The Morris Fromkin research grant and lectureship is the only UWM Libraries-funded grant that supports original research and scholarship by UWM faculty and staff. Grant recipients have come from history, art and design, economics, geography, Africology, communication, architecture, criminal justice, and many other departments and units at UWM.
History of Lecture
Established in 1970, the Morris Fromkin Memorial Lecture is funded by a UWM Libraries grant that encourages and assists UWM faculty members from across disciplines in their research on individuals, groups, movements, and ideas which have influenced the quest for social justice and human rights in the United States. Hosted annually in the Golda Meir Library, the Morris Fromkin Memorial Lecture provides the grantee an opportunity to present their research to an audience of UWM colleagues and members of the greater Milwaukee community.
Who Was Morris Fromkin?
Morris Fromkin was a prominent lawyer who served the Milwaukee community throughout the early 20th century. He was born in 1892 into a persecuted Jewish community in Czarist Russia. After immigrating to the United States as a child, Fromkin took up factory work in New York City’s Lower East Side. Fromkin was a World War I veteran, having served from 1917 to 1919. He was deployed to France where he fought in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, the largest and deadliest of the American Expeditionary Forces in the war.
Upon his return to the states, the socialist ideals of Milwaukee notables like Mayor Daniel Hoan resonated with Fromkin. He moved to the growing lakeside city, where he worked his way through law school to become a trial lawyer. During the course of his long and active career, Fromkin specialized in defending immigrants and the poor, often pro bono.
Beyond his illustrious legal career — including arguing a 1938 labor union case in front of the U.S. Supreme Court — Fromkin was also active in community service. While living in Milwaukee, he backed local workers’ rights movements, worked to uplift the poor, supported the arts, and advocated for the local Jewish community.
After his death in 1969, Fromkin’s widow, Selma Fromkin, and his three children, Marcia Fromkin Prester, Sari Fromkin Magaziner, and David H. Fromkin, made a donation to the UWM Libraries to fund the Morris Fromkin Memorial Collection, as well as the research grant and lectureship, in his honor. In 2024, the UWM Libraries established an endowment for the research grant and lectureship thanks in large measure to a major gift from Dan Soyer in memory of his grandfather Morris Fromkin.