In early May of 1944, the Milwaukee Journal (mj) recounted the scene at a westside Milwaukee meeting convened by neighborhood segregationists. Led by realtor Fred Barthel, this group aimed to force out a Black family of defense workers who had recently moved into a renovated building in the
Nada Hudson grew up in this industrial, working-class neighborhood, becoming involved in antifascist and civil rights initiatives closely tied to a militant labour movement in the 1930s and 1940s, before the Cold War undercut labour-left politics. Although the historical record for Hudson is limited and fragmentary, this essay uses the tools of social history and microhistory to excavate her life in working-class Milwaukee, situating her in the social and political contexts of Croatian migration, Depression-era life in a working-class neighborhood, emerging antifascist politics, and Civil Rights unionism during and shortly after World War Two. By paying close attention to this twenty-one-year-old Croatian American and writing the backstory of her involvement in the 1944 dispute, this essay contributes to histories of Eastern European women by exploring the dynamics of migration, class, gender, and race in a twentieth-century U.S. industrial city.
Hudson’s early activism, and an effort to place her both historically and spatially, raises three questions. How did her family history—migrating from Eastern Europe and growing up as a Croatian American in a family that embraced “diaspora leftism”—shape her activism? How did growing up in this ethnically and racially mixed neighborhood, one in which Eastern European migrants lived adjacent to one of the city’s few outlying Black working-class neighborhoods, affect her activism? How does this account of a labour-left Croatian American woman contribute to our understanding of interwar and wartime egalitarianism, providing not a correction but a counterexample to histories of Eastern European immigrants’ path toward exclusionary whiteness? In the spirit of microhistory, this investigation makes no claims about Nada Hudson’s life as typical or representative. Instead, these questions, spurred by a close examination of Hudson’s early life, leading up to the 1944 dispute, illuminate a moment in the culture of labour-left activism, influenced by migration and Eastern European immigrants’ everyday lives. Nada Hudson threw herself into this wartime clash over housing and race, carrying a commitment
1 Family Background and Migration
Nada Goldner was born in 1922 in Sušak, a coastal urban industrial area in Croatia that is now part of Rijeka (Fiume). Her sister Zlata was born there a year earlier. Their mother, Paulina Tomljanović, came from Lič in the nearby mountainous Gorski Kotar region, and their father, Rudolfo Goldner, had been born farther east in the Slavonian region of Croatia. The surname Goldner apparently came from Rudolfo’s mother, who was Jewish; she and his Catholic father never married. Both Rudolfo and Paulina, growing up in the Croatian areas of Austria-Hungary and marrying in 1920, witnessed war, the dissolution of an empire, and the post-Great War founding of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (or Yugoslavia).3
Rudolfo Goldner came to the United States in the fall of 1923, just a year after Nada’s birth and shortly before the restrictive U.S. Immigration Act of 1924. Like most South Slavic migrants, he was drawn by the promise of industrial work. Goldner’s socialist politics likely also played a role.4 Goldner soon made his way to Duluth, Minnesota, where relatives had settled and where four years earlier Paulina’s brother was killed by a boom crane in a steel mill, leaving a widow and five children.5 Goldner lived in a neighborhood that housed many of Duluth’s South Slavic residents who worked at U.S Steel’s sprawling Minnesota Steel Company. Croatian, Serbian, and Slovenian businesses and
Sometime between 1926 and 1928, Rudolfo Goldner left Duluth and made his way to Milwaukee. He likely was attracted to the city by jobs in Milwaukee’s diverse, albeit troubled, industrial economy, by the presence of a sizeable Croatian and South Slavic community, and perhaps by Milwaukee’s socialism—a politics that made an imprint on working-class life and access to public amenities. Goldner soon became a naturalized U.S. citizen, taking his oath on 11 April 1929. This newly acquired citizenship and his move to Milwaukee suggest Goldner’s intent to remain in the United States.8
Later in 1929, Paulina Goldner and her two daughters Zlata and Nada boarded a passenger ship in Trieste (Trst/Triest), before it steamed to the U.S. with 1,300 South Slavic, Greek, and Italian passengers. According to the Vulcania’s manifest, the three Goldners, who declared their nationality as “Jugoslavia” and language as Croatian, had lived most recently in Paulina’s hometown. Although changes in U.S. immigration policy in the 1920s, building on earlier restrictions from Asian countries, now also limited migration from Southern and Eastern Europe, the Goldners managed to obtain visas in Zagreb as “non-quota” admittees due to Rudolfo’s citizenship. Paulina, Zlata, and Nada landed in New York on 3 December 1929. With forty dollars and tickets to Milwaukee, the three Goldners made their way west to join Rudolfo. Soon after arriving in Milwaukee and settling into the working-class Sixteenth Ward, Paulina also became a naturalized U.S. citizen, as did her daughters,
A new surname followed on the heels of the family’s recently attained citizenship status. Rudolfo “translated” the family name from the German-Jewish surname Goldner, meaning goldsmith, to Oristo. This change indicated, in part, his enthusiasm for Esperanto, a language embracing a spirit of universalism, which he learned while in Europe, along with his seven other languages. In the U.S., he taught Esperanto, even offering lessons later in the 1930s under the auspices of the New Deal Works Progress Administration (wpa). But other factors apparently contributed to this name change. According to a puzzling Milwaukee Journal account, Goldner “changed his name because he believes it has a Jewish connotation and he belongs to a benefit order that excludes Jews.” This group was likely the First Croatian Benefit Association, which soon would be upended by internal turmoil.10 As the economy spiraled downward in the early Depression years, many working-class immigrant families turned to ethnic mutual benefit societies to survive. The secular Goldner family might have shed this marker of their Jewish identity out of economic need, having confronted the perils of interwar antisemitism in Europe and the U.S. that also targeted immigrants with radical leanings. Rudolfo continued, however, using Goldner as a middle name. The choice of this Esperanto name, an atypical step toward Americanization that was riddled with ambiguity, suggests a strategic universalism and secular pluralism that animated the family’s radical politics and foreshadowed the later-1930s labour-left political culture.11
