10 notable moments from Milwaukee’s past
May 9, 1950: Sports enters ring at Arena
One month after the Milwaukee Arena formally opened its doors, the venue hosted its first sporting event: a middleweight fight between ex-champ Rocky Graziano and Vinnie Cidone. With more than 12,000 looking on, Graziano scored a technical knockout in the fourth round.
May 12, 1936: ‘Tomorrow’s’ star is born
Tom Snyder, who revolutionized late-night TV talk with his show “Tomorrow,” was born in Milwaukee. After getting his start in radio at WRIT, Snyder went to television, where he ended up hosting “Tomorrow” after Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show” on NBC from 1973-’82, paving the way for late-night hosts from David Letterman to Stephen Colbert. (Snyder died of complications from leukemia at age 71 in 2007.)
May 12, 1950: Bowling congress finally opens up
After years of pressure from outside groups, delegates of the Milwaukee-based American Bowling Congress voted overwhelmingly to strike a clause from the group’s constitution that restricted membership to “individuals of the white male sex.”
May 14, 1953: The Great Brewery Strike
Workers at Milwaukee’s six breweries — Schlitz, Miller, Blatz, Pabst, Gettelman and Independent Milwaukee, which made Braumeister — went on strike, after members of United Brewery Workers Local 9 voted overwhelmingly to walk off their jobs, demanding, among other things, a cut in the workweek from 40 to 35 hours (with no pay decrease), and uniform health and welfare plans and pensions. The strike lasted nearly eight weeks, until Blatz’s separate deal with the union forced the other breweries to follow suit.
May 16, 1919: Mr. Showmanship’s debut
The artist known as Liberace was born Wladziu Valentino Liberace in West Allis on this date. Liberace, who grew up in West Milwaukee, honed his performance chops playing piano in theaters in Milwaukee before becoming a megastar in the 1950s with his combination of flashy costumes, flourish-filled playing and selfdeprecating humor.
May 18, 1964: School’s out (for 1 day)
About 11,500 pupils took part in a boycott of Milwaukee Public Schools in predominantly African-American neighborhoods. The one-day boycott was the first organized by Milwaukee United School Integration Committee to call attention to the Milwaukee School Board’s failure to address the impact of segregation. About 5,000 of those absent pupils attended “freedom schools” set up by MUSIC at neighborhood churches.
May 27, 1944: Milwaukee’s ‘League of Their Own’
Milwaukee’s new entry in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League — the newspapers called them the “Schnits,” or Little Beers, but they were known as the Chicks — opened their season at Borchert Field in Milwaukee with a 10-inning, 4-3 loss to the South Bend Blue Sox, before a crowd of around 700 fans. The Chicks later won the pennant, but still moved to Grand Rapids, Mich., the following season.
May 28, 1837: Steaming into port
The James Madison arrived in the port of Milwaukee on this date, the first steamer to visit the city. The ship, which brought 1,000 passengers and 4,000 barrels of freight, was the largest steamer on the Great Lakes at the time.
May 28, 1858: ‘Settlement Cook Book’ author born
Elizabeth “Lizzie” Black was born in Milwaukee in a family of German-Jewish immigrants. Drawn to reform work, Lizzie Black Kander (she married in 1881) founded The Settlement in 1901 on N. 5th St. There, she led the creation of “The Settlement Cook Book,” which became a reliable cookbook standard for generations, selling more than 2 million copies and revised into more than 30 editions.
May 30, 1860: 1st street car (horse-powered)
Two cars, pulled by four horses each, traveled on what is now Water St. from the Walker’s Point Bridge to what is now Juneau Ave., in the first street rail-car trip in the city by City Rail Road Co.