Developed during the roaring twenties and into the civil rights era, the very quiet and rural community of Lake Ivanhoe, Wisconsin was once a hopping place. Tucked off of winding state highway 50 in the southernmost corner of rural Walworth County, Wisconsin, Lake Ivanhoe served as an exclusive African American resort; a private, counter summer recreational place that rivaled nearby “gentile only” Lake Geneva; a place carved out of a cornfield that allowed African Americans a place of escape from the ills of the hot urban Chicago summers and racial riots.
Once the only African American owned community in the entire state, Lake Ivanhoe, ironically, was destined to be lost through gains made over the course of the twentieth century; an area physically abandoned to the masses and fated to disappear from Wisconsin’s state history.
As scholars have stressed, historically public parks, beaches, and other places of leisure are romanticized and idealized as salubrious places but, in reality, they are not neutral places. Instead, they are, and have always been, planned for a specific purpose. They exist for specific, ecological, political, and economic reasons and still shape how people perceive and use parks. Lake Ivanhoe was no different. Lake Ivanhoe was designed and established as a specific counter space to overcome both the racial tensions and problems posed within Chicago’s park system, as well as the de facto segregationist policies of nearby Lake Geneva. Today, although Lake Ivanhoe functions as a suburb that consists of a predominantly white population, the lake still serves as a gathering place for African American families; an area where they gather to visit and reminiscence, as well as to relax during the day and to see the stars at night.
With the eventual dismantling of Jim Crow, Lake Ivanhoe also became dismantled as shifting demographics allowed African Americans to seek other living and recreational places, and allowed the general population to settle into the community. In other words, along with desegregation came the degradation of Lake Ivanhoe as a thriving and exclusive African American place in both the physical and cultural landscape of southeastern Wisconsin. Environmental transformations result in demographical adjustments, just as demographical adjustments result in environmental transformations.
Although de jure segregation is no longer, implicit racism on the nation’s beaches and parks still remains and even shapes how, and if, certain groups use leisure spaces. Our past ideas and values regarding leisure space continues to dominate and determines who takes advantage of certain places of leisure. Races still tend to separate themselves in public places such as beaches and parks, and oftentimes individuals make assumptions regarding the safety, desirability, ect. of a certain leisure place by who utilizes that particular place. Although the subsequent generations of African American families still enjoy visits at Lake Ivanhoe, something remains missing and a certain sort of tension remains within the surrounding areas as local historians vie for the inclusion of Lake Ivanhoe’s history into the larger county histories. It is only with the inclusion of all histories that Wisconsinites can begin to understand, and enjoy, both the great chapters of successes and failures of Wisconsin, as well as the moral acts of writing the histories themselves.
Wisconsin Rediscovered 