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.