2 Sixteenth Ward Neighborhoods
The Goldner/Oristo family lived first in the southern-most part of the Sixteenth Ward’s Merrill Park neighborhood. During the 1930s and early 1940s they moved from apartment to apartment, occupying at least half-a-dozen different rental units, mostly in the southern half of Merrill Park and later near the eastern boundary of Pigsville. These two neighborhoods clung to the edge of the Menomonee River Valley, an area that divided the city’s North and South Sides and was filled with factories, stockyards, and railroad yards (see Map 17.1).13
Four features of the westside working-class neighborhood in which Nada and Zlata Oristo grew up are salient for this history. First, Merrill Park and portions of Pigsville were diverse ethnically and modestly diverse racially. The neighborhood housed many immigrants and first-generation residents from Southern, Eastern, and Central Europe. While overwhelmingly white, Merrill Park was also home to African Americans. A second and related feature of the neighborhood was the informal boundary line that segregated Merrill Park’s Black residents into the Ward’s southeastern corner. The 1944 conflicts over race and housing that engaged Nada Hudson stemmed from an initiative by segregationists to fortify this boundary in a neighborhood that was diverse but
German Lutherans and then Irish immigrants were early residents of Merrill Park. By the early twentieth century, immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe—especially Croatians, Slovenians, and Italians—settled into this working-class neighborhood. Along with apartments on the northern edge of the district, Merrill Park featured wood-frame, single-family houses and duplexes built during the decades around the turn of the century, many divided into rental units. This district recorded a higher percentage of renters than the citywide rate, with three-quarters of the units in the neighborhood filled by renters versus about two-thirds for Milwaukee as a whole. A prominent local landmark was St. Rose of Lima parish and school, where Irish Catholic residents worshipped and socialized. The parish adapted as newer residents moved in, making space for a Ukrainian service or for Italian parishioners, as religiously observant immigrants sought out services conducted in a familiar language. Croatian Catholics attended Croatian-language services at Sacred Heart Catholic Church just north of downtown or at St. Augustine Catholic Church in West Allis.15
Many neighborhood residents were industrial and service economy workers. About two-thirds of Merrill Park’s residents and three-fourths of Pigsville’s residents in 1940 were craftsmen, domestics, service workers, or labourers, including a high proportion of operatives, the core of the industrial economy. Neighborhood residents worked in the factories, rail yards, and shops in the valley, as well as other jobs just a streetcar or bus ride away, including the sprawling Allis-Chalmers plant in West Allis. Rudolfo Oristo found work as a machinist at the nearby Falk Corp., until he was fired possibly because of union activity and a workers compensation dispute. Paulina Oristo, who had been trained as a needleworker, mostly cleaned houses and cooked for families. Median annual incomes at the end of the 1940s ranged from $3,170 in Merrill Park to $3,275 in Pigsville, both well below the city rate of $3,747 or county rate of $3,900. The Depression hit these already struggling neighborhoods hard. Many families, including the Oristos, faced under- and unemployment throughout the 1930s. Public jobs programs such as the wpa offered some relief. In addition to his wpa Esperanto stint, Rudolfo Oristo was hired to transcribe Braille. Like many others, the Oristos turned to ethnic organizations and public agencies for food and other aid.17
In a 1937 analysis and 1938 mapping of Milwaukee real estate by the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (holc), these neighborhoods had been “redlined,” rated as high-risk investment areas. Their “D,” or red, rating was due in part to the industrial areas bordering these neighborhoods. The reports also noted a concentration of “lower income industrial workers” in Merrill Park and Pigsville, the presence of “many” families on relief, and the poor condition of an aging housing stock. Racial diversity, surprisingly, was not highlighted in the area’s rating. The holc documented instead the mixed population of “Germans & Yugoslavians.” In any case, the low rating meant that federal assistance in the form of publicly insured, long-term mortgages was channeled away from these neighborhoods. While private lenders’ disinvestment in these
These obstacles likely heightened residents’ anxieties about economic security and home values, playing into the fears and racialized discourses about housing values that segregationists stirred up during the 1944 conflicts. Local realtors’ arguments built, of course, on the foundation laid earlier racially restrictive covenants and by the National Association of Real Estate Boards’ (nareb) Code of Ethics (adopted in 1913, revised in 1924), warning against transactions that would allow into a neighborhood a “member of any race or nationality, or any individual whose presence will clearly be detrimental to property values.”20 A 1943 nareb manual spelled out this prohibition, equating upwardly mobile African-Americans with bootleggers, prostitutes, and gangsters—naming all as sources of “blight” that realtors had an obligation to exclude.21
During World War Two, as African Americans moved to northern cities seeking jobs in defense industries, conflicts broke out in neighborhoods as some white residents fought to reinforce racial boundaries and defend white privilege. As scholars and activists have recounted, these incidents—whether violent or noisy—were integral to a history of racism that enforced strictures of a Jim Crow society in all regions of the country. At midcentury, these disputes over race and housing pitted segregationist white residents, backed especially by real estate interests, against Black residents, backed by a labour-left coalition of civil rights activists, union members, and popular front activists.22
