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.

 

 

History 450—Re-Enactment: Joe Klotsche

 Guest post by Daniel Bauman

For our class project exploring UWM in the 1960s and specifically the creation of the Olson Planetarium, I will be re-enacting J. Martin “Joe” Klotsche. He was at the center of the expansive

growth of UWM in that time period, and his thoughts and words provide good context for understanding the institution that would house the Planetarium.

Klotsche spent 47 of his 88 years on the landlocked Kenwood campus of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) and its preceding institutions. He graduated high school at the age of 13 in Scribner, Nebraska, and, from that moment on, remained connected with academia for his remaining 75 years, as a student, faculty member and an administrator. Even in retirement, he dedicated time and energy looking back and writing about his life on campus, publishing several pieces. Joe Klotsche has over 10 publications to his name, ranging from international affairs, to his ideal of an urban university, and his own memoirs and reflections on being an educator. His early interests were in International Affairs (which he would continue to indulge), but as his role in campus life grew he would pursue the ideal of a major urban university, administratively and intellectually. The “urban mission” of such a university would confront the realities of the 1960s head-on, and Klotsche would lead UWM through anti-war protests and a significant push by BIPOC students and community members for more inclusion on campus.

Joe Klotsche was committed to developing UWM throughout his entire 27-year career as an administrative leader, which began, if not in UWM’s name yet, in 1946 as President of Wisconsin State Teachers College-Milwaukee. He was characterized by many as approachable, and as an administrator we can see him as being highly pragmatic. Over the years of Klotsche’s leadership UWM’s autonomy would steadily grow, but Klotsche always was aware of having to work productively with some form of leadership in Madison to produce desired outcomes in the shape of UWM’s growth. He was a self-proclaimed advocate for student and faculty rights, but acted in efforts to protect the institution, either from state leadership or from situations he felt threatened the university ideal from within campus or community, as exemplified by his actions around the social unrest of the 1960s.

Klotsche stepped down as Chancellor of UWM in 1973, or rather aged out as 65 was the maximum age for an administrator. He stayed on as a faculty member in the History Department until 1978. He died in 1995.

References

Klotsche, J. Martin. Confessions of an Educator: My Personal and Professional Memoirs. Milwaukee, WI: University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 1985.

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,University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Archives, UWM Libraries, https://collections.lib.uwm.edu/digital/collection/uwmoh/id/56/rec/1.

Schroeder, John H. The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee: The First Sixty Years. Milwaukee, WI: UWM Foundation, 2018.

UWM Office of the Chancellor—Past Chancellors - https://uwm.edu/chancellor/about/past-chancellors/.

Joe Klotsche—Chancellor of the 1960s

Guest post by Daniel Bauman

Johannes (“Joe”) Martin Klotsche came to Milwaukee in 1931 to teach at the Wisconsin State Teachers College, a college of 1,700 students on what is now UW-Milwaukee’s (UWM) campus. He stayed until 1978. For a 27-year run, 1946 to 1973, he served as the highest-ranking administrator through name changes and mergers, as President, Provost, and then Chancellor. UWM formed in 1956 with Klotsche as Provost, but it wasn’t until 1965 that Provost Klotsche became Chancellor Klotsche. He served as Chancellor until 1973. As leader he guided UWM through the turbulent 1960s and early 1970s as a pragmatic administrator focused on the creation of a major urban university.

Klotsche in the 1960s was at the helm of a rapidly expanding, but adolescent, university, with all the administrative challenges one would expect: new schools and their respective new buildings, more students and more resources needed, an expanding and increasingly newer faculty, a changing of reporting structure, a Board of Regents to work through, and yes, the larger issues of the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement. Additionally, the University sent Klotsche to Brazil for 18 months in ‘67 and ’68, which didn’t calm things.

When UWM was established in 1956, there were 6,177 students. By 1962, there were 9,354 students.[1] Upon Klotsche’s retirement as Chancellor in 1973, UWM had over 23,000 students.[2] UWM experienced expansive growth in the 1960s, but it was not alone. In 1981, Klotsche sat down for an interview and recalled “the 1960s were the golden years as far as higher education in America was concerned…. Anything you asked for you got, and the timing for UWM could not have been any better.”[3] Klotsche had a vision of an urban university, that would evolve into a major urban university. Overseeing UWM in an inherent growth period, he focused on harnessing that growth into evolution. The outcome of this growth was not just a larger UWM, but a newer type of institution.

