COMMUNITY
BRINGING HISTORY TO LIGHT
The Enduring Families Project educates the community on its African American history. BY BETTY CHRISTIANSEN | CONTRIBUTED PHOTOS
Through the Enduring Families Project, local actors portray individuals important to La Crosse's Black history in school presentations, at community events and in a new video project. Photo by Phil S. Addis.
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ew Coulee Region residents know that in the late 1800s, La Crosse was home to a thriving Black community that included business owners, a presidential candidate and an Olympic medalist. But that’s changing, in no small part because of the efforts of the Enduring Families Project, a theater performance group begun by two retired teachers from the Milwaukee Public School system. SHARED PASSIONS Denise Christy Moss and Rebecca Mormann-Krieger both taught at the Milwaukee High School of the Arts and relocated to the Coulee Region after retirement. Both had an interest in the Black history of the area. Moss’s husband had family ties to Cheyenne Valley—a 19th-century community in northern Vernon County comprising the state’s largest rural settlement of African Americans, who owned farms alongside European immigrants and Native Americans in an environment of harmony and mutual respect. And Mormann-Krieger was exploring African Americans in La Crosse as part of research on Wisconsin history. When she discovered several noteworthy historical figures in La Crosse, the seeds of the Enduring Families Project were sown. A former theater and social studies teacher with a passion for getting her diverse student body involved in history and theater, 40 OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2020 www.crwmagazine.com
Mormann-Krieger began writing monologues based on these prominent Black figures in La Crosse’s history, which she hoped to share with the community in some form. Moss, a former teacher of theater and speech, lent her production experience to the project, locating actors, costumes and performance opportunities through which these stories could be told. With the fiscal sponsorship of the La Crosse Historical Society, their project took root. ON THE BUS The Enduring Families Project debuted Juneteenth 2018, when four sets of actors—including Moss as Nellie Poage, sister of La Crosse’s Olympic medal-winning George Poage—stationed themselves at locations in La Crosse where they could reenact the stories of Black members of La Crosse’s history. Modeled after the LCHS Silent City tour, the event featured a bus tour with stops at each site, where participants could observe the performances and interact with the actors. “That really put us on the map,” says MormannKrieger. Both women recall audiences of all colors fascinated by a piece of La Crosse’s history they never knew. “People really wanted to know these stories,” recalls Moss. “The key was putting the actors in the actual locations where the stories took place,” she adds. “I hadn’t known about George