3
While available sources say little about Nada’s and Zlata’s childhoods, the ethnic and racial contours of their working-class neighborhood during a time of economic hardship suggest formative aspects of their everyday experience. As they learned English, attended school, and traveled more widely in their neighborhood, they would have encountered other Croatian Americans, as well as other immigrants and their children. The Oristo family’s apartments in the southeastern portion of Merrill Park and later near the Mount Vernon Gospel Church put them into regular contact with their Black neighbors. Unlike many other white children in racially segregated Milwaukee, Nada and Zlata probably grew accustomed to navigating their neighborhood with periodic or even daily encounters between Black and white residents.23
As the sisters traversed their neighborhood, their parents’ values and organizational ties also likely affected how they understood their surroundings. Grace Falbo, an Italian immigrant who grew up in Merrill Park and lived just a few blocks away from the Oristo family, recalls a neighborhood with Italian, German, Irish, Croatian, Jewish, and Black children, playing and attending school together. In her oral history, she speaks fondly about her friendships across racial, ethnic, and religious lines, including with the Croatian sisters “Nada and Slada [sic].” For Falbo, the Oristo girls were notable as “Yugoslavian” friends who “knew communism.” Their father also had a reputation for radical political activities.24
The Oristos, who continued to speak Croatian in the home, participated in both Croatian cultural associations and labour-left organizations during the 1930s and 1940s. A brief exploration illustrates the rich organizational life and interconnections between these groups. Especially important was the emergence of antifascist and antiracist politics in these South Slavic associations, with ties to popular front labour-left groups in the lead-up to World
Paulina Oristo was involved in Croatian social organizations and regularly read the Croatian Fraternal Union’s (cfu) weekly Fraternalist (Zajedničar), a Croatian-language newspaper published in Allegheny, Pennsylvania that included an English-language section during the 1930s. She and her family also likely listened to the Croatian Radio Hour that began airing on wemp in early 1937 and featured Croatian-language programming and tamburitza music. Soon after arriving in Milwaukee, Paulina demonstrated Croatian cooking at the International Institute of the YWCA (the Young Women’s Christian Association). While little is documented about her political or social views, Paulina Oristo made clear to family members that she rejected the Catholic Church into which she had been born and sympathized with socialist principles. Importantly, her ethnic commitments did not lead to insularity but instead complemented her open-mindedness. For her husband, commitments to Esperanto and left-wing politics, were accompanied by regular involvement in Croatian and South Slavic associational life and cultural activities, including directing plays for the Three Slobodas Croatian-American cultural club. These activities and the media the family consumed (in both Croatian and English) contributed to their cultural and political identity, connected to interwar Croatia but increasingly rooted in the industrial city’s Croatian and South Slavic communities, providing avenues for the socialist politics they carried with them from Europe.26
While these cfu efforts linked U.S. migration and egalitarian social policy to the fate of Croatia and Yugoslavia, transnational and pan-Slavic concerns were central to the American Slav Congress (asc) and United Committee of South-Slavic Americans (ucssa), formed after the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact collapsed. Both groups were active in the Milwaukee area, with the cfu and its members participating. The asc, rooted in industrial unionism and the International Workers Order, drew together Slavic Americans who constituted a sizable proportion of the city’s industrial workforce. With labour leader Leo Krzycki at the helm (a Milwaukee-born Polish American socialist who rose in the ranks of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers and helped to organize the cio), the asc drew considerable attention in Milwaukee. Edmund Bobrowicz, an organizer for the cio’s International Fur and Leather Workers Union (iflwu) and future congressional candidate who was red baited, was also active in the asc. The Milwaukee County asc claimed to represent “100,000 Americans of Slavic descent … [embracing] 67 Polish, 22 Croatian, 14 Slovak, and 13 Czech organizations.” An early rally of the Milwaukee branch turned out 5,000 people, hearing from leaders of the cio and the American Federation of Labor (afl).31
Importantly, the asc and ucssa made civil rights and egalitarianism a part of their agenda, tying fights against fascism to battles against racial prejudice and inequality in American society, echoing the Double v campaigns of Black civil rights groups. Anticommunists attacked the ucssa for its support of Tito and, together with the asc, for their reluctance to criticize the Soviet Union during the war. Foreshadowing Cold War anticommunism, these attacks underscored connections between the ucssa, the asc, and labour-left groups, especially the cio.34
Arriving in Milwaukee as a socialist, Rudolfo Oristo apparently soon became involved in the Communist Party of the United States of America (cpusa), likely drawn by the sizeable South Slavic unit in the local cpusa. While the local cpusa bore the marks of its ties to the Soviet Union, taking dogmatic positions on international issues, the local cpusa activists focused especially
Given their social and political alignments, the Oristos likely took part in meetings, rallies, or picnics organized by these many groups, hearing strains of labour-left antifascism and egalitarianism throughout these years. As young girls and high-school students, Nada and Zlata Oristo probably accompanied their parents to cfu and other Croatian community events, maybe participating in musical or other cultural activities that involved children and families. They undoubtedly learned about the cfu, the cpusa, and organized labour at home, immersing them in the radical egalitarian politics and antifascism that united these groups during the 1930s. Given the notable labour and South Slavic presence in their neighborhood, such experiences shaped them politically.
