Oshkosh

Basic Information

Type of Place

Independent City or Town

Metro Area

Politics c. 1860?

Don’t Know

Unions, Organized Labor?

Don’t Know

Sundown Town Status

Sundown Town in the Past?

Possible

Was there an ordinance?

Don't Know

Sign?

Don’t Know

Year of Greatest Interest

Still Sundown?

Surely Not

Census Information

The available census data from 1860 to the present

	Total	White	Black	Asian	Native	Hispanic	Other	BHshld
1860	6086		22
1870	12663		68
1880	15748		77
1890	22836		56
1900	2824		52
1910	33062		98
1920	33162		39
1930	40108		33
1940	39089		12
1950	41084		9
1960	45110		7
1970	55221		103
1980	49620		292
1990	55006		435
2000
2010	66083		2,497
2020

Method of Exclusion

• Unknown

Main Ethnic Group(s)

• Unknown

Group(s) Excluded

• Black

Comments

“Oshkosh … was a ‘sundown town’ where African Americans were not welcome to stay overnight. Those who challenged this custom put themselves at grave risk. In 1960 only 7 African Americans lived in Oshkosh. –Andrew Kersten and Jerald Podair, review of “Black Thursday Remembered,” exhibit in WI Black Historical Society Museum, JOURNAL OF AMERICAN HISTORY 6/2009, 167.
… the community and the university’s administration and faculty were caught off guard by the arrival of 94 black college students. Oshkosh’s citizens continued to practice a northern version of Jim Crow, denying their new black neighbors housing, entertainment, employment, and basic services.” “Matters climaxed in the fall semester of 1968.” The college president responded to the occupation of his office by expelling all 94 students, banning them from attending any OTHER state campus in WI, and notifying their draft boards (of the males). The administration also fired white faculty members who supported the students.

August 2007: One reader reports “It was said the great Jesse Owens came to Oshkosh after the Olympics. He was honored but quietly told not to hang around after it got dark.”

Oshkosh unions had an agreement with the town, not the employers, to keep blacks out of town.

What I have read somewhere in the past is/ was that Oshkosh and the Fox river valley were slowly integrating, but by the late 40s/50s segregated (minorities leaving) because of lack of work (and acceptance) in an expanding economy. What I recall (accuracy??) is that it was part of the larger experience of what some labor historians (there are some sources to track: Buhle for instance ) have described as the triad: business,white labor and govt: labor got higher wages but didn’t cause labor problems and supported US expansion abroad and its foreign policy (AIFLD, association with anticommunism, CIA,etc; Meaney’s support of the Vietnam War, etc). In return minorities were not integrated into the unions.
I think this interpretation has been challenged to some degree;at least it was not so stark, but it seemed logical to me to accept considering hearing about more integrated Oshkosh community in the past and then seeing how white it was when we lived there form 92 94. There is also the anomally (of sorts) of seeing so many union bumper stickers, yet the area is so overwhelmingly Republican.
Also, someone else told me that union workers had run black strikebreakers out of Oshkosh at some point. He thought 1920s, although the census shows big drops in black population between 1910-20 and again 1930-40. Ever hear of this?

I saw your query on H LABOR and have a tiny scrap of questionable info. to contribute to answering it. I grew up in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, in the 1950s and 1960s, when the town was all white. This was largely treated as something natural and unremarkable. However, one piece of local oral history had it that African Americans had been brought in as strikebreakers and subsequently run out of town. My very faint recollection about this places the strike in the 1920s. I don’t know anything about KKK activity in that area at that time but suspect that there might have been some.

We moved to Oshkosh when I was 6 in 1957. For most of my growing up in Oshkosh, the only African Americans I remember were those who came up from Illinois on vacation to fish in the Fox River and in some of the lakes connected to the Fox River system.
In junior high I remember being taught that in the 1920’s the KKK was popular in Oshkosh, with either 1000 or 5000 members (I’m not sure which).

At one time I remember asking my parents if any black families lived in Oshkosh. My Dad or Mom said that there was one black family, but I don’t remember ever knowing or meeting them, or having them identified to me when I was a child.

