May 17, 2024

In Activity #1 we examined surviving evidence about how coded rules or norms might have shaped who could or could not socialize, eat, drink, or shop at certain places in La Crosse. With the exception of the Palm Garden’s separate entrances for river traffic and town residents, Activity #1 mostly focused on La Crosse’s permanent residents. For Activity #2, we want to shift our focus to people traveling to La Crosse for work or leisure, and what exclusionary norms might have shaped travelers’ experiences at local hotels and motor lodges.

Lillian Smith Davenport’s 1941-1942 campaign to end exclusionary signage in downtown La Crosse (from Activity #1) hints at how unwelcoming La Crosse might have felt to people of color who visited the city in the 1940s. As someone who grew up in La Crosse, but had lived elsewhere for a number of years, Lillian may have had both an insider’s perspective as well as the ability to see La Crosse from a tourist’s or newcomer’s eye.

This tourist’s perspective of La Crosse as a place one might encounter exclusionary norms was echoed later in the decade by two Black union delegates who sued the Stoddard Hotel for unequal treatment based on race in 1946.

1947 Racial Discrimination Lawsuit Against Hotel Stoddard

In 1947, two Black American tourists sued the Stoddard Hotel for racial discrimination they experienced while in La Crosse for a conference. During the lawsuit, the manager of the Stoddard, John A. Elliot, corresponded with a number of people, including some friends and colleagues in the Wisconsin State Hotel Association. Decades later, the law office that had defended Hotel Stoddard donated the correspondences (among other papers in this case file) to the La Crosse Public Library Archives. To read how Elliot talked about the lawsuit, read this blog published by the LPL Archives in 2021:

“1947 Racial Discrimination Lawsuit Against Hotel Stoddard,” by Jenny DeRocher.

The Stoddard Hotel was located at the southeast corner of 4^th and State streets. Today, it is a parking lot surrounded by the State Bank (as you can see on the far right of the photo), the Rivoli, the Post Office, and the Cavalier Theater.

Towards the end of the blog post linked above, there’s a reference to the Green Book series that Black motorists relied on to help them find safe places to sleep, eat, and buy gas while traveling across the U.S. Although the Stoddard Hotel never made the list of recommendations for La Crosse, the Green Book guides published between 1957-1967 listed two places: Nuttleman’s Lodge Motel and the Linker Hotel.  (You can see them both here on this page from  the 1960 Green Book.)¹ Taking our cue from the Green Book series, let’s look at surviving evidence about these two places.

Nuttleman’s Lodge Motel

There are two important challenges we have to keep in mind when using the Green Book series as a primary source. First, information about where it was safe to stop for gas or food or lodging was compiled through long-distance communication networks that made it impossible for any one person to fully verify every listing. The Green Book series was created by New York resident Victor Hugo Green, who was assisted by his wife Alma. Green was a postman, so one kind of communication network he was able to tap into for information was the National Association of Letter Carriers: fellow postal workers in other parts of the U.S. provided suggestions for his guides Charles McDowell, an employee at the Department of the Interior tasked with promoting cross-country tourism also provided information. And, as it grew in popularity, the Green Book also integrated suggestions from its users.²

The second challenge for using the Green Book series is that there may have been cases where business owners accepting Black travelers’ money did not necessarily equate to accepting the idea of racial integration. Some complicated evidence in a 1979 oral history interview with Mabel Nuttleman hints at the challenges Black travelers may occasionally have faced when following Green Book suggestions. Mabel and her husband Richard were the proprietors of Nuttleman’s Lodge Motel on Highway 16 from 1931 until 1962. Their lodge appears in the Green Book from 1960-1967. In her oral history, Mabel describes the lodge also being listed in AAA TourBook guides published by the American Automobile Association, and the efforts she and her husband went through to get it listed. So appearing in the Green Book could have been a comparable kind of business decision. But in the section below, Mabel’s recollections seem to suggest she had mixed feelings about Black guests staying at her motel.

• 

  Mabel Nuttleman, Transcript, 1979. From the UWL Oral History Progam.

• 

To englargen these images in a new tab: Page 1 | Page 2

The Linker Hotel

The other La Crosse location appearing in the Green Book series is the Linker Hotel. The Linker Hotel was owned by three brothers, George, Charles, and Henry Linker, who were German immigrants that came to La Crosse in the 1880s. Their business started as the Linker Brothers Barber Shop and Turkish Bath Rooms, located across the street at 3rd & Main streets. In 1915, the brothers purchased a building at 318 Main St. that had recently sustained fire damage. They completely remodeled the interior of the building, adding underground plumbing and Turkish baths. It opened back up as the Linker Hotel, Barber Shop, and Turkish Bath.

