Development Diary #6

-Wednesday May 9th-

Today was another productive day, I spent the afternoon in Walnut Way taking pictures and video with the assistance from Elias. We took a personal tour of the house and somehow ended in the attic and came across a huge collection of vintage jazz records and books left by the previous owners of the house, everything was good until I hit my head with the ceiling coming down the stairs (ouch!!).

After that, I went to the Central Library downtown and spent the rest of the evening (until they kicked me out) in the Humanities Department. There I found 3 documents that called my interest. Two of them were maps of Milwaukee from 1909 & 1910 (notice the lot each year) and the other was a document that explained the migration from African-Americans to Milwaukee per decade (late 19th & early 20th century). The latter confused me a bit because to my
understanding the owner of the house (Mrs. Barnett) was African-American and the document stated that that part of Milwaukee wasn't populated with African-Americans till 1930 and according to my records it shows that she owned the house as early as 1919. Nothing a little more investigation can clear up, tomorrow or Friday I'll be visiting the library to look at the census taken those years to uncover this mystery. I'll keep you posted!