movement, the story of the rights movement, and it embodies everything about the first amendment. we hope people will come to experience it as well as the movies and other interactive's that we tell here at the exhibit. announcer: you can watch this or other american artifacts programs at any time by visiting our website c-span.org/history. the newest books, the presidents, historians rank chief executives, and it provides insight into the lives of the presidents. true stories gathered by interviews with historians. thatit the life events shape our leaders, challenges they face and the legacies they left behind. order your copy today. the president is now available as a hardcover or e-book.

>> we are on the banks of lake michigan. c-span is learning about this cities tour history. we take you inside the milwaukee public museum streets of old milwaukee exhibit. >> the streets of old milwaukee starts in the 1890's and takes you to about 1917, when america breaks out on the world scene. it is a wonderful look immersive , the way people lived in the late 19th and early at -- early 20th century, but it is building blocks, when you look at each of the structures in there, it gives you an idea of the people who were here in the business that was going on and about what was going on in every neighborhood. , milwaukee depicted itself had almost 290,000

residents. of that number, almost 60% claimed german heritage or direct german immigration. we experienced best immigration from southern europe as well as canada and parts of mexico and asia. in milwaukee there were scores of small neighborhoods that were cloaked -- polish, german, you name it. ethnic35 different groups in milwaukee around 1900. this is the vestibule of our time traveling streetcar. you will find, if you look at it is modernhs, times. as we progress, the buildings get older, the cars get older. people change costume. when we get to the opposite

vestibule. into ad yourself here time when manufacturing was just blossoming. balld us is the corporation. it started here as a brewery and evolved over time into a manufacturing facility. , pieces foraring streetcars and railroads, very heavy industry. they are still available today -- falkcorporation corporation here. this goes back to the 1840's, but by the 1890's, technology was so strong, steam technology and electricity really made heavy manufacturing possible. like many american cities, you have massive plants developing

in milwaukee, like falk and chalmers, and this is interesting, because arnold falk president chalmers and took that company over. these companies grew quickly. we were a large railroad hub. of facilitylot here. what was the most important thing was the milwaukee port. that goes back to the 1840's. when they had 1200 foot long peers all the way out into the lake. milwaukee grew, especially the grain industry, coming from wisconsin, from minnesota, it would all come here. into the 1870's, milwaukee was a bigger shipping point then

chicago for grain. because of that and because of the german influence, we had a lot of beer going on here. the schlitz tavern is a major .eature here over the years saloons like this became tight houses. this started in the late 1880's and lasted until prohibition in 1920. the idea was the local brewery would supply a place, all the product and materials to run a tavern. some of these were owned by the breweries. some were least, and some were independent owners that ran the local taverns. you could always rely on a good clean beer out of these establishments because the

taverns were held to high standards of quality and service. that said, there were many independent taverns around milwaukee where the quality was high, but could also be very low and could have some questionable people about, like many places we had our troubled districts here that were kind of an interesting story in and of themselves as well. box.e in front of a police milwaukee police took this idea from various american cities and got the idea from europe. aboutnstituted this in 1886, complete with telephonic communication. by 1895, there were over 900 of these around the city. they were used by the police station they way had to make the tour around the

neighborhood, and they had to come and check in for they would have to pick up the phone and call dispatch to see if there was anything they needed to do. a place to keep extra clothing or lunch. sometimes they would put people inside of it while they were holding them in custody, waiting for the paddy wagon to come pick them up. this is the watson unit. it is a depiction of the house owned by the watsons. ohiocame here in 1850 from after gaining their freedom in virginia in 1834. it was a hopscotch kind of emigration that came here. what is interesting, again it was family driven. , she movedt daughter

here, mother and daughter longed for each other so much, and they were letters talking about how much they miss each other and how the family should be together. breakout,1849 cholera they said we are moving, and they came here by wagon in 1850, settling here. the african-american community community,tightknit very religious. many who came here had skills. these people were trained masons. trainedhters were seamstresses. many others here in the early part were working as barbers, as barriers --as

farriers and blacksmiths. over the course of the time in the end of the civil war into the time of about world war i, there was a good size influx of african-americans from other parts of the country, from the deep south, some from the southeast, some from the southwest. people came from missouri. they came here with limited skills and quite often they were forced to take some of the poorest jobs here. many people worked their way up, but otherwise there was a little bit of underclass that went with that. this is the honor cabin. by a a cabin that was made german immigrant, as the representation of what it was like to be here. small cabins became frame houses, and then, especially if you were a beer aaron, you wound

up with a mansion. many people had wonderful homes, ran their own businesses, and worked hard. many of the industries were created by germans, migrants to milwaukee, so there was a pool of talent and high energy people interested in building milwaukee. announcer: our staff recently traveled to milwaukee to learn about its history to watch more about the stops, visit c-span.org/cities tour. you are watching american history tv all weekend every weekend on c-span3. next historians discuss the district of columbia compensated emancipation act of april 16

1862. the act freed about 3100 slaves in the capital and compensated owners for each former slave. the panel talks about the influence the act had on the emancipation proclamation issued a month later on generally first, 1860 three. the national archives hosted this event on april 16, marking the annual holiday and the district of columbia. >> on this day 157 years ago, an act for the release of certain persons held to service or labor in the district of columbia became law. the d.c. emancipation act ended slavery in washington, d.c. freeing hundreds of slaves and individuals. for the past year as war raged between the union and the confederacy, the opponents of slavery decried the scandal of