Author: Hannah Dugan

This article is part of a series that connects Milwaukee’s current social conditions with efforts in Alabama cities to publicly recognize their racial histories, to document the 1960’s Civil Rights Movement, and to extend and expand the Movement’s goals towards peace and reconciliation. Monroeville is the birthplace of To Kill a Mockingbird, and the hometown of the novel’s author, Harper Lee. And its people and geography serve as the genetic makeup of “Macomb,” the fictional hometown of Scout, Jem, Dill, Calpurnia, Boo Radley and Atticus Finch. In some ways, the town itself is a character in this novel. Monroeville...

This article is the first in a series that connects Milwaukee’s current social conditions with efforts in Alabama cities to publicly recognize their racial histories, to document the 1960’s Civil Rights Movement, and to extend and expand the Movement’s goals towards peace and reconciliation. View the companion Photo Essay for this series. A short but long anticipated trip to see the play “To Kill a Mockingbird” in rural Alabama, serendipitously expanded to become a trek along the state’s Civil Rights “trail.” Eventually, the visit planned for a few days transformed itself into an itinerary of lessons in peace and...

Wisconsin Spring elections are upon us, with early voting and the April 3rd election day voting for nonpartisan offices, including state judicial officers. Wisconsin remains in the majority of states which elects its judges and justices, entrusting the entire citizenry to choose the entire branch of government. Statewide, this election cycle’s ballots include twelve contested judicial elections—one election for a ten-year term on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, and eleven elections for six-year terms in the county circuit courts of Clark, Columbia, Dane, Eau Claire, Juneau, Manitowoc, Price, Sauk, Winnebago, Waukesha and Buffalo-Pepin, one judge presides over cases in both...

The pride of the American legal profession visited Milwaukee only once, and for merely a day. Illinois lawyer Abraham Lincoln came to Milwaukee not at the behest of Wisconsin bar colleagues, [1] but rather at the behest of the State Agricultural Society of Wisconsin. He came not as a skilled litigator, but rather as a celebrity. And he did not disappoint. He came to the 1859 version of the Wisconsin State Fair, during which he earned some speaker’s fees and gained some political friends. Within five months, he headed to New York to deliver his career-changing Cooper Union Speech,...