Linker Hotel at 318 Main St. in 1916. Note the sign in the alleyway. In 1927, this building had a 5-story addition added and today is is called Lynne Tower.

When it opened in 1916 with the new remodel, it was open exclusively for men. Salesman and other business travelers were the hotel’s targeted clientele. By 1919, plans were in the works for a new addition to the back of the building, with possible baths for women. However, no surviving articles confirm that this second set of bathing facilities were ever actually added. It is not until a 1937 ad that we see any sort of hint that the Linker Hotel allowed guests that were not male.

1937 City Directory ad (page 29).

Over time, the Linker Hotel opened up to families traveling through La Crosse, which is confirmed by a 1946 newspaper article. It’s not clear how the Linker Hotel came to be recommended in the Green Book series. Unfortunately we are not aware of any oral histories or other sources that describe what the experience of staying at the Linker Hotel or using its Turkish Baths might have been like for patrons.

Guided Questions

• The sources we had to work with in Activity #2—letters and a judge’s ruling, Green Book listings, an oral history, newspaper articles—leave us with an incomplete picture of what it might have been like to navigate potentially exclusionary norms in La Crosse as a traveler in the early-mid 20th century.  What conclusions are you comfortable drawing from this evidence? What questions are you left with?  
• In August 2021, we explored how people living in the La Crosse area marketed (or “boosted”) our region as a tourist destination. The sources in Activity #2 shift the focus to a visitor’s eye view of La Crosse. How do you think the sources for this activity could fit into a history of tourism in La Crosse? What kinds of stories about La Crosse as a tourist destination could they potentially help us tell?

---

ENDNOTES

1. Green Books can be viewed online here: https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/collections/the-green-book#/?tab=navigation
2. Much has been written about the Green Book series, both before and after the 2018 movie of the same name introduced this history to a wider audience. For History Club purposes, Encyclopedia Britannica’s article about the Green Book series is an accessible way to get up to speed: https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Green-Book-travel-guide.  We used this source to confirm the details about the communication networks Green tapped into to compile recommendations about places to stop, shop, and stay. We also think the later parts of the entry describing white business owners’ complex reasons for appearing in the guide and how the limited number of people of color living in places in the Upper Midwest might have made it harder to make useful recommendations could be applicable to the situation in La Crosse. For a lengthier explanation that examines women’s contributions to the Green Book series, see this web page from the National Park Service: “Green Book Historic Context and AACRN Listing Guidance.”

---

This month’s History Club meeting will be on Thursday, May 30, 2024, from 5:30-6:30pm at the La Crosse Public Library in the Archives & Local History Department on the 2nd floor of the Main Branch. RSVP here.

August 20, 2021

In Activity 1 for this month, we gave you some pretty heavy sources (heavy on multiple levels, we feel: 1) the racist content, 2) potentially a lot of reading, depending on how much the sources pulled you in, and 3) the sources included such a broad range of subject matter, despite having similar purposes). To balance the month out, we thought we’d try something a little different and challenge your creativity by having you make your own primary source! This will, hopefully, allow you to process the aspects of Activity #1 that sparked a strong reaction within you, and give you an outlet to emphasize aspects of life in La Crosse that you are passionate about.   

Here are some questions to help guide you:

• How would you design your own promotional campaign for attracting tourists and migrants to La Crosse?
• Would you include a section about the community’s history?
• If yes, how would you frame La Crosse’s history?
• How would you frame our current community, culture, environment?
• What would your main focus, or selling point, be?
• How would you acknowledge the Ho-Chunk land that our community occupies?

We don’t want this to stress you out, we simply want it to exercise that historian brain of yours! If you can, join us at our August 25 meeting and pitch your idea. You can have a verbal pitch, or if you would like to make a physical copy, try making a zine (see below for guidance) and we can have a little show-and-tell.

If you can’t make it on August 25, but still want to participate, you can email Jenny your idea, or even a picture of your zine, and she’ll share it at the meeting for you. We’ll use this activity to guide our discussion on how the primary sources from Activity 1 made you feel and impacted your own ideas.

