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 | ||||||||
| 1890 | ||||||||
| 1900 | ||||||||
| 1910 | ||||||||
| 1920 | 3378 | 0 | ||||||
| 1930 | 4760 | 0 | ||||||
| 1940 | 5452 | 0 | ||||||
| 1950 | 6849 | 1 | ||||||
| 1960 | 9969 | 1 | ||||||
| 1970 | 16555 | 3 | ||||||
| 1980 | 21484 | 7 | ||||||
| 1990 | 23916 | 31 | ||||||
| 2000 | 28152 | 96 | ||||||
| 2010 | ||||||||
| 2020 |
Method of Exclusion
- Unknown
Main Ethnic Group(s)
- Unknown
Group(s) Excluded
- Black
Comments
[Dorothy E. Williams, The Spirit of West Bend (Madison: Straus Printing, 1980)]
“If there is any one character that everyone hears about sooner or later in connection with West Bend it is ‘Snowball.’ He was Elmer Lynden, a young Negro about 25 years old who lived and worked in the area. On the Saturday night of July 19, 1924, he had attended a dance at Nenno and was walking home toward Barton [adjacent to West Bend] when a local police officer, Henry J. Lemke, tried to arrest him after receiving a call about a disturbance. He was alleged to be intoxicated. According to later testimony the young man resisted arrest and in the melee drew a pair of pliers and struck Lemke. When Chief of Police Berend arrived he tried to reason with ‘Snowball,’ who fled, after allegedly ‘using abusive language’ and ‘refusing to listen to reason.’ Two warning shots were fired, but the third shot fired by Lemke hit Snowball squarely in the abdomen while he was backed up to the brewery wall. He fell.” [Note: if they shot to prevent his running away, he had stopped. If they felt threatened, well, they were two armed men and he had pliers.]
Many West Benders “were not satisfied with either the testimony or the resultant feeing of the police officer. Especially incensed were the members of the Washington County Humane Society [!], so Charles Leins, president of the organization, brought charges of manslaughter against Lemke…”
KKK letter threatened DA. Lemke was found not guilty.
“Probably few people were as well liked as [Snowball]; it became difficult to find anyone who would speak ill of him. He had always appeared happy and cheerful; his beautiful singing voice and his skill on the banjo made him a popular entertainer.” “”He was so well known in this section that fully 1000 persons came to the undertaking parlor Monday and early Tuesday morning to view the remains…” Lemke became “a virtual recluse.” Only one other black in the history of the area was an ex-slave whose wife made great cookies, died in 1899.
“West Bend simply did not like the [Civil ] war.” German farmers. “Most people were anti-Republican. In Wisconsin, this brand new political party was composed largely of Whigs, who were noted for their anti-Catholic and anti-foreigner feelings.” “A third reason was that West Bend simply was not interested in freeing the slaves.” West Bend newspaper editor: “”We look upon this extensive immigration of these free blacks to mix with and compete with free white labor of the north as a most outrageous policy. The equality will be formed by reducing the white to a level with the black. It must be stopped soon, if ever. The only way to stop these sons of Ham from over-running our state and disgracing our race is left with the Democrats. See that you vote for men who will free our state from the curse.”” So, West Bend supplied few soldiers, little money, to the cause. It did pay lots for substitutes, however. “Washington County had the lowest proportion of volunteers of any county in the state.”
On 11/16/1862, a mob threatened the draft commissioner, who fled to Milwaukee. Port Washington also had a draft riot; the mob attacked the store of an abolitionist. “‘Iowa voted to put blacks on an equal basis, so let’s send them the blacks from Wisconsin.’ These were the local sentiments.”
West Bend “was a solidly Democratic community at the outset…. The village never did have Free Soilers, as did its Yankee neighbor Hartford, for the communities developed in vastly different ways after the Yankees left West Bend to be replaced by the Germans, while Hartford remained predominantly Yankee.” “West Bend remained firmly in the Democratic camp for fifty years…. Why? [Lincoln] favored Negro suffrage, and the locals voted by a whopping 60% against the extension of the vote to blacks.” By 3 to 1, voted for Tilden over Hayes, 1876. Disliked Grant, earlier. “The people preferred Tilden because he promised to ‘sound the death knell for military rule in the South,'” a sore point in West Bend [quoting the Democratic newspaper editor].
Huge celebration, 3/1885, when Grover Cleveland was inaugurated, first Democrat since Civil War. But in 1896, the Democratic newspaper supported McKinley, while Bryan won, 203 to 182, the first close vote in West Bend history. Coolidge won, 5 to 2, but Al Smith and FDR won. In 1938, Republicans won, and after WWII Republicans always win.
No Civil War monument. Two big plaques of Civil War names were put on the WWI monument, which also has two big plaques of WWI names. [In proportion to population, though, Civil War probably killed more here.]
To get government contracts, the West Bend Company “had to have minorities.” “So they brought in five or six of the darkest ones they could find, and kept them visible, in case the government showed up.” “Bad faith.” That would be in the early 1970s.
More recently, in the 1980s, they needed workers for the night shift, so they bussed blacks in from Milwaukee. None ever moved here.
The first black to move to West Bend was a black manager at K-Mart in about 1982.
[Why none earlier?] “Everyone is German Lutheran.” Also, “Industries weren’t hiring them.”
In the last ten years, though, we have had a black deputy sheriff.
August 2007
When I moved to West Bend 3 years ago, I met an elderly lady – she is 92 years old now and has lived in West Bend since she got married long ago. She told me they used to have a rule in West Bend that blacks could not stay there overnight. She said that one time, a black man did stay overnight, and he was shot.