Zlata and Nada Oristo were strong students during their secondary school years at Milwaukee’s West Division High School. Nada was member of the honor society and was elected class officer (secretary) in her senior year. Both sisters belonged to the Latin Club, perhaps inspired by their father’s interest in languages. Encouraged by their parents to take up music, Zlata played the violin, and Nada played the cello, performing with high school ensembles and the Milwaukee Youth Orchestra. Zlata graduated at the end of the school year in 1939. Nada’s commencement was held mid-year in January 1940. For a while after graduating, they continued to live with their parents in a small Sixteenth Ward apartment. With their father working a wpa job, the daughters presumably looked for work to help support the family, encountering an economy that was slowly picking up due to early demands for wartime production.36
Nada Oristo’s engagement with the ycl deepened when she later shouldered both citywide and national leadership roles in the ycl’s successor
During the war, with their husbands away in the military, Nada and Zlata rented a flat together at 3756 W. Stevenson Street—in Merrill Park, near the eastern edge of Pigsville. Both sisters worked, likely involved in defense production. Zlata’s daughter recalls that she sewed parachutes and uniforms. Nada’s daughters think that she was employed in a tannery, producing leather for boots, belts, rifle slings, and other military supplies. Work in a tannery would have put Nada in contact with leaders from the cio’s iflwu, the left-wing union led by organizers George Bradow and Edmund Bobrowicz, as well as the Black labour and housing activist Joe Ellis. Whether they connected through the workplace or in labour-left organizations, these radical activists and Hudson would work together in wartime and postwar civil rights initiatives including the Civil Rights Congress (crc).39
4
By the time of the Sixteenth Ward housing controversies, Nada Oristo Hudson lived less than four blocks away from a newly renovated house in which the Morris family rented an apartment.40 Hudson publicly opposed the segregationists who sought not only to oust the Morris family but also to draw a line at 35th Street to contain Merrill Park’s Black residents in a section east of that boundary.
During the controversy, segregationists belittled Nada Hudson. An audience member interrupted her defense of the Morris family, calling out “Are you a property owner?” Her answer of “no” provoked a “blast of boos” from the crowd. By trying to shame Hudson as a renter, the anti-Morris agitators cast doubt on her legitimacy as a participant in neighborhood decisions. Could somebody who did not own property be a full participant—a full citizen—in this neighborhood? Even though rental units far outnumbered owner-occupied housing in Merrill Park, and Hudson had lived here for almost fifteen years, these segregationist homeowners tried to claim exclusive authority to determine the neighborhood’s future, including (or maybe especially) the area’s racial landscape. They fueled fears about property values in mixed-race neighborhoods—anxieties reinforced by racially restrictive covenants, redlining, and other real estate practices.41
The naacp’s James Dorsey defended Hudson against these charges, questioning not only the “homeowner entitlement” voiced at the meeting but the patriotism and masculinity of the men who jeered Hudson, a serviceman’s wife. “You men who just booed down that lady, booed down the wife of a man who is fighting to make your homes safe for you.” Dorsey’s defense upheld Hudson’s right as a resident to be heard. But by focusing attention on men’s wartime roles—contrasting the neighborhood segregationists who enjoyed the safety of stateside life with Hudson’s husband who fought fascism overseas—Dorsey played into wartime gender constraints that tied Hudson’s rights and public voice to her status as a soldier’s wife. Or as the historian Robert Westbrook argues, she gained standing as an object of men’s wartime sacrifice, far from any ideal of gender egalitarianism or working-class feminism. Lost in this exchange about renters’ status, women’s dependence, and men’s wartime sacrifice was any recognition of Nada Hudson’s Croatian American radicalism, solidly rooted in her experience growing up as an immigrant in 1930s Merrill
The segregationists’ drive toward exclusion and separation was not an isolated case, of course. Wartime hate-filled campaigns peaked in 1943—notably in wartime production and military centers such as Detroit and Los Angeles—but were evident throughout the war years and throughout the United States. At the same time, racist surges clashed with local and national campaigns for wartime racial and ethnic unity, improved “interracial relations,” racial pluralism, and civil rights. Another important wing of wartime racial egalitarianism that shaped Hudson stemmed from a radical labour-left, antifascist, and antiracist movement that included industrial labour unions, communist party activists, and other popular front organizations in the 1930s and 1940s.43
