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
| Total | White | Black | Asian | Native | Hispanic | Other | BHshld | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1860 | ||||||||
| 1870 | ||||||||
| 1880 | ||||||||
| 1890 | ||||||||
| 1900 | ||||||||
| 1910 | ||||||||
| 1920 | ||||||||
| 1930 | 5362 | 5 | ||||||
| 1940 | 9651 | 14 | ||||||
| 1950 | 14665 | 22 | ||||||
| 1960 | 18390 | 16 | ||||||
| 1970 | 17394 | 29 | ||||||
| 1980 | 14930 | 47 | ||||||
| 1990 | 14272 | 72 | ||||||
| 2000 | ||||||||
| 2010 | 14110 | 355 | ||||||
| 2020 |
Method of Exclusion
- Unknown
Main Ethnic Group(s)
- Unknown
Group(s) Excluded
- Black
Comments
According to a librarian: Whitefish Bay was known informally as “Whiteface Bay” because of its racial composition.
“A colony of lake-shore cottages occupied by Jewish families near Milwaukee was burned in 1928 and again in 1929.”
[Carey McWilliams, A Mask for Privilege (New Brunswick: Transaction, 1999 [1948]), 125.]
According to a nearby resident: “I was a circulation manager at the Milwaukee Journal (first job out of college) and a colleague of mine worked in that area. He had issues keeping black carriers. They would tell him that the police would pull them over while delivering papers, to the point of harassment. One was asked ‘What are you doing here?’ He was in a station wagon full of Sunday newspapers and replied ‘What does it look like?’ Apparently this didn’t go over well. Another carrier was asked if he was the new paper carrier. He replied that yes, he was the new carrier. He was told ‘Then I don’t want it. Cancel my subscription.’ As an aside, I have heard it referred to as White folks bay (hadn’t heard white face bay before, but can’t say that isn’t used as well).”