On a December weekend, the Wisconsin Exposition Center on the western edge of Milwaukee fills with the sound of qeej reed pipes and the flash of silver coin necklaces against indigo cloth. More than twenty thousand people pass through the Hmong New Year here, and many of them have never lived anywhere but Wisconsin. The story of the Hmong in Milwaukee begins in the mountains of Laos and in a war the Hmong fought alongside the United States, and it ends, for now, in a city that has become one of the largest Hmong homes in America.
The Place
Milwaukee sits where the Milwaukee, Menomonee and Kinnickinnic rivers meet Lake Michigan, a brewing and manufacturing city built by German, Polish and other European immigrants across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. By the late 1970s its factories were closing and its central neighbourhoods were emptying of people and capital.
It was into those neighbourhoods, on the near North and South Sides, that the first Hmong refugees arrived. They came not for prosperity but for the cheap rent, the jobs that remained, and the help of resettlement agencies and sponsoring churches.
Today the Hmong are woven through the city’s west and northwest sides, from Vliet Street to the markets off North 76th, and they make up the single largest share of Milwaukee’s Asian population.
How It Became Hmong
A war, then a flight
The Hmong are an ethnic group from the mountainous regions of Laos, Vietnam and southern China. During the conflict in Indochina, the United States Central Intelligence Agency recruited Hmong soldiers in Laos to fight the North Vietnamese and the Pathet Lao in what became known as the Secret War.
When American forces withdrew in 1975, the Hmong who had fought were left exposed. Thousands fled across the Mekong River into refugee camps in Thailand, and from there the Indochina Migration and Refugee Assistance Act of 1975 opened a path to the United States.
The first arrivals, 1975 to 1980
Between 1975 and 1980 roughly two thousand Southeast Asian refugees resettled in the Milwaukee area, and the Hmong made up slightly more than a quarter of them. The metropolitan Hmong population stood at about 550 in 1980.
These were small numbers in a large city, and the early years were hard. Families that had farmed mountain rice now lived in cold rented flats, often without English, learning a factory economy that was itself in decline.
The response was to build institutions. Lao Family Community opened in 1980 to help refugees settle, and the Hmong American Friendship Association followed in 1983, founded by and for Southeast Asian refugees coming together to help one another adjust. These mutual aid agencies translated documents, found jobs and apartments, explained an unfamiliar country, and kept the clan structure of the homeland working inside an American city.
Secondary migration and growth, 1980 to 2000
The community did not grow mainly through new arrivals from Thailand. It grew through secondary migration, as Hmong families already in the United States moved to Milwaukee to join relatives, to find work, or to leave colder and costlier places.
The numbers tell the story plainly. The metro Hmong population rose from about 550 in 1980 to roughly 3,400 by 1990, then to about 8,000 by 2000. Higher than average birth rates added to the climb.
Clan and kinship networks drove this movement. In Hmong society a household rarely decides alone, and where uncles and cousins settled, others followed. Milwaukee became a magnet because earlier arrivals had already made it one.
Roots in the ground
Many of the newcomers had been farmers in Laos, and farming returned as soon as land could be found. Hmong families rented plots on the city’s edges and in surrounding counties, growing vegetables, herbs and flowers for sale.
That produce found its way to Milwaukee’s farmers markets, above all the Fondy Farmers Market at 2200 West Fond du Lac Avenue, where Hmong growers became a defining presence alongside African American and Latino vendors. The market’s affiliated Fondy Farm later gave many of those growers, a number of them Hmong women, long term leases on quality land outside the city, with irrigation, greenhouses and shared equipment.
For many elders, the market stall was more than income. It was a way to keep doing the work their hands knew, to pass seeds and techniques to children raised in apartments, and to stand in public as people who fed the city rather than depended on it.
A second generation, 2000 to today
By 2010 the metropolitan Hmong population approached 13,000, making Milwaukee the fourth largest concentration of Hmong in the United States. More recent estimates put the city’s Hmong population around 12,500.
With size came institutions of permanence. The Hmong American Peace Academy opened in 2004 as the first Hmong charter school in Wisconsin, and Grace Hmong Alliance Church grew into the state’s largest predominantly Hmong congregation.
The children of the refugees now run for office, open clinics and restaurants, and organise the New Year their grandparents brought from Laos. The Hmong in Milwaukee are no longer a community of arrivals. They are a community of natives.
The Landmarks
Hmong American Friendship Association, 3824 West Vliet Street. Founded in 1983 as a mutual aid agency, this is one of the oldest Hmong institutions in the city. It runs elder outreach, job placement, advocacy and a small museum of Hmong artefacts, and for years it organised the major New Year celebration that draws tens of thousands.
Phongsavan Asian Market, 6300 North 76th Street. Opened in 2009 on the northwest side, this two floor market is the social heart of Hmong Milwaukee. Under one roof sit dozens of vendor stalls, a food court of small restaurants serving pho and Hmong sausage, a clinic, fresh produce and traditional clothing, and a community hall used for everything from weddings to political forums.