After the war, Nada Hudson continued her involvement with the ayd and worked briefly for the Milwaukee cio. She was also active in a multiracial, labour-left cohort that launched the crc in Milwaukee. As Cold War anticommunist investigations intensified, Hudson came under scrutiny. Early postwar Red Scare targets included militant cio leaders, the crc, and the cpusa’s Wisconsin leadership. In the early 1950s, Nada and James Hudson were suspected of fomenting Black revolution, allegedly handing a manual to an activist who then informed on them to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (fbi). The family went underground, relocating to Chicago; Nada and James assumed new names. In the mid-1950s, the Hudsons returned to Milwaukee, settling just down the hill from Zlata and her family in a nearby suburb. Although the Hudsons eventually left the cpusa, visits from fbi agents continued. Nevertheless, Nada and Zlata sustained their commitment to the civil rights and peace movements, maintaining lifelong friendships with fellow labour-left activists such as Harold Christoffel. Years later, during the 1960s open housing battles against segregation in Milwaukee, the police interrogated a young activist. He discovered that the police intended to prove that the protesters were “communist dupes,” basing this flimsy charge on evidence that his mother had grown up in the Sixteenth Ward with Nada Oristo Hudson.44
5
As the historian David Roediger argues, many Southern and Eastern European immigrants and their children during the first half of the twentieth century traveled a route to Americanization by differentiating themselves from African Americans, that is “working toward whiteness.” In short, immigrants’ inclusion
While a reconstruction of Nada Oristo Hudson’s path to labour-left racial egalitarianism does not contradict Roediger’s important argument, this “exceptional” case complicates the larger narrative. An excavation of the Goldner-Oristo-Hudson journey from post-World War One Eastern Europe to World War Two-era Milwaukee offers insight into historical contingencies that fostered a young Croatian America woman’s attachment to racial egalitarianism rather than propelling her along the heavily traveled road toward racial exclusion and separation. This family’s socialist alignments, transported from Europe, took root in an ethnically and racially mixed, industrial, working-class neighborhood during the Great Depression. In this setting, their political commitments and education about American society were nurtured by a vibrant South Slavic and labour-left organizational life, constituting an alternative path toward midcentury Americanization. While no doubt benefiting from white privilege in a society structured by racial hierarchies, Nada Hudson fought for racial egalitarianism not only as an abstract ideal but as a concrete aim in her neighborhood and city.45
Milwaukee census tract map with city wards, 1945
source: map. milwaukee county community fund and council of social agencies, census tract facts: a handbook of basic social data of milwaukee county, wisconsin (milwaukee: statistical research department, 1945)
“Want Negroes to Stay Away” 1944. See a 16 May 1944 mj photograph in which labour-left allies of the Morris family presented a 468-signature petition; Hudson and Eola Morris sat at the center of the group, with Edward Morris to the side.
On diaspora leftism, see Dyakonova 2019, 19. On 1940s egalitarianism, see Korstad 2018; Cobble 2004; Lipsitz 1994; Korstad and Lichtenstein 1988. On working-class immigrants and racial egalitarianism, see Enyeart 2019; Guglielmo 2010; cf., Roediger 2005; Cohen 1990. On political agency and feminism, see McNay 2010. On microhistory versus biography, see Lepore 2001, 133.
In the early 1920s, Sušak was part of Yugoslavia; Italy controlled the rest of Rijeka/Fiume. Momirski 2021; Kralj 2012, 259–261; Megan Hudson, Polly Hudson, and Ingrid Buxton, interview by Eric Fure-Slocum, 27 May 2021, (recording and transcript in author’s possession) [hereafter Hudson and Buxton interview].
On Croatian and Austro-Hungarian migration, see Larson 2020; Steidl, Fischer-Nebmaier, and Oberly 2017; Zahra 2016; Brunnbauer 2012; Miletić 2012. On immigration restriction, see Ngai 2004.
“Rudolph Goldner Naturalization Card,” Naturalization Petitions for the United States District and Circuit Courts, Northern District of Illinois and Naturalization Service District 9, Microfilm Serial 1285, Roll 66, National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland [hereafter nara], Ancestry.com Library Edition [hereafter Ancestry], Wright’s Milwaukee 1929. The earliest evidence of Goldner in Milwaukee is “Officers Are Named by Esperanto Club” 1928. On Milwaukee South Slavic communities, see Gurda 1999, 175, 178, 180, 226, 258; Ward 1976; Sebanc 1972. Milwaukee’s socialist mayors were Emil Seidel (1910–1912), Daniel Hoan (1916–1940), and Frank Zeidler (1948–1960). McGuinness 2009.
New York, Passenger and Crew Lists, 1820–1957, 1929 arrival, microfilm serial T715, 1897–1957, role 4637, line 19, page 177, Ancestry; “Paulina Goldner (Oristo) Naturalization Card,” Naturalization Petitions for the United States District and Circuit Courts, Northern District of Illinois and Naturalization Service District 9, Microfilm Serial 1285, Roll 134, nara, Ancestry; New York, Passenger and Crew Lists, mf T715, 1897–1957, role 4637, line 19, Ancestry. On immigration laws and naturalization, see Marinari 2020, 43–70; Schneider 2011, 214–222; Bader-Zaar 2004; Ngai 2004, 21–53.
