The work was hot and hazardous, but the paychecks spelled sweet relief after generations of poverty in the rural South. These foundry workers, shown at the Allis-Chalmers plant during World War II, were part of the Great Migration that brought 6 million African Americans to the urban North between 1910 and 1970.
Although Chicago was a bigger regional magnet, Milwaukee felt the Migration’s effects. The city’s Black population rose from 980 in 1910 to 7,510 in 1930, and then, after a long, painful time out for the Depression, continued to grow with the military buildup for World War II. By 1950, there were 21,772 African Americans in Milwaukee, 3.4% of the total population. It was from these roots that the present community grew.
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The attraction was jobs in the city’s abundant industries. Allis-Chalmers was the largest industry of all, employing nearly 25,000 people at the peak of the war effort in 1943. Black workers were 434 of that number, up from 110 just two years earlier.
In nearly every case, they started at the bottom of the occupational ladder. For these foundry hands, the work was physically demanding, the air was filthy, and the danger of burns was constant, but factory jobs represented a double victory. The products made at Allis-Chalmers and other Milwaukee industries helped America win the war, and blue-collar wages helped the workers who made those products secure their economic freedom. Many families tasted the first prosperity they had ever known, a prosperity that would last, at least at the community level, until the onset of deindustrialization in the 1980s.
TAKE A CLOSER LOOK:
- Molten metal, perhaps brass, is being poured into molds of silica sand hardened with a binding agent.
- This unusual device is an optical pyrometer, which measures the temperature of the metal without touching it.
- The safety equipment of the 1940s was rudimentary in comparison with the near space suits worn by today’s foundry workers.
- This casting is cooling before the sand is shaken and chipped away from the finished product.
IN COLLABORATION WITH MILWAUKEE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY
