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Madison in the Sixties

Topical tales of Madison's influential people and critical events from long ago.

Madison in the Sixties – Panty Raids

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Madison in the Sixties. Panty Raids October 8, 1961 It’s just after midnight Sunday morning and more than a thousand beer-and-hormone-soaked young men are out on State Street, celebrating the football team’s victory over Indiana and delighting in a twenty-year-old German model in a tight blue dress playing toreador in the street. Suddenly a group […]

Madison in the Sixties – On strike, shut it down

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June 1 1961—The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers goes on strike, shutting down up to $20 million in construction for almost four weeks before UW law professor Nathan S.  Feinsinger mediates a settlement which provides workers with what’s described as a “substantial” wage increase. The following April, about 120 truck drivers in Teamsters Local 695 […]

Madison, the third week of August, 1969

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Madison in the Sixties. The third week of August, 1969 Tension between the minority community and the all-white police department has now even spread to the two citizen policy and oversight commissions, as the Police and Fire Commission attacks the Equal Opportunities Commission Director the Rev James C Wright over something he never even said. […]

Madison, August 1967

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Madison in the Sixties – August, 1967 After a summer sizzling with what it calls “tension-filled incidents with racial overtones,” the Equal Opportunities Commission holds a series of public hearings in neighborhoods with large minority populations, hoping to gain some understanding and tamp down tensions. A later report documents just how bad things were – […]

Madison, the last week of July, 1962

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The sad saga of the disgraced former Madison police chief Bruce Weatherly comes to a tragic end on Wednesday July 25 when his wife, Inez, shoots him in the stomach with his own .38 caliber revolver at their home in his native San Antonio, Texas. “I just shot your daddy,” Mrs. Weatherly tells her daughter […]

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