“Rudolph Oristo Is Name” 1931; “Exit Rudolf Goldner, Enter Mr. Oristo” 1931; “Row Among the City’s Croatians” 1931. Goldner’s language facility proved useful as a chauffeur in Europe. Hudson and Buxton interview. On the Croatian Esperanto League and Universal Esperanto Association, which he represented, see Hamann 1928, 545–552; “Officers Are Named by Esperanto Club” 1928. On Oristo’s classes, see “Esperanto Study Will Be Offered as wpa Project” 1936; “Courses in Esperanto” 1937; “New School Here to Teach the abcs of Marxism” 1934. On Esperanto’s universalism and roots, see Schor 2016, 59–108.
Cohen 1990. On Jewish immigrants’ interwar name changes, see Fermaglich 2015. On interwar antisemitism in the United States, Milwaukee, and Croatia, see Valbousquet 2021; Goldstein 2003; August 2001; Sekelj 1988; Swichkow 1973.
U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1930 United States Federal Census [hereafter 1930 U.S. Census], Milwaukee, Wisconsin, page 19A, Enumeration District 0197, fhl microfilm 2342325, Ancestry; Hudson and Buxton interview. On Depression-era childhood in Milwaukee, see Webb 2006.
The family’s Merrill Park addresses included: 46 N. 32nd St.; 30 N. 32nd St.; 100-A N. 32nd St.; 3712 Stevenson St.; 3224 W. Mt. Vernon Ave.; 218 N. 30th St; and 3756 W. Stevenson Street. Upon arrival, Rudolfo lived in an older Croatian neighborhood: 459 Walker St. “Rudolfo Goldner Naturalization Card”; Goldner/Oristo in 1930 U.S. Census; U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1940 United States Federal Census [hereafter 1940 U.S. Census], Milwaukee, Wisconsin, roll T627_4556, pages 6A, 6B, Enumeration District 72–360, Ancestry; Wright’s Milwaukee 1940, 511; Wright’s Milwaukee 1944–45, 533.
Portraits of these Sixteenth Ward neighborhoods are drawn from: Buenker 2016, 132–139; Gurda 2015, 75–93; Gurda 1980, 44–45; Quinn 1979; Tien 1962, 198–202; Social Explorer Census 1950; Research Clearinghouse of Milwaukee 1950; Milwaukee County Community Fund 1945; Social Explorer Census 1940; 1940 U.S. Census, 52; 1930 U.S. Census. Merrill Park corresponds roughly to census tract 73 and Pigsville to tract 74 on the 1940 and 1950 census maps (see Map 17.1).
Gurda 1980, 21–58. Two 1940s-era Milwaukee mayors, brothers Carl and Frank Zeidler, grew up in Merrill Park. On St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church, see Gurda 1991, 5–8, 24–26; Schimpf 1987; St. Rose of Lima 1938; Grace M. Falbo, Oral History Transcript, conducted by Lawrence Balassaro and Diane Vecchio, River Hills, Wisconsin, 5 April 1991, 14, in “An Oral History of the Italians in Milwaukee,” Milwaukee County Historical Society, Mss. 1770 [hereafter Falbo Oral History]. The parish boundaries covered Merrill Park and Pigsville. Sacred Heart Catholic Church moved out of the near-northside in the 1950s; both churches retain Croatian connections. Sacred Heart Parish; St. Augustine Church; Hostutler 2009; Ward 1991, 493–498; Sebanc 1972, 135.
Apostles Lutheran Church was located between N. 38th and N. 39th Streets on W. Michigan Avenue.
Home Owners’ Loan Corporation, “Area Description—Security Map of Milwaukee,” Areas D7, D7A, 1 October 1937, in Nelson, Mapping Inequality. The Area D7 description notes that the Merrill Park areas in which the Oristos lived, “between 27th and 35th, south of Claybourn,” as home to factory workers, with Mt. Vernon Avenue containing some of the poorest housing. On the Oristos’ employment, see “Falk Earnings Data Checked” 1937; “Rudolfo G. Oristo Obituary” 1951; Hudson and Buxton interview; Falbo Oral History, 12; “Esperanto Study Will Be Offered as wpa Project” 1936; Oristo in 1940 U.S. Census; “World War ii Drafts Cards (Fourth Registration) for the State of Wisconsin,” Records of the Selective Service System, 1940–, record group 147, box 231, microfilm series M2126, roll 77, nara Ancestry. See also Buenker 2016, 133–139; Quinn et al. 1995.
As in other industrial cities, Black residents were confined largely to segregated neighborhoods. On outlying Black neighborhoods, see Michney 2017. In 1945, Black residents accounted for about two percent of Milwaukee’s population. Fure-Slocum 2013; Trotter 2007; Citizens’ Governmental Research Bureau 1946. On the neighborhood’s racial composition, see Gurda 1980, 21– 88; Tien 1962, 198– 202; U.S. Bureau of the Census 1950; 1940 U.S. Census, manuscript sheets for Milwaukee’s Sixteenth Ward, blocks 26, 28, 29, 31, Ancestry; Milwaukee County Community Fund 1945, census tracts 73 and 74. The Mount Vernon Gospel Church was at 320 N. 33rd Street; the West Side Church of God in Christ was on the valley’s edge at 119 N. 32nd Street, near where the Oristo family first lived. Shadd 1950, 30, 55. On Latinx and Asian American Milwaukeeans, see González 2017, 13–28; Rodriguez and Shelley 2009, 162–191.
holc, “Area Description—Security Map of Milwaukee,” Areas D7, D7A, in Nelson, Mapping Inequality. Concordia, an area just north of these neighborhoods, had been more well-to-do until the 1920s but now was labelled as declining (yellow). On the impact of redlining and related policies, see Michney and Winling 2020; Light 2010; Satter 2009; Gordon 2008, 83–98.