Klotsche required the right UW leadership in Madison for this development. He had this in Fred Harrington, President of the University of Wisconsin from 1962-1970. As Vice President from 1958 to 1962, Harrington was already supporting the Milwaukee campus with funding and before the Board of Regents.[4] Harrington believed in promoting the growth of the Milwaukee campus and in 1963 worked with Klotsche to draft the ‘25 points,’ which proposed major university status for UWM. The Board of Regents adopted this vision and set the stage for development of professional and graduate programs independent of the Madison campus. From 1962-1966, UWM received approval for Schools of Fine Arts, Business Administration, Applied Science & Engineering, Social Welfare, Library & Information Science and Architecture. When UWM was formed, only a College of Letters & Science and a School of Education existed.[5]

Joe Klotsche regarded Fred Harrington as instrumental in UWM’s growth, even if Harrington didn’t make Klotsche’s life any easier. In 1981, Klotsche remembered a controlling Harrington: “Harrington’s desire to tighten things up was to get things moving, to get the show on the road.” Klotsche viewed this control as being a catalyst itself for the creation of a stronger sense of faculty governance in UWM: “a lot of things that happened that made the control quite offensive to many of the faculty members here on the campus. There was a deluge of new faculty members coming to UWM….and the new group cared less about the Madison tradition.”[6]

Klotsche’s trip to Brazil in 1967 exacerbated faculty frustration. When it was decided that Klotsche would go on assignment in Brazil, and remain Chancellor, faculty were not consulted about the absence of their top leader from campus. The fact that the Vice Chancellor, Charles Vevier, was formerly Harrington’s Special Assistant, seen as ‘his man’, didn’t help either. Pressure from the faculty would ultimately lead to Harrington traveling to Brazil in 1967 to meet with Klotsche and agree to first re-assign Vevier and fire him upon Klotsche’s return to campus in 1968. Klotsche cited this episode as a positive and necessary step for the University in forming a stronger faculty governance. He viewed a strong faculty as necessary for the sake of a strong university.[7]

In the late 1960s, UWM was teeming with new buildings, new faculty, more students, and now its own Chancellor who was on campus one day and in Brazil the next, when it confronted the social and political realities of the times.

The protests around the Vietnam War on campus had a profound impact on Klotsche, even though he and others characterized UWM’s situation as more passive than other campuses. Klotsche recalled that the events “commanded more and more of my attention and presented me with the most difficult problems in all of my years as Chancellor.”[8] Klotsche was supportive of the students’ right to protest and quietly was very much opposed to the war himself. However, he was an administrator that needed to follow the Board of Regents and guide his institution through.

He was troubled by the events because they tore at the fabric of the university ideal. The division of faculty and students, the destruction of campus, the disruption of the activities of the classroom, all bothered Klotsche. He devoted many pages in his Confessions of an Educator to discussing his decision-making around events that constitute 3 years out of a lengthy 47-year career: the Dow Chemical and CIA interviews (1967), the protesting of ROTC (‘69), the S.I. Hayakawa lecture (‘70) and his decision not to close campus during the May 1970 strike.[9] Coming out of the strike, the University charged several faculty members, leading to a handful of terminations, suspensions and reprimands. In short, “those were tough years, those were really tough years.”[10]

The other major context during this time, the Civil Rights Movement, highlighted where Klotsche and UWM fell short of their urban university ideal. In the late 1960s, when students and communities of color in Milwaukee started to push the administration, there were almost no minorities on campus,[11] let alone support for students of color. Klotsche suggested that, to some extent, the University had identified these issues and was working on them before students and communities demanded changes. The most notable institutional change was the appointment of Ernest Spaights as Special Assistant to Klotsche, creating the Experimental Program for Higher Education (EPHE) in 1967, charged with “recruiting underrepresented disadvantaged students, along with personnel to support their efforts.”[12]

Black demands for access and recognition would ultimately lay the groundwork for greater inclusion for Latinos and Native Americans. In the late 60s, student demands, mainly those of the United Black Student Front (UBSF), conceptualized a Center for African American Culture. In 1971 this became the Department of Afro-American Studies in the College of Letters and Science.[13] Klotsche wrote in his Confessions that “universities were slow to realize that the problems blacks and other minorities encountered were the result of a university conditioned by white, middle-class values.”[14] The urban university was in fact not immune to the larger societal issues impeding racial equity. And, perhaps neither was Klotsche, having been a part of that environment for decades. Nonetheless, the doors had opened for change.