Don’t know what a zine is, or how to make one? A zine (pronounced “zeen”) is kind of a short, DYI magazine—you can read more here if you would like. And this short and simple Youtube video may guide and inspire you. The infographic below shows instructions on how to fold one sheet of paper into an 8-page zine. We’ll (Jenny and Tiffany) attempt to make our own so no one is alone in sharing a zine.

August 6, 2021

Our discussion at last month’s meeting led to new questions about how the La Crosse area has historically been described—and marketed—as a place to move to or visit.  So let’s use August Activity #1 to investigate the “sales pitch” used to attract immigrants and tourists to La Crosse, ca. the 1840s – 2020s.  We’ve assembled primary sources from three distinct points in time that illustrate how La Crosse has been described to outside audiences: an immigrant recruitment guide from 1854, a tourist brochure from the decade of the 1930s, and the present-day website for the La Crosse Chamber of Commerce.

Details about each primary source can be found below.  Here are a few overarching discussion questions to consider as you examine them:

• What aspects of La Crosse’s environment, culture, and commerce are being used to promote our city and county?  
• According to each primary source: what is the story of La Crosse? What arguments are being made about why people should come here permanently (immigrants) or temporarily (tourists)?  
• What do you think La Crosse has to offer an immigrant or tourist? Do these primary sources reinforce your opinion? 
• Do these primary sources challenge or change your assumptions about how La Crosse was, or is, marketed to the outside world?

The Primary Sources

1: Spencer Carr, A Brief Sketch of La Crosse, Wisc’n…, 1854

In the mid-late nineteenth century, Wisconsin was rapidly transformed by Manifest Destiny-era westward migrations of Euro-Americans and African-Americans seeking natural resources and employment.  As it looked towards the start of its second decade, the settlement of La Crosse, Wisconsin (est. ca. 1841-1846) produced a 28-page pamphlet designed to recruit additional migrants. A recently-arrived immigrant from Pennsylvania, Baptist Minister Spencer Carr, compiled A Brief Sketch.

View A Brief Sketch here, through UWL Murphy Library’s Digital Collections.

Carr describes the settlement of La Crosse and its environment on pp. 3-6 in the drop-down menu.  Pp. 8-15 might also be of interest: what other kinds of information is he using to advertise La Crosse?

2: La Crosse County tourism brochure, ca. 1930s, possibly published by La Crosse Chamber of Commerce

Seeking to entice regional tourists during the first few decades of mass-produced automobiles, someone in La Crosse–likely the La Crosse Chamber of Commerce–created this brochure sometime in the decade of the 1930s.  Much shorter than A Brief Sketch…, this pamphlet takes advantage of improved twentieth century printing technology by using color illustrations and maps, along with black and white photography to visually support their case for La Crosse as a “Scenic Wonderland.”

As you examine the brochure, you will notice some racist Native American imagery and descriptions. As you process the words and pictures used in this brochure, consider ways in which this kind of representation of Indigious peoples still pops up in our community’s narrative. Look below to find two resources to help you process this.

View the brochure here, through the La Crosse Public Library Archives’ Digital Collections.

3: La Crosse Chamber of Commerce, “Choose La Crosse.com” website, 2021

We thought we’d bring our investigation up to the present-day by including the La Crosse Chamber of Commerce’s twenty-first century means of advertising our city and region: their website.  How does the homepage compare to the two other primary sources in terms of the kind of information presented?

To go to Choose La Crosse.com website, click here

Because the homepage talks about the present, we thought that maybe you’d also be interested in the “Our Story” section, which gives some historical background on La Crosse. Compare this section to how Carr and the 1930s pamphlet present our history.

To go to the “Our Story” section of their website, click here

In Activity #2, we’ll challenge you to come up with your own promotional materials for La Crosse.

---

We are providing these two additional secondary sources for two reasons.

1. They will help you process the racist depictions of our Indigenous community members in the 1930s brochure and
2. We’re hoping that these two sources will help you transition from August’s activities to September’s activities. This September, we plan to look at the forced removals of the Ho-Chunk from their homelands here in La Crosse, and how those forced removals are evident and talked about in primary and secondary sources.

Source 1:

Dan Green’s Lecture on Racism and Native American Statuary, which you can watch and listen to on the LPL’s Youtube page, here: https://youtu.be/k70-xc811Po

Source 2:

This New York Times article that is incredibly relevant to this activity and just happened to come out this week called “Is Travel Next in the Fight Over Who Profits from Native American Culture?”

New York Times, August 3, 2021View/Download