My Dad taught at the university (then Oshkosh State College) and claimed that he tried to get a Black friend of his who taught at Ripon College to take a job at Oshkosh State College. But his friend didn’t want to come to Oshkosh. Dad said his friend didn’t think then environment would be as accepting in Oshkosh as it was in Ripon.

In Oshkosh High School, there was a fellow in the class one year behind mine (he would have graduated in 1970) who was Egyptian, and who fairly clearly was of mixed race, with both white and black racial characteristics. I think he was accepted by everyone except for some of my Jewish friends, who disliked him not because of his having black racial characteristics, but because of the tension between Israel and Egypt at the time. There was another Egyptian in the same class who was fairly Caucasian, whom my Jewish friends disliked too. The mixed blood fellow went by the name Sam. I think his name was Osama. The thing I really remember about Sam was that he was an excellent chess player. We played a few times and I could never beat him. I think Sam was the only person in Oshkosh High School who beat me in chess. Sam said that his dad was a chessmaster. His dad maybe was a Professor at, what was by then, Oshkosh State University.

By the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, there probably were African American professors at the University in Oshkosh, but I do not know for sure. There definitely were African American students. One year, a number (maybe even 100 or more) of African Americans were expelled from Oshkosh State University for a demonstration in the administration building (Dempsey Hall) during which it was said that they damaged or destroyed property. I don’t recall clearly, but maybe the African Americans occupied part of Dempsey Hall and issued demands and then when the demands were not met to their satisfaction, started destroying or damaging property. I don’t really remember clearly though. I maybe never really knew the details that well. I don’t recall what the demands were. I don’t even remember which year this was. I maybe was in high school at the time.

In about 1970 a group of African American investors came up from Milwaukee and bought the People’s Brewery and eventually the Chief Oshkosh Brewing Company. Through the temporary work company, Manpower, I worked (manual labor) for a week or two at People’s Brewery. I remember seeing the African American owners walking through the plant at least once. I think they were giving some people a tour.

I think that many local people welcomed the investment in the two breweries, because it was an attempt to save the failing breweries. The attempt failed though, because the major American breweries were selling their beer so cheaply, and the smaller breweries in Wisconsin were unable to compete at that time. Many smaller breweries in Wisconsin failed before microbreweries became popular.

I just saw your post about African Americans in WI. I think we had a black foreign exchange student one year in my time at Oshkosh High School (1965-69). My mother also graduated from Oshkosh High School (in 1941) and she had a Black guy in her class. His last name was Shad and his family apparently lived in Oshkosh for some time.

I have lived in Oshkosh all of my 80 years, so know a little about its history, I attended Oshkosh High School from 1937 to 1941. There were only two non white families whose children were classmates of mine The Shadd (not sure of spelling) was black and their son Bill was a great athlete so they were reasily accepted.The other family was the Lem family, they ran an oriental restaurant. Both families were very well thought of–the Lem kids were brilliant.

I heard rumors about the Harlem Globe Trotters being invited to the home of one of the prominent families in town by their daughter, because they could not be housed in a hotel in the city. This is only hearsay, so I cant confirm this as gospel truth.

My first husband worked in construction before he went back to school on the GI bill. He worked with five black men who were housed in an apartment provided by the construction company that employed them. Before we were maried, my husband had one room in a home, and ate all of his meals out his fellow workers often invited him for a home cooked meal. After we were maried, they became our guests also. They always encouraged my husband to further his education, so that he would not end up like them working hard physically at a difficult job. AFter my husband died, I kept in touch with two of the men for many years until I receive word that both had died.

I lived in Oshkosh from 46 to 72.
I know that no blacks lived in Oshkosh up to 1968. After that I’m not sure..
Oshkosh do not have any laws keeping blacks out.

The link below is a digital humanities project documenting Black Thursday on the UW Oshkosh campus–a protest in which 90 black students gave a list of demands to President Guiles: http://www.uwosh.edu/blackthursday/blackthurs.html