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Article: Community of Pleasant Ridge once the key to the good life But integrated rural settlement in Grant County just a memory now Series: The WISCONSIN Story \ 1848-1998 WISCONSIN SESQUICENTENNIAL \ 150 STORIES, 150 YEARS
- Article from:
- The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (Milwaukee, WI)
- Article date:
- May 28, 1998
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 1998 The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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Few go there now. The onetime community of Pleasant Ridge,
founded by former slaves, has been reduced by time to fading memories
and worn grave markers.
But once its attraction was magical.
"Freedom was sort of in the air," the daughter of a settler later
said.
Not merely freedom, but the good life, as measured for black
families then. Even as the wounds of Civil War were still raw, the
rural settlement in the Beetown area of Grant County became a truly
integrated community, with the nation's first school where black and
white students learned, and lived, together.
"It was a beautiful place to grow up," former resident Mildred
Greene recalled at age 85, "where blacks and whites were all ...