Milwaukee's History of Segregation and Development: a Biography of Four Neighborhoods

Abstract

Today, Milwaukee, Wisconsin is the most highly segregated city in the United States. Though many try to pinpoint who or what to blame, one cannot understand Milwaukee’s current or future without understanding the cities complex past. This paper will track the residential history of four distinct Milwaukee neighborhoods: The South Side, Bronzeville (on the North Side), Riverwest and the Third Ward (both downtown). In each of these four neighborhoods, we track the patterns of settlement, the drivers that molded them, and the processes of segregation and housing policies that affected how each of the neighborhoods were built and how it has continued to change over time. Using interviews, repeat photography, and collections of maps, we discover that each neighborhood is different in the uses of both pattern and process of segregating populations.