Fondy Farmers Market, 2200 West Fond du Lac Avenue. Operating in this North Side location since 1980, Fondy is where Hmong farming reattached itself to the city. Through the warm months Hmong growers sell asparagus, greens, herbs and flowers here, part of a multicultural marketplace serving tens of thousands of customers each season.
Hmong American Peace Academy, 4601 North 84th Street. Wisconsin’s first Hmong charter school opened in 2004 under Milwaukee Public Schools and now serves close to 1,900 students from kindergarten through grade twelve. It teaches a standard curriculum alongside Hmong language and heritage, a deliberate effort to keep the next generation rooted.
Grace Hmong Alliance Church, 4400 North Mayfair Road, Wauwatosa. Begun in 1980 on the South Side at Layton Boulevard, this Christian and Missionary Alliance congregation grew to roughly 900 members and is the largest predominantly Hmong American church in Wisconsin. It moved to its current Wauwatosa home in 2018.
Hmong American Women’s Association, 3727 West National Avenue. Founded by Hmong refugee women, HAWA works on domestic and sexual violence, women’s leadership and youth programming in the Silver City neighbourhood. It is one of the few organisations in the country focused specifically on Hmong and Southeast Asian women.
Wisconsin Exposition Center, State Fair Park, West Allis. Each December the expo halls here host the Milwaukee Hmong New Year, a two day festival of traditional dress, music and dance competitions, food and a sprawling marketplace that draws more than twenty thousand people from across Wisconsin and beyond.
Where They Came From
Almost every Hmong family in Milwaukee traces its path through the same geography: the highlands of Laos, especially provinces such as Xieng Khouang where Hmong influence ran deepest, then the refugee camps of Thailand, then the United States.
What set Milwaukee apart was the second leg of the journey. Rather than arriving directly from Thailand, most of the city’s Hmong came by secondary migration from elsewhere in America, drawn by relatives, by work in the factories, and by the established community that earlier movers had created.
That is why Milwaukee’s Hmong story rhymes with other Hmong centres. The same clan networks and farming ambitions shaped the communities in Fresno, California and Sacramento, California, in the twin centres of St Paul and Maplewood, Minnesota, and closer to home in Wausau, Wisconsin. Families in all of these places are often quite literally cousins.
Milwaukee Today
The Hmong in Milwaukee number around 12,500 and make up more than a third of the city’s Asian population. They run grocery stores and insurance agencies, farm market gardens, teach in the schools and serve in local government. The refugee generation is ageing now, and its children and grandchildren are the ones carrying the culture forward.
It is not a tidy success story. The neighbourhoods where the Hmong first landed still struggle with poverty and disinvestment, and the community continues to work through the trauma of war and displacement that the fiftieth anniversary of the diaspora, marked in 2025, brought back into view. Language loss and the gap between elders and the young are real concerns.
Yet the institutions hold. The Friendship Association on Vliet Street, the market on 76th, the school on 84th, the church in Wauwatosa and the New Year at State Fair Park form a circuit of Hmong life that did not exist forty years ago and now feels permanent. For more on the wider community, the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee’s Encyclopedia of Milwaukee and the history of the Hmong in Wisconsin are good places to begin.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many Hmong live in Milwaukee?
Recent estimates put the Hmong in Milwaukee at around 12,500, the largest Hmong population of any city in Wisconsin and the fourth largest concentration in the United States. They make up more than a third of Milwaukee’s Asian population.
Why did the Hmong settle in Milwaukee?
The first Hmong arrived as refugees after 1975, resettled by agencies and sponsoring churches in the affordable central neighbourhoods. The community then grew mainly through secondary migration, as Hmong families already in the United States moved to Milwaukee to join relatives and find work.
When did the Hmong come to Milwaukee?
The first Hmong refugees reached the Milwaukee area in the late 1970s, following the Indochina Migration and Refugee Assistance Act of 1975. The metro Hmong population grew from about 550 in 1980 to nearly 13,000 by 2010.
Where is the Hmong community in Milwaukee?
The Hmong in Milwaukee are concentrated on the city’s west and northwest sides, anchored by the Hmong American Friendship Association on West Vliet Street and the Phongsavan Asian Market on North 76th Street, with farming families active at the Fondy Farmers Market.
What is the Milwaukee Hmong New Year?
The Milwaukee Hmong New Year is a two day festival held each December at the Wisconsin Exposition Center at State Fair Park. It features traditional dress, music and dance competitions, food and a marketplace, and draws more than twenty thousand visitors.
Where do Milwaukee’s Hmong families come from?
Most trace their origins to the highlands of Laos, particularly Xieng Khouang Province, then to refugee camps in Thailand, and then through other American cities before reaching Wisconsin. Many are related by clan to Hmong communities in Minnesota and California.
If your family’s story passed through Milwaukee, or any of the places Hmong have made home in America, Atlas of Home can trace that journey. From the highlands of Xieng Khouang to a market stall on North 76th Street, to wherever you are now.