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The Republican National Convention convenes in Milwaukee next week. Delegates could say they're meeting on the party's home turf, dating back 170 years. About 90 minutes away from the massive hall that hosts the convention stands a one-room schoolhouse in Ripon. Historians say it's one of the birthplaces of the Republican Party. Chuck Quirmbach of member station WUWM brings us this report.
CHUCK QUIRMBACH, BYLINE: Ripon Chamber of Commerce Director Mandy Kimes opens the door to a single-story building that's painted white.
MANDY KIMES: Welcome to the Little White Schoolhouse.
QUIRMBACH: A modest sign stands over the doorway, reading birthplace of the Republican Party. Inside, about 820 square feet, holding a black chalkboard, a teacher's desk and benches for students. There's even an era-appropriate wood-burning stove with a small metal door Kimes opens and closes. Kimes says a schoolhouse stove would have been heating the building on March 20, 1854, when about 50 men met to discuss how to oppose the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. That measure allowed the possibility of wider expansion of slavery beyond the balancing effort of the Missouri Compromise. Kimes says attendees for the meeting in Ripon were from a mix of political parties active at the time.
KIMES: They didn't agree on everything. There were Whigs, which was a party that was really struggling at the time and not getting much momentum there. There were Democrats. There were Free Soilers.
QUIRMBACH: Yet Kimes says people at the meeting felt the existing political parties still did not go far enough in denouncing slavery.
KIMES: And after lots of debate, and especially a lot of leadership by Alvan Bovay, the very first Republican committee was formed, the very first Republican local meeting was formed, and that name was really adopted.
QUIRMBACH: Bovay, born in upstate New York, was a teacher and lawyer who had moved to Ripon a few years before the 1854 meeting. Now that the building that witnessed the origin story of the GOP is preserved as a museum, local officials hope RNC delegates will find their way here. Lenny Burnett of Goodletsville, Tenn., says he came by as part of a trip to see friends in Wisconsin. Burnett says he's not very political but was intrigued to learn about the anti-slavery effort.
LENNY BURNETT: Places like this, for sure, are great to help educate for those who are willing to learn.
QUIRMBACH: Some visitors are political. Erv Pinnow drove over from his home 20 miles away because he thought merchandise promoting presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump would be on sale - it isn't. Yet Pinnow hopes the museum may encourage visitors to consider switching parties.
ERV PINNOW: People maybe that were Democrats or something might come in here and change their mind or something like that, you know?
QUIRMBACH: The Ripon Chamber of Commerce emphasizes the schoolhouse and museum are nonpartisan and nonprofit. Yet museum employees say visitors do occasionally ask why a party that was founded in part to oppose slavery appears to have had trouble in recent decades attracting Black voters.
SARAH ELLIOTT: If you think about the political party, the Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln, yes, they originally formed as a one-issue party, anti-slavery.
QUIRMBACH: Schoolhouse Program Director Sarah Elliott, a Civil War historian, says while the party began with a certain focus, just like other political movements, the GOP has gone through many eras.
ELLIOTT: So that's just the nature of the passage of time. When it comes to the parties realigning, the parties, quote-unquote, "switching," that is a very complicated issue.
QUIRMBACH: The complexities of today's GOP will be on display in Milwaukee. And if delegates don't have the time to make it to Ripon, a one-third-size replica of the Little Schoolhouse will be on display near the convention center.
For NPR News, I'm Chuck Quirmbach in Ripon, Wisconsin. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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