The Wisconsin Historical Society has amassed a collection of political artifacts that features campaign buttons, signs and some unique items from as early as the 19th century. Today, the Society is collecting modern political memorabilia as the presidential election draws closer.
Abbie Norderhaug is the state archivist and director of acquisitions at the Wisconsin Historical Society. She explains what they’ve collected from this year’s political conventions and details other items from the collection at the State Archive Preservation Facility in Madison.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Why is it important to collect political artifacts, especially during an election year?
It's important to collect political artifacts for a number of reasons. The Wisconsin Historical Society has been collecting, preserving, and sharing stories since the 19th century, and it's important to collect things in the moments that we have access to the story as it's unfolding. If you wait years to collect something, you are collecting what folks have saved for you. But if you're collecting it proactively in the moment, you can look at the issues that are important to people at the time and make sure that you're representing them in your historical collection.
What criteria does the Wisconsin Historical Society use to determine the significance of a political artifact?
We're a nonpartisan agency, so we work really hard to ensure that we're collecting both sides of the story. We look at what current events are happening, what's in the news, what sort of things seem to be the main issues for the different political parties and try to make sure that we are collecting artifacts or paper material that document those items.
What are some of the oldest items in the collection?
We have political items going back to really early elections in the state in the 19th century. We have items from political campaigns like when Teddy Roosevelt was campaigning in the state of Wisconsin in 1912. We have things up to the current conventions as well as conventions in the 1960s.
If you could pick out a couple of really unique items or ones that you want to highlight.
So one of the items we have here is a ribbon from President Grant's 1868 presidential campaign. It shows an eagle as well as Grant and a wreath and American flags. What's interesting about this is it also references the Civil War because it talks about his Richmond campaign in 1865. We have a 1964 convention badge from Vel Phillips. Vel was a Milwaukee city councilwoman. She was the first African American State delegate for either major political party.
I'm seeing over here some pretty new items. If you could describe this little collection here.
These are items that came from the RNC in Milwaukee and then the DNC in Chicago. These are a couple of the staff's favorite items that we picked up. We have a cheesehead — this was worn on night four of the Republican National Convention. Wisconsin delegates on Night 4 decided that they would wear cheeseheads because the Texas delegation had been wearing cowboy-style hats. It was sort of a friendly rivalry between the two states. We have an RNC-branded T-shirt, and then on the back of this is the image of President Trump with his post-assassination attempt with his ear bleeding. It was made by a local Wisconsin vendor who wanted to get a T-shirt with that image made close to the convention to highlight that moment in history.
How does the society collaborate with political campaigns, community organizations or the general public to acquire items?
We're really lucky in that people in Wisconsin have been very generous over the years to donate material that they've collected about political events and other events. We work with a lot of members of the public who approach us and ask if we would be interested in specific items. For the RNC and the DNC, we reached out to delegates and people attending the convention both before and during the convention to ask for their help in collecting items. We realized at the RNC that delegates were given certain items when they were on the floor of the convention or even at delegate gatherings pre-convention, and we wanted to make sure we were including those in our documentation. It's really working in partnership with people in the community to make sure that we're capturing the whole story of an event.
How do older artifacts compare with contemporary ones, and does that tell us anything about how campaign messaging has changed over time?
I think that they're actually similar in many ways. You see that the use of buttons — we have buttons back to much earlier campaigns, we have them for today's campaigns — a lot of the messaging is not necessarily similar but done in the same way. So, a lot of names in a large font and then a slogan in a slightly smaller font underneath, often leaning on a kind of red, white or blue color like you'd expect. I think the 90s campaign material that we have, and even into the 50s and 60s, tends to have candidate faces more than just names, but sort of that general use of buttons has been pretty consistent.
As we approach the election in November, is there anything else that the Society is looking to collect or keeping their eyes on?
We're always looking to expand our political collection. We documented the Republican Party and the Democratic Party at their conventions. We're looking to document third-party candidates or third-party events that may be happening. If anybody was at one of those conventions and brought something home that they think is particularly meaningful, we would love to speak with them about that and we're always looking for political material to add to our collection.
