In the early 1970s, the State Historical Society of Wisconsin was establishing Old World
Wisconsin, an outdoor museum consisting of original buildings constructed in Wisconsin by
various ethnic groups. Staff members sought to include structures built by 19th century
black settlers but were hindered by a lack of information on rural Wisconsin African Americans.
In 1973, the Society was awarded a grant from the Wisconsin American Revolution
Bicentennial Commission to conduct research on rural blacks, locate buildings, and
reconstruct them at Old World Wisconsin (WARBC grant no. 30-14PM-73). Researcher Zachary
Cooper worked under the grant and as part of his research conducted oral history interviews
with black residents of Grant and Vernon counties, the two rural areas which it was
determined had the largest number of black residents between 1850 and World War I. His
research was summarized in a Society publication Black Settlers in Rural Wisconsin (1977).
These early interviews were augmented by additional interviews conducted by Zachary Cooper
and Emilie Tari in 1980 and 1981 under a grant from the National Endowment for the
Humanities to the University of Wisconsin Department of Curriculum and Instruction. This
grant also resulted in two videotapes aimed at 4th and 5th graders and a teachers' manual
distributed by the Department of Public Instruction and titled Coming Together, Coming Apart: Black Settlers in Rural
Wisconsin (Bulletin 3254).
