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House of History: Black LGBTQ+ Milwaukee History

The House of History is devoted to collecting and sharing Black LGBTQ+ history in Milwaukee. Inspired by the experience of Janice Toy (one of the interviewees featured in this collection), Dr. Brice Smith worked with Janice to gather oral history interviews to create an historical record of her community. The oral history narrators documented here include twenty three Black LGBTQ+ Milwaukeeans known for their historical significance and/or unique perspective on culturally relevant experiences. The interviews were conducted in 2022 and 2023, with support from Diverse & Resilient (a non-profit public health organization that is led by, and has primarily served Black LGBTQ+ Milwaukeeans for nearly thirty years), the Greater Milwaukee Foundation, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. This collection includes the full oral histories. Please visit The House of History site for even more history: https://www.houseofhistorymke.org/

I’ll Tell You A Story – Memories of Pre-Holocaust Europe

In 1983, volunteers from the Generation After (an organization of children of Holocaust survivors) conducted interviews with 65 Jewish immigrants residing in metropolitan Milwaukee. The digital version of the Generation After Oral History Project consists of 25 interview transcripts for subjects with surnames between A-L.

Images of Lake Geneva

Images of Lake Geneva

Photographs and postcards depicting Lake Geneva, Wisconsin in its heyday as a summer retreat for wealthy Chicagoans. This collection also includes plat books and atlases spanning 1873-1962.

In the Words of Women

This is an ongoing collection of audio stories recorded by the Mount Mary community at the Haggerty Library’s high-tech Storybooth. Begun in 2022, these recordings are from any individuals or classes who wished to share their stories – short, long, or somewhere in between.

Increase A. Lapham Papers, 1825-1930

This digital collection contains the complete manuscripts of Wisconsin scientist Increase A. Lapham (1811-1875) owned by the Wisconsin Historical Society, including letters, diaries, scientific notes, drawings and other papers.

Invictus

The Invictus, launched in 1977, was published by the UWM Black Student Union (BSU), giving voice to the University’s African American student body with news features, profiles, and poetry. The paper had two significant idle periods – one in the early 1980s and another between 1988 and 1993 – but was relaunched after both by the BSU.

Irene Bishop Goggans Collection

The Irene Bishop Goggans collection contains materials pertaining to the African American community in Milwaukee and across the country. Materials collected by Irene Goggans (1926-2017) are mostly from the 1950s to the early 2010s and include newspaper clippings, photographs, event programs, and more.

Jane Morgan Memorial Library

In 2018, the Jane Morgan Memorial Library and the Cambria-Friesland Historical Society began to digitize materials from their archives that are important to the history of Cambria and nearby communities in Columbia County, Wisconsin. The digital collection includes photographs, postcards and pamphlets such as a booklet published for the 1944 Cambria centennial and the “Cambria Victory Homecoming” after World War II.

Janesville’s Past

Janesville’s Past

A range of materials documenting the history of Janesville, Wisconsin including photographs and postcards from the 1840s through the 1980s and directories for the city of Janesville and Rock County, 1857-1931. Also includes walking guides to historic districts published in the 1990s and 2000s.

Jay “Ding” Darling Collection

Jay Norwood Darling was a Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonist who attended Beloit College from 1895-1900, where he served as art director for the college yearbook. The digital collection features illustrations Darling created for the 1899 yearbook as well as a selection of Darling’s letters and other writings.