Quoted in Glotzer 2015, 488. See also Gordon 2008; Quinn 1979.
The 1943 language as quoted in: Avila 2004, 8–9; Hirsch 1993, 75. On the nareb’s influence over government agencies, including the Federal Housing Administration, see Freund 2007. For Milwaukee and Wisconsin, see Metropolitan Milwaukee Fair Housing Council 2005, 71–74.
See Meyer 2000; Sugrue 1996; Hirsch 1983. On labour-left coalitions, see Kimble 2015.
Upon arrival, both daughters spoke and wrote Croatian. By 1930, Zlata spoke English, while Nada was still learning the language. New York, Passenger and Crew Lists, mf T715, 1897–1957, role 4637, line 19, Ancestry; Galdner (Goldner) in 1930 U.S. Census.
Falbo Oral History, 7–18. This oral history reflects racial views formed in the wake of the Civil Rights movement. Falbo’s family lived first near N. 27th St. and W. Clybourn and then N. 35th St. and W. Clybourn. She went to Mary Hill School and then to the Wisconsin Avenue School. Falbo recalls Rudolfo Oristo being “arrested for writing a letter to the king of Yugoslavia” (12). While this might not be a reliable childhood account, it suggests his continued engagement with the politics of Yugoslavia. On Milwaukee’s cp, see Mukherji 2017, 127–132.
For capacious interpretations of the “popular front,” see Jones 2005, 125–150; Denning 1996. While the official Popular Front period of the Communist International ran from 1935 to 1939, a broad-based and longer-running grassroots popular front supported industrial unions, social democratic policies, and racial equality.
Hudson and Buxton interview; “Lesson in Cooking Real Croatian Meal” 1931; “Program for the First Anniversary of the Croatian Radio Hour,” wemp, 23 January 1938, Box 2, cfu Collection, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Archives, Milwaukee, wi [hereafter uwm Archives]; “Play to Be Given” 1940. See also “10th Anniversary Celebration Program,” cfu Branch No. 392 (West Allis), 5 October 1941, Milwaukee Hall; and Souvenir Program, 25th Anniversary Celebration, Croatian Women, Branch No. 3 (Milwaukee), 5 May 1957, Croatian Center Hall, Milwaukee; both in folder “Ethnic-Croatian,” Local Pamphlets Collection, Milwaukee Public Library. Kralj 2012, 114–158; Greene 2009.
The Nada lodge was reportedly the oldest and largest Croatian organization in Wisconsin. “Oldest Croatian Lodge to Observe Anniversary” 1953, 26. “Rudolfo G. Oristo Obituary” 1951. Zlata later took out her own cfu membership: “Month of April 1955 Membership” 1955.
“Articles of Incorporation of Croatian Fraternal Union Center, Inc., filed 3 April 1952,” folder “Croatian Fraternal Union,” Box 7, Croatian Fraternal Union Records, uwm Archives. The Lodges listed are: #261, #807, and #255 in Milwaukee: #391, #392, and #731 in West Allis; “Croatian Union Votes Aid to the Indigent” 1935; “Milwaukee’s Fifth ‘Croatian Day’ Will Be Held Next Saturday, July 23” 1939; “Croats Meet; Factions Row” 1935; “Croats Mass 5,000 Strong at Their Picnic” 1939; Steidl et al. 2017, 96–98. On the cfu and labour-left activism, see March 2017; Rachleff 1998; Kraljic 2009; Rachleff 1989; Nelson et al. 1981, 44–45. On the importance of ethnic resources for the cio, see Cohen 1990. cfu lodges hosted sports teams (e.g., bowling, softball, basketball) that played other ethnic and labour teams in industrial leagues. “Stanzers Win in Allis Loop” 1938; “Wrecker Nine Plans Entry in Triple A Loop” 1940. Research is needed on early cfu policies, especially its turn from limiting membership to “the white race” to advocacy of pluralism and racial egalitarianism. “Articles of Organization, 1925,” Croatian Independent Sick Benefit Society of West Allis, Wis., Box 7, cfu Collection, uwm Archives. On Christoffel, see Meyer 1992.
“Group Turns Guns on Antialien Bills” 1939; “Conference Held Here on Antialien Bills in Congress” 1939; “Starnes Bill Opposed” 1940; Buff 2017, 27–52. On fascist and antifascist politics, see Enyeart 2019; and Fronczak 2018.
“Lodges Aid Red Cross, Pledge Defense Bonds” 1942; “Groups Join Those Giving to the Red Cross” 1942; “$7,862 Raised in Slav Drive” 1944.
