Door County’s website invites visitors to “Explore Summer Adventures,” conjuring visions of fish boils, Lake Michigan summers, ice cream and Al Johnson’s goats at Wisconsin’s most famous summer vacation spot. But in this historical moment when the nation’s commitment to addressing racial inequality is under assault, my memories of Door County are much less idyllic.
In the late ‘80s my sister rented a house in Ephraim on the shores of Eagle Harbor. It would be a weekend away from Milwaukee for uncles, aunts and six cousins, her kids and mine.
That changed when my 12-year-old son, Jesse, the oldest of the cousins, came running into the house. He looked like he’d seen a ghost. He’d been to Wilson’s, Door County’s iconic ice cream parlor, and had seen a can of tobacco on the counter behind the cash register that was branded with a racial slur.
We walked back to Wilson’s. It was packed. Prominently displayed behind the counter was a tobacco can with a caricature of a grinning black woman, big hair, thick lips, oversized nose and earrings.
I approached the cash register. Firmly, but politely I asked that the tobacco can be removed, explaining that it was offensive. “No, I won’t do that,” responded the man behind the counter who quickly went back to serving other customers. I repeated my request more forcefully. Again, it was denied.
What to do? My son is Black. I, like many Jews who grew up in the shadow of World War II and the Holocaust, had been taught at an early age that silence in the face of hatred and discrimination was unacceptable. I wanted my children to grow up being proud of who they are and knowing that bigotry must be challenged and confronted.
I raised my voice so everyone in Wilson’s would hear that the owner was refusing to remove the racist tobacco can sitting on his shelf with other artifacts. The store grew silent. All eyes turned on the tobacco can, the owner and me. There was no backing down. I said, “Get rid of the damn can, now!” I could see customers were becoming increasingly uncomfortable. Sales would be lost. Again, I demanded the can be removed and it finally was.
I turned to Jesse and told him we would get no ice cream today, not from Wilson’s now or ever. We walked out of the building.
A couple of weeks ago I asked Jesse, now in his mid-40s, if he remembered what happened that day, because some of the details had faded for me (including thinking the tobacco can was a coffee can). “I remember everything clearly, as if it happened yesterday,” Jesse replied, “including the name and image on the can. Every detail including the earrings! I will never forget that day.”
Jesse’s memory was accurate, confirmed by a quick internet search which revealed yet another Wisconsin connection. The B. Leidersdorf Company of Milwaukee began producing the tobacco with the racist name in 1878. Its founder and owner, Bernhardt Leidersdorf, was a Milwaukee Republican alderman (1880-1881) and public debt commissioner (1905-1906). Evidently racist marketing didn’t hurt his reputation or political ambitions.
The brand was later purchased by the Virginia-based American Tobacco Company. But the lithographed can containing the tobacco continued to be produced by Leidersdorf into the 1960s. While the name was changed to “Bigger Hair” in the early 1940s in response to the emerging civil rights movement, the racist image remained with the addition of the words “Fiji Woman” to the left of the picture.
Leidersdorf’s tobacco and can and the confrontation at Wilson’s are reminders of racism’s deep roots in Wisconsin despite Assembly Speaker Robin Vos’ absurd declaration that getting rid of diversity, equity and inclusion is “the single most important issue we are facing.” Perhaps Vos has forgotten that the nation’s top law enforcement officials have declared that the “biggest domestic terror threat comes from white supremacists,” or about the racially motivated massacres in Charleston, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, El Paso and Uvalde and the murders of George Floyd, Briana Taylor and countless others.
A report from the UWM Center for Economic Development concludes, “No metropolitan area ranks as consistently poorly, across the board, on indicators of Black community well-being as Milwaukee does.” It is why Milwaukee earned its reputation as the “Selma of the North” in the 1960s.
Just three years ago Black Lives Matter marches in Milwaukee and across the state, including the Door County community of Sister Bay, gave communities a breath of fresh air by confronting systemic racism in criminal justice, income, employment, housing, and medical care in Wisconsin. Vos’ culture war attacks on the University of Wisconsin system and minority student access indicate how far we have to go.
While the Wisconsin Department of Tourism invites us to explore the state and Door County welcomes us, neither will be possible for all the state’s citizens until Wisconsin addresses its systems of racial disparity and accepts its Black citizens as equals. It is incumbent upon all of us to confront racial bigotry whenever and wherever it manifests itself.
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