UWM’s encounter with both anti-war activities and issues of civil rights showed University connection to the larger community, and the latter showed where the urban mission had blind spots. Neither of these phenomena were unique to UWM, but both were important in the context of UWM’s trajectory. By the end of 1970 UWM had over 20,000 students; a stronger faculty; and increased graduate, professional and doctoral offerings. It had weathered the challenging anti-war era and structurally accepted a need for change in diversity and inclusive offerings. If the major urban university status was achieved, UWM had achieved it by 1970.

The year 1971 saw the merger of the University of Wisconsin System with the Wisconsin State University System into one unified system, giving UWM even more independence from UW Madison. It also formally established that only Milwaukee and Madison would have doctorate programs, reaffirming the major university status Joe Klotsche strived for.[15] This would mark the last major structural change for UWM’s reporting structure to Madison. In 1973, Joe Klotsche retired as Chancellor, mandated to do so at the age of 65 as an administrator, and rejoined the History Department faculty for the last 5 years of his career.

References

 

Cassell, Frank A., J. Martin Klotsche, and Frederick Olson. The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee: A Historical Profile. Milwaukee, WI: The UWM Foundation Inc., 1992.

Klotsche, J. Martin. Confessions of an Educator: My Personal and Professional Memoirs. Milwaukee, WI: University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 1985.

Klotsche, J. Martin. The University of Milwaukee: An Urban University. Milwaukee, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 1972.

Klotsche, J. Martin. The Urban University: And the Future of Our Cities. New York: Harper & Row, 1966.

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.University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries, Archives Department. https://collections.lib.uwm.edu/digital/collection/uwmoh/id/56/rec/1.Schroeder, John H. “University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.” Encyclopedia of Milwaukee, https://emke.uwm.edu/entry/university-of-wisconsin-milwaukee/.

Schroeder, John H. The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee: The First Sixty Years. Milwaukee, WI: UWM Foundation, 2018.

UWM Libraries e-guide to Vietnam War Protests at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Archives Dept.: The Student Strike and Later Protests, 1970-1972, https://guides.library.uwm.edu/c.php?g=56372&p=364611.

 

Vang, Chia Youyee, and David J. Pate. Telling Our Stories; A History of Diversity at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 1956-2022. Milwaukee, WI: University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2022.

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[1] John Schroeder, The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee: The First Sixty Years (Milwaukee, WI: UWM Foundation, 2018), 8.

[2] Schroeder, 17.

[3] J. Martin Klotsche, “Oral History Interview with J. Martin Klotsche,” interview by Frank Cassell, UW-Milwaukee Oral History Project Records, 1981-1990, April 21, 1981, audio, 1:50:50, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries, Archives Department

[4] J. Martin Klotsche, The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee: An Urban University (Milwaukee, WI: The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 1972), 60.

[5] Klotsche, 1972, The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 62, 142.

[6] Klotsche, “Oral History,” 1981, audio, 1:52:10 section.

[7] Klotsche, “Oral History,” 1981, audio, 2:00:13 section.

[8] J. Martin Klotsche, Confessions of an Educator: My Personal and Professional Memoirs (Milwaukee, WI: University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 1985), 248.

[9] Klotsche, Confessions of an Educator, 248-277.

[10] Klotsche, “Oral History,” 1981, audio 2:23:15.

[11] Frank Cassell, J. Martin Klotsche & Frederick Olson, The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee: A Historical Profile, 1885-1992 (Milwaukee, WI: The UWM Foundation, Inc., 1992), 29.

[12] Chia Youyee Vang and David Pate, Jr., editors, Telling Our Stories: A History of Diversity at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 1956-2022 (Milwaukee, WI: University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2022), 25-26.

[13] Vang and Pate, Telling Our Stories, 28-29.

[14] Klotsche, Confessions of an Educator, 302.

[15] Schroeder, The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 22.