Wisconsin Historical Society / David Sandell
Levitan looks at how civil rights and urban renewal received increased attention in the ‘60s. Here, the Rev. James Wright tracks the dispersion of Madison’s approximately 1,750 black residents after enactment of the Fair Housing Ordinance in 1963.
The treasures in Stuart Levitan’s Madison in the Sixties are not so much buried as strewn. You never know when you’re going to come across a tidbit that amuses, enlightens, or shocks.
Take the story about a police inspector who in 1963 decided that a blurred-image love scene in a foreign film being shown at the Majestic was “overtly immoral” and “sickening” and demanded that the theater cut it from the film. Or the city attorney who in 1964 threatened to prosecute any woman who wore a trendy but revealing new style of bathing suit while cajoling local merchants to keep this item off their shelves — or, as he put it, “not . . . perpetuate this hysterical insanity that’s going on.”
A former County Dane supervisor and current chair of the Madison Landmarks Commission, Levitan is the author of a previous seminal book, Madison: The Illustrated Sesquicentennial History, Volume 1, 1856–1931. (There was no volume two.) His new book, from the Wisconsin Historical Society Press, aims to “chronicle the reality of the civic and political ‘60s in Madison, beyond myths and false memories.” It is a worthy quest, and the result is another thorough and engaging work of local history, replete with dozens of priceless archival photos.
Levitan focuses on five key areas: civil rights, student protest, urban renewal, the UW-Madison, and the then-broiling debate over the plan for Frank Lloyd Wright’s Monona Terrace, which would require several more decades to actually be built. And while his decision to present lists of developments in these areas sometimes feels like TMI, the book benefits from his bright writing and enthusiasm for his subject.
Some of the stories are well-known, like the April 1960 death of UW-Madison boxer Charlie Mohr after a pummeling that brought an end to the university’s participation in the sport. Or the protests over recruitment efforts by Dow Chemical in 1967, which turned violent.
But much of what Levitan digs up might otherwise have remained in the dustbin of local history. Take his book’s coverage of race.
In 1960, most of Madison’s housing was not available to blacks, with some landlords openly indicating that they would not allow black tenants. A film produced by the UW Extension that showed landlords selectively turning away blacks who inquired about vacancies was initially suppressed, relates Levitan, to protect “the privacy of those lying to black apartment seekers.”
Efforts to enact an open housing ordinance were met with harsh resistance. “Let’s face it,” clucked one alderman who opposed the measure, “the world is built on prejudice and discrimination.” One of his colleagues agreed, asking plaintively, “Should we pass a law because there are a few bigots?”
“It’s the very minimum we can do,” replied the mayor, Henry Reynolds. A loophole-ridden law is passed in 1963, followed by a more comprehensive one in 1967.
The 1960s are rightly remembered as a time of protest; but it’s easy to forget how much in disfavor it was. “We can do without the marchers,” sniffed the Wisconsin State Journal in 1962, in response to race protests. “It has no legitimate place in a free society where we govern ourselves by the ballot box and not street agitation. Let ’em write to their congressman.” Later, in 1964, the paper called the early student protests against the Vietnam War “deplorable” and “repugnant.”
On the other hand. Wisconsin Gov. Gaylord Nelson praised students who demonstrated for civil rights, saying he was in “full accord” with their cause.
In Madison in the Sixties, Levitan has given us a book worthy of the decade it documents.
