History of Milwaukee
The name "Milwaukee" comes from an Algonquian word Millioke, meaning "Good", "Beautiful" and "Pleasant Land" (cf.
During the French and Indian War, a group of "Ojibwas and Pottawattamies from the far [Lake] Michigan" (i.e., the area from Milwaukee to Green Bay) joined the French-Canadian Daniel Liénard de Beaujeu at the Battle of the Monongahela.
In competition with Juneau, Kilbourn established Kilbourntown there, making sure that the streets running toward the river did not match up with those on the east side.
Further, Kilbourn distributed maps of the area that showed only Kilbourntown, implying that Juneautown did not exist or that the east side of the river was uninhabited and thus undesirable.
The third prominent builder, George H. Walker, claimed land to the south of the Milwaukee River, where he built a log house in 1834.
A great number of German immigrants had helped increase the city's population during the 1840s and continued to migrate to the area during the following decades.
During the middle and late 19th century, Wisconsin and the Milwaukee area became the final destination of many German immigrants fleeing the Revolutions of 1848.
Wauwatosa was widely recognized as Milwaukee's first "bedroom suburb," though it developed its own set of social, economic, and religious institutions.
Milwaukeeans elected three Socialist mayors during this time: Emil Seidel (1910–1912), Daniel Hoan (1916–1940), and Frank Zeidler (1948–1960), and remains the only major city in the country to have done so.
During this period, socialist mayor Daniel Hoan implemented the country's first public housing project, known as Garden Homes.
On November 24, 1917, Milwaukee was the site of a terrorist explosion when a large black powder bomb [11] exploded at the central police station at Oneida and Broadway.
[11][13] It was suspected at the time that the bomb had been placed outside the church by anarchists, particularly the Galleanist faction led by adherents of Luigi Galleani.
This area, which was located on and near what are now known as Old World Third Street and Martin Luther King Drive, soon became known as a "Harlem of the Midwest" for its jazz clubs and juke joints which attracted both local and nationally renowned musicians such as B.B.
Bronzeville's significance began to fall off as the heart of Milwaukee's Black community shifted north following World War II after the building of a major expressway (Interstate 43) which destroyed the geographic continuity of the district.
The first plan for Wisconsin's highway system, with an aim to improve Milwaukee's worsening automotive congestion, was submitted in 1945, although construction did not begin until the late 1950s.
Milwaukee's population peaked in 1960, according to the decennial US Census, with a count of 741,324 and a national ranking as the 11th largest American city.
Milwaukee made its final boundary annexations and consolidations in the same year, when it established the configuration of borders seen today.
In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, African American residents, outraged by the slow pace in ending housing discrimination and police brutality, began to riot on the evening of July 30, 1967.
Within minutes, arson, looting, and sniping were ravaging the North Side of the city, primarily the 3rd Street Corridor.
Starting in the late 1960s, as in many cities in the Great Lakes "rust belt," Milwaukee saw the loss of blue collar jobs and the phenomenon of "white flight."
