In 1988, the Marshall & Ilsley Corporation provided a grant to UWM to prepare a history
of the Milwaukee Public Schools since 1920. UWM assigned Frank Cassell (chair of the History
Department) and Sam Yarger (dean of the School of Education) to administer the project. In
May 1989, they appointed Michael Gordon of the History Department to coordinate an oral
history component for the project. Between 1989 and 1990, Gordon and several graduate
students conducted nineteen interviews. The project's final report was published as Seeds of Crisis: Public Schooling in Milwaukee Since 1920
(Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1993).
