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?
- Probable
- Was there an ordinance?
- Don't Know
- Sign?
- Don’t Know
- Year of Greatest Interest
- Still Sundown?
- Surely Not
Census Information
| Total | White | Black | Asian | Native | Hispanic | Other | BHshld | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1860 | ||||||||
| 1870 | ||||||||
| 1880 | 4277 | 0 | ||||||
| 1890 | 9253 | 0 | ||||||
| 1900 | 12354 | 1 | ||||||
| 1910 | 16560 | 9 | ||||||
| 1920 | 18661 | 2 | ||||||
| 1930 | 23758 | 5 | ||||||
| 1940 | 27268 | 4 | ||||||
| 1950 | 30414 | 6 | ||||||
| 1960 | 31943 | 2 | ||||||
| 1970 | 32806 | 4 | ||||||
| 1980 | 32426 | 24 | ||||||
| 1990 | 37060 | 47 | ||||||
| 2000 | ||||||||
| 2010 | 39106 | 860 | ||||||
| 2020 |
Method of Exclusion
- Unknown
Main Ethnic Group(s)
- Unknown
Group(s) Excluded
- Black
Comments
Wausau often won the “whitest city in America” designation.
One teacher tesitifies: In 1974, he was taking a U WI Madison band on a tour in WI. In Wausau (or possibly Stevens Point), his black percussion teacher went to the motel, tried to get the twenty or so rooms they had reserved, was told they were “sold out.” An hour later, they sent white students in, were told they had vacancies. So he went in, got the twenty reserved rooms.
October 09, 1995 STRANGERS IN A STRANGE LAND BY WENDY COLE WAUSAU
FIFTEEN YEARS AGO, WAUSAU, WISCONSIN, WAS HOMOGENEOUS AND COMPLACENT, among the whitest of cities in the country. No longer: beginning in the late 1970s, local churches began sponsoring displaced refugees from the wars in Southeast Asia, allowing them to settle in Wausau. As a result, the town (pop. 38,000) is now 15% Hmong, a people native to the mountains of Indochina who speak a language that until the 1950s had no written form.
Nowhere has the transformation been as dramatic and tense as in Wausau’s school system, where today 30% of elementary students are Southeast Asian. Yet there is no formal…
/time/magazine/article/buylink/0,11397,1101951009 133234,00.html
Testimony of a former resident:
I lived and went to school in and around the wausau area from second grade all the way through high school. (I graduated in 1966) I worked for a year after graduation in the county court house. I never heard at any time of any law such as the one of which you asked.
As a matter of fact I remember a distinct pro African American movement when I was in grade school and all of the problems were showing up in the south. I even questioned my father, (who grew up here in SW Missouri) about the differences between the way blacks were treated here. We had class discussions about the answers he gave me and NO ONE, student or teacher, ever defended the way black citizens were treated.
A number of people from Wausau marched in Alabama. They were people who could afford to travel and take time off from work, but were backed by others in the community.
I do know that back before W.W.II the Wausau Hotel would not allow a black person to stay there. I am aware of this because my mother’s friend was one of the families who opened their homes. I do believe they were fined by the city each time they refused even back then. I wish my mother was still alive to check this point. If I am remembering correctly, however that would mean the city did not approve of their policy and therefore the idea that it was some kind of law would be unlikely.
I can tell you that there were no African Americans or Asians In our high school when I attended there.