefly serving as president of the National League of Cities and the U.S. Conference of Mayors. He also received an M.A. from UW-Milwaukee in 1964. One of his notable successes as mayor was his consolidation of the planning, housing, and redevelopment offices into one department, labeled the Department of City Development, which still exists today.

            Seven years into his mayorship, Maier was criticized for his handling of the 1967 Civil Disturbance, an event that started out as a nighttime “scuffle” between African American teenagers and Milwaukee police and escalated into looting, minor arson incidents, and sporadic gunfire. Maier cites in his autobiography that two policemen were shot two hours after the first reports of the disturbance were reported, which prompted him to call in 500 National Guardsmen and shut down the city for 24 hours. Although the police crew announced that everything was quiet at 4:50 a.m., Maier went through with the state of emergency and placed a curfew for the following night. The perspectives surrounding who was responsible for the escalation of the event were racially polarized, and many thought that Maier sided with white Milwaukeeans, labeling civil disturbance participants “hoodlums” in his state of emergency. This incident was also politically charged, as participants in the disturbance acted out of anger for the continued rejection of a fair housing law from the common council, which Mayor Maier also opposed.

            After his re-election in 1968, Maier proposed a “39-points” plan to address racial inequality in Milwaukee yet still opposed an open housing law. He was criticized for the lack of municipal reform in the plan, instead calling for state and federal support. Maier’s years as mayor also included downtown revitalization and the establishment of Summerfest. He prided himself on being “the mayor that made Milwaukee famous,” assigning this title to his autobiography in 1993.

As for his relationship to the re-enactment, Maier would have expressed his support for the construction of the UWM planetarium, recognizing the educational and entertainment value it would add to the city. Since it would have been funded by the state, he wouldn’t have had a problem with it. Maier was directly involved in the city’s social problems and might have commented on the political protests around the time of the planetarium’s establishment.

 

References

 

Harding, Bethany. “Henry W. Maier,” Encyclopedia of Milwaukee, https://emke.uwm.edu/entry/henry-w-maier/.

 

Maier. Henry W. The Mayor Who Made Milwaukee Famous: An Autobiography. Lanham, MD: Madison Books, 1993.

 

“Henry Maier.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Maier, accessed 1 Dec. 2023.

 

Manfred Olson

 Guest post by Brady Steinbrecher

The subject of my work this semester is Manfred Olson and his work with our campus. The handle for my created Instagram page is physpro_olson. The included photo has been selected as the profile picture, as it is used to represent him on the planetarium website at the time of writing this. For this project, my goal is to highlight the activities on campus around the time of construction, as well as the process of the construction. This is achieved through the posting of pictures and captions depicting campus from the period, and also photos taken by Manfred Olson himself for a scrapbook that cataloged the construction of the physics building and planetarium. Manfred Olson was a physics professor on campus from 1931 to 1963. While working here he also helped with projects at the University of Chicago in the Metallurgical Laboratory in 1943 and then in Los Alamos from 1947 to 1949. He retired from teaching in 1963 to become the planetarium director, which is encapsulated in his final post on the timeline. Professor Olson was a very intelligent man who took passion in his research, but also in his teaching. He was a big advocate for UWM to get our planetarium, as he thought it would majorly change the way that we taught astronomy, and he was right. This is another aspect I attempt to convey through my posts, with the goal being to encapsulate the excitement he, along with many others on campus, must have been feeling at the time. He not only was getting his goal of the addition of a planetarium, but also a completely new and revolutionary physics building. I believe that, through my posts, the reader is able to not only view the life of Manfred Olson, but also feel his excitement for future prospects and witness his humor firsthand.

Percy Knox 1964 - 1968

 Guest Post by Hassan Richardson

My reenactment character is a fictional composite character by the name of Percy Knox (P.K.); an African American male teenager who attended Rufus King High School from 9^th to 12^th grade (1964-1967). His mother moved Percy to Rufus King High School during 9^th grade due to conflicts with bussing in the city. Percy experienced some racial encounters as a new student here; the school was becoming increasingly Black which caused some racial tension at the time. This influenced Percy to befriend fellow African American students and get involved with putting Freedom Day posters in Milwaukee Public Schools. He attended Freedom School on May 18^th, 1964, and was briefly instructed on Robert Henry Lawrence Jr (1935-1967), who was in the US Air Force and was a future prospect for US space missions at the time (became first African American astronaut). Lawrence was from Chicago, IL. Percy researched Robert Henry Lawrence Jr. and recaptured his long-time passion for astronomy. He continued his involvement by becoming more career-focused in 11^th grade as he was set on becoming an astronomer and/or astronaut. UWM was a local and promising university at the time, especially for the physics department, hence the concluding development of the physics building and the Manfred Olson Planetarium (1966). Percy also attended several planetarium lectures held by physicist Manfred Olson. Lawrence and Olson were idols to Percy and inspired him to attend UWM (1967-1971) as a Physics (B.S.) major with an emphasis in astronomy. Tragically, Percy’s main role model Robert Henry Lawrence Jr.  died in December of 1967 in a fighter jet crash. He was remembered by his family, US Air Force, and those he impacted.