The Milwaukee branch used the name American Slav Council. “Milwaukee American Slav Council Activity,” 25 August 1942, American Slav Congress 1942–1943, U.S. Office of Strategic Services, Foreign Nationalities Branch Files, 1942–1945, nara, ProQuest History Vault; “Banachowicz Named to Attend Congress” 1942, 12; “Slavs to Perfect Permanent Unit Here Next Sunday” 1942; “Postwar Task Big One, Slav Council Told” 1942; U.S. House Un-American Activities Committee 1950; Ubriaco 1999. On Leo Krzycki, see Miller 1976. On communist/anticommunist rifts: “County Slav Council Quits National Body” 1943; “Ukrainians Rap Slav Group Rift” 1943; “Roosevelt War Aims Endorsed by Slavs” 1944. See also Zecker 2018.
Larson 2020, 307–364; Enyeart 2019, 74, 84; Lees 2007, 133–135; Sebanc 1972, 141. The cfu contributed to the ucssa’s formation. Reports of the group’s activities appeared regularly in the local press: “Plan for Meeting of South Slav Group” 1943; “Slavs to Eye Unity Setup” 1944; “Adamic Slaps Ruth Mitchell: Aiding Fascists, Slav Author Declares” 1944; “Milanov, Violinist and Slavic Groups to Appear Today” 1944. See the ucssa’s newsletter “The Bulletin,” edited by Adamic, including a plea against divisiveness: Kosanovich 1944.
“Soviet Hailed by South Slavs” 1944, 13; Protest Notice 1944; “Fight Renting Hall to Smith” 1944. On the Bund, Berninger 1987–1988.
Enyeart 2019, 95; “The Ill Wind from Moscow” 1944. Double V stood for victory abroad and at home, fighting fascism and racism.
“Falk earning Data Checked” 1937; Mukherji 2017; “Rudolfo G. Oristo Obituary” 1951; “Reds Seeking Election Posts as Wallaceites 1948.” After the war, Rudolfo and Paulina moved south of the Menomonee valley to the Fifth Ward, near where Rudolfo first lived in Milwaukee. Also running on the Progressive party 1948 ticket were Werner Buchel (Fifteenth Ward), a Morris family supporter in 1944, and Mildred Ostovich (Sixteenth Ward), married to a uaw Local 248 activist.
West Division High School 1936, 71, 104; West Division High School 1937, 65, 87, 95; West Division High School 1938, 76, 82, 84, 85, 93; West Division High School 1940, 19, 36; Hudson and Buxton interview; “298 Diplomas at West High” 1939; “Honor Students to Give Address” 1940; Oristo in 1940 U.S. Census.
Nada Hudson’s daughters discussed her self-doubts in Hudson and Buxton interview. On the ycl and cp, see Pettengill 2020; Dyakonova 2019; Maraniss 2019; Mukherji 2017, 117, 118, 130; Storch 2007; Isserman 1982. Nada Oristo and James Hudson married in 1941. He enlisted in the army, serving in Europe. His radical politics likely consigned him to behind-the-lines jobs. Before the army, he completed three years of college. Zlata Oristo and James Buxton, who also apparently met in the ycl, married in 1944. Buxton served in the Pacific. “James Hudson,” U.S. World War ii Army Enlistment Records, 1938–1946, nara, Electronic Army Serial Number Merged File, Record Group 64, Ancestry; U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs birls Death File, 1850–2010, Ancestry; U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1940 United States Federal Census, Madison, Dane, Wisconsin, roll m-t0627-04469, page 4B, Enumeration District 13–41A, Ancestry.
“Proceedings of the First Constitutional Convention of the American Youth for Democracy,” New York City, 16–17 October 1943, folder 8, box 252, American Youth for Democracy Records, Tamiment Library, New York University, New York; Cronin 1945, 116–117; “Want Negroes to Stay Away 1944”; “Front Groups Widely Used in Red Strategy” 1946. On the complexities of women’s roles in radical and labour organizations during the 1930s and 1940s, see Schreiber 2022; Dumenil 2020; Faue 2017; Guglielmo 2010; Cobble 2004.
On wartime employment: Fehring 2020; Pifer, 2003; Gurda 1994, 33. See also an oral history with a Serbian American woman who made parachutes and paratroopers’ jump suits. Dorothy Petrovich, Oral history Interview, 26 March 1993, “Wisconsin Women during World War ii,” Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison, wi. On the crc (formerly the National Negro Congress): “Civil Rights Parley Opens” 1947; Gellman 2012.
Wright’s Milwaukee City Directory, 1944–45, 533.
“Want Negroes to Stay Away” 1944; Gordon 2008.
“Want Negroes to Stay Away” 1944. On wartime sacrifice and gender, see Basso 2013; Westbrook 2004, 39–91.
Sugrue 2012, 87–102.
Cronin 1945, 117; “Civil Rights Parley Opens” 1947; “Red Fascist Groups Named” 1948; U.S. House Un-American Activities Committee 1955, 803; “Red Planned Revolt, Claim” 1952; Hudson and Buxton interview; Hagedorn 2017, 4; Jones 2009.
Roediger 2005. See also Zecker 2021; Guglielmo 2010; Cobble 2004. Microhistorians use the term “exceptional” to denote atypical cases requiring examination. See De Vries 2019.
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