KAUKAUNA COMMUNITY NEWS — Students at Kaukauna High School have a new understanding of the African-American experience in the Fox River Valley after spending time going through “A Stone of Hope: Black Experiences in the Fox Cities,” a pop-up museum about local Black history from the 1700s to the present.
The exhibit, organized by the History Museum at the Castle in Appleton, will be on display through Jan. 31, 2016.
In a report Friday by Fox 11, sophomore Tony Montalvo said he was surprised by what he learned.
“I thought we always were great and respected everybody equally, but that was a big shocker,” Montalvo said in the report.
Before 1900, the Fox Cities were home to a growing Black population of Civil War veterans, small business owners and community leaders, according to the HIstory Museum’s website.
But most Blacks left the area by 1920 due to increasing harassment from police, racial exclusion at hotels, racial covenants barring home ownership and minstrelsy advertising and entertainment.
The exhibit also addresses Appleton’s past sundown custom and racial exclusion from 1915 to 1961, and how the Fox Cities emerged from this mountain of despair during the Civil Rights Era, according to the History Museum.
The exhibit at Kaukauna HIgh includes twelve floor banners, each richly illustrated with photographs of individuals, businesses and events described in the narrative.
A portrait of a young African American, likely Oliver Artis, taken at the W.T. Ross photography studio in Appleton. Artis was the son of Civil War veteran Horace Artis. During the 1890s, Oliver Artis worked as a barber for Joseph Elmore (another Black Civil War veteran), whose shop was located where the Zuehlke Building stands today. Photo posted at Facebook.com/MyHistoryMuseum.