Polish Southsider: Stanley Wisialowski

 Guest post by Grant Thomas

I would like you to meet my reenactment character and my Great Grandfather, Stanley “Stash” Wisialowski. Born August 31^st, 1910, in Milwaukee to Josephine, Polish woman, but Wisconsin native, and Jacob Wisialowski, Polish emigrant coming from western Poland around the Pomeranian region. Stanley would be the seventh of nine children to the couple and would become a major aid around the house after the death of his father around May of 1924. While education would not be a major aspiration of Stanley, he would enter vocational education and other small paying jobs. I would say one of the happiest days was marrying in May 1934 to Clementine Maciolek at St. Adelbert. Following marriage, he would gain work at Monarch’s company and with the birth of his two daughters Sandra (Sandy) in 1940 and Carole in 1943. Monarch’s was a popular place to work for the family as a number of his siblings, cousins, and other assorted families would also gain employment. Due in part to Monarch’s creating clothing for the war effort and having two young girls he would not serve in any branch of the military. Sadly, Sandra would pass in 1944 leaving a significant ache in his life and a wish to provide the best for his wife and living daughter. With the economic downturn of manufacturing Stanley would leave Monarch’s in the late 1950s.

Following a term of unemployment, he and his brother Max would create the Wize repair shop with the original set up being at his home, 28^th and Lincoln. Later, for the store fronts, they were first at 1111 16th street and found a more permanent home at 1535 West Lincoln, their specialty being jackets, jeans, and other clothing items. The business would run from the 1960s to the 1970s and a fallout between the brothers over Max, possibly taking money for personal gain. Once the main shop closed Stanley would simply move the working machines back to his home and create the new version of the business in his basement taking subcontracts from local clothing stores or dry cleaners. Through this period, he would interact with multiple police officers and people of color giving the same pleasant service to anyone, as he would often say to my grandmother, “live and let live.” He did have some worries as a devout Catholic over Father James Groppi’s actions, but mostly from worrying about the safety of the young black men and women that the priest was working with through the Civil Rights Movement.

In general, he was described as a typical south side Polish man, able to speak both his ancestral tongue, Polish, and English in equal measures and being a shorter thin man yet getting stocky in his later years. Beloved by his family and keeping close with his siblings, particularly drinking Pabst with his surviving brothers, Max and Eugene and known for a love of dancing, able ability at bowling, and enjoying both flower cultivation and mushroom picking. Finally, his story ends in the same city he was born, at the age of 72 in February of 1982. 

Fred Harvey Harrington

Fred Harvey Harrington reenacted by Nathan Brown

Fred Harvey Harrington seated at his desk

Fred Harvey Harrington was the President of the University of Wisconsin from 1962 to 1970. Harrington was born in Watertown, New York, in the summer of 1912. As an adult, Harrington continued his education on the East Coast. Harrington attended Cornell University as an undergraduate and earned his PhD in History from New York University in 1937. From then on, except for a brief time working for the University of Arkansas from 1940 to 1944, Harrington spent the rest of his career in academia at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In 1957, Harrington was appointed as the special assistant to Edwin Fred, the President of the University. This promotion prepared him for a career in academic administration. In 1958, Harrington was promoted to the position of vice president for academic affairs under the new president, Conrad Elvehjem. From this time onwards, Harrington played a key role in the development of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM). Although he was not directly involved with the construction of the Manfred Olson Planetarium, Harrington was zealous in his efforts to help UWM mature into the institution it is today. The efforts Harrington took to grow UWM included defining what principles should guide the growth of UWM, sharing research funds from Madison with UWM, working towards UWM’s autonomy from Madison, expanding UWM’s graduate programs, and expanding the physical campus of UWM. The protests of the late 1960s became disastrous for Harrington’s position as the President of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Harrington lost support from the Board of Regents because of his lenient stance towards student protests. This led to his resignation in 1970. After his resignation, Harrington worked in India with the Ford Foundation until 1977 when returned to instructing history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Harrington subsequently retired in 1982. 

 

Bibliography

Cronon, E. David. “Fred Harvey Harrington, 1912-1995.” Wisconsin Magazine of History 78, no. 4 (1995): 294–295.

“Fred Harvey Harrington (President, 1962-1970).” University of Wisconsin-Madison. Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System, 2023. https://www.library.wisc.edu/archives/exhibits/campus-history-projects/chancellors-and-presidents-of-the-university-of-wisconsin-madison/fred-harvey-harrington-president-1962-1970/.

Fred Harvey Harrington. University of Wisconsin Archives. https://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/P46IC4M5BXUSM8B.

“Minutes of the Regular Meeting of the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin: July 13, 1957.” Edwin Broun Fred (1945-1958): Minutes of the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents. University of Wisconsin Board of Regents Collection. https://search.library.wisc.edu/digital/AZAOLYFQ6AKUOX87/full/ACDPCE5G7WKCHZ8Q.

Olson, Frederick. “Fred Harrington and the Development of UWM.” Frederick I. Olson Papers. University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries, Archives Department. UW-Milwaukee Libraries, Archives.

Thomas, Robert. “Fred Harrington, University Chief, Is Dead at 82.” The New York Times (New York, NY), April 9, 1995.