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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 – The Death of a Lord of the Ring

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As the decade opens, Wisconsin’s Charlie Mohr is one of the country’s best, and nicest, collegiate boxers. In his horn-rimmed glasses and green tweed cap, he didn’t look like much of a fighter, but in 1959, the 22-year-old from the south shore of Long Island was voted outstanding collegiate boxer and was the reigning NCAA […]

Madison in the Sixties – the only liberal elected mayor

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Madison in the sixties, early April – the only liberal elected mayor. The mayoral election of 1965 is polite but partisan and gives the city a clear choice between continuity and change: Conservative businessman George Hall, who ran the successful mayoral campaigns in 1961 and 63 for conservative businessman Henry Reynolds, and Dane County clerk […]

Madison – the mayoral campaigns of Henry Reynolds

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Madison’s first, and most consequential, mayoral election of the sixties almost didn’t happen. But when it did, it changed the course of Madison government and ended the effort to build Frank Lloyd Wright’s Monona Terrace auditorium and convention center. In 1960, Madison Mayor Ivan Nestingen chaired Sen. John F. Kennedy’s campaign during the Wisconsin primary […]

Madison in the Sixties, the end of March

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Madison in the Sixties – the end of March 1960                More than a thousand students pack old Music Hall past legal capacity for Sen. John F Kennedy’s last local appearance before the April 5 presidential primary. University workers lock the doors, leaving several hundred students out in the snow – until one of them finds […]

Madison in the Sixties – the second week of March

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1963                When attorney Albert McGinnis, chair of the Madison Redevelopment Authority, decided to run against Mayor Henry Reynolds, he knew that urban renewal would become an issue in the campaign. A week after McGinnis stuns Reynolds in the March 5 primary it does, as the mayor attacks the MRA over the Triangle project, where the […]

Madison, Feb. 21-22, 1967: Dow 1– the Skirmish

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Getting the Dow Chemical Company to stop making the incendiary gel Napalm B for use in Vietnam became a priority for the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) when the Ann Arbor chapter launched a protest campaign against the Michigan- based company in August 1966. Six months later, the Madison SDS steps up. Tuesday morning, February […]

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