Good Morning Obots!
Today we feature Earlene Fuller, shown below with her teammates (far right) in Milwaukee, WI and some history on the badger state – which was once known as the tenpin capital of the nation (which if you ever watched Happy Days or Laverne & Shirley you sort of knew that LOL)
The Wisconsin Historical Society is well known for its first-rate collections documenting the American civil rights movement, but 2009 gift to the Wisconsin Historical Museum shed welcome light on a lesser-known aspect of the African-American experience — bowling. That fall, Pauline McCollum of Milwaukee generously donated a collection of bowling garments and memorabilia that belonged to her sister, Earlene Fuller. Earlene Fuller was an African-American seamstress and bowler who designed and made bowling outfits for numerous black and white teams in Milwaukee and elsewhere from about 1970 through the mid 1990s. An accomplished bowler herself, Earlene won several regional tournaments, was the National Bowling Association’s Women’s Singles Champion in 1979, and bowled a 300 game in 1983. She was elected to the Milwaukee Women’s Bowling Association Hall of Fame in 1992. She is profiled in They Came to Bowl: How Milwaukee Became America’s Tenpin Capital, published by the Wisconsin Historical Society Press.
Earlene Fuller never let race interfere with her game. “If you go in thinking, ‘I’m black and I gotta do well,’ you have a barrier against you right away,” she told the Milwaukee Journal in the 1980s. “But if you go in thinking ‘I’m a bowler and I have to do well,’ then it doesn’t matter who you’re bowling against.” Nevertheless, Fuller embraced her ethnic identity. She maintained membership in two African American bowling organizations – the National Bowling Association and the Milwaukee Bowlers Guild, Inc. – and in the 1990s began incorporating kente cloth and other African-inspired fabric patterns into the shirts she made for her own teams.
Fuller was one of many African Americans who left the rural south for opportunities in the industrial north. Born in Jackson, Mississippi, she arrived in Milwaukee as a young adult shortly after World War II. She found work with an apparel manufacturer and began developing the textile-working skills that would allow her to establish her own business and eventually to teach industrial sewing at Milwaukee Area Technical College.
The collection consists of 10 shirts or outfits designed, made and in most cases worn by Fuller, along with 17 related trophies, awards and certificates as well as a small group of photographs. The garments demonstrate Fuller’s success as a designer and businesswoman, and several speak directly to her ethnic identity. Several shirts include African-inspired fabrics, including one particularly striking one made with a Kente cloth pattern.
The trophies document several locally and nationally important bowling locations, organizations, and events, including the Teutonia recreation center, Kuglitsch’s Lanes, the Milwaukee Bowlers Guild (an African-American group), Pitch’s Lounge, and the National Bowling Association, a still-thriving organization founded to promote bowling among black Americans at a time when the American Bowling Congress was still segregated.
While bowling has been enormously popular in the Badger State for generations, evidence of African-American participation in Wisconsin’s unofficial state pastime has been scarce. The Society’s archives does have a handful of earlier images of black bowlers, including Isaiah Pyant of Milwaukee’s Bronzeville Bombers. These shots, part of the Edmund Eisenscher collection, date from the late 1940s, when teams sponsored by the Congress of Industrial Organizations still struggled to break the American Bowling Congress’ color barrier. That barrier was eventually broken in 1951, paving the way for black Wisconsinites like Earlene Fuller to adopt bowling in the 1960s. Together, the Fuller collection brings the Society’s understanding of African-American bowling information into the post-segregation era, when a talented and enterprising black woman could find not only fellowship and competition in bowling, but a career as well.
Below: The Bronzeville Bombers on April 5, 1947, just after coming through with a score of 2690, putting them in tenth place in the state CIO tournament. The five men are all CIO’ers from different plants throughout Milwaukee. Left to right: Scott Watson, William Tucker, Newt Walton, Percy Akins and Isaiah Pyant.
