But as he hung up, Nou Vang turned and saw the same group of fishermen from the speedboat approaching him and his sons on foot—now, with aluminum batons and a knife. “And they’re tapping their clubs like this,” Samuel said, hitting his hands. “I don’t remember any of the words they said, but I’m like, How can I help my dad? To me, it was racial—super racist. I was so little, I didn’t know what I could do, but I picked up these rocks.” Methuselah did, too.

Nou Vang knew nothing good would happen next if they didn’t leave, and fast, so he pushed his boys back toward their boat. The Thaos went back out on the lake, sitting helplessly on their boat, praying the police would arrive before the white men returned in their speedboat. The police came—and Nou Vang pressed charges.

A month after the fishing trip, he and his sons received a $50 check in the mail from a local courthouse for new fishing poles.

***

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, racial tensions between the native- and foreign-born populations gripped central Wisconsin. Less than a hundred years earlier, hostilities in that part of the country centered around immigrant populations arriving from Europe—Norwegians, Swedes, Italians, and Poles. This time, however, the new arrivals were refugees from Indochina, especially the hill-tribe group called the Hmong (pronounced “MOH-ng”).

These nomadic people had historically lived in the mountainous areas of Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, Burma, Cambodia, and China. For generations, the Hmong didn’t have citizenship in those countries and lived autonomously, in remote and isolated places. But, as a stateless group with no ties to—or protection from—the nations they roamed, the Hmong had long been persecuted and driven from their traditional lands. In the middle of the 20th century, when the CIA began to conduct covert operations to fight state-sponsored communism in the jungles of Southeast Asia, the agency found valiant, fearless fighters in the Hmong.

Nou Vang Thao, now in his mid-50s, was a young guerrilla foot soldier for the CIA, along with his father, uncles, and relatives. They risked their lives for a U.S. cause and allowed many American soldiers to return home to their families. Reports vary widely, but according to a number of estimates, one-quarter of all Hmong men and boys—more than 50,000 out of 300,000—died fighting communists along the Laos-Vietnam border. An unknown number died trying. Some died in forests; others drowned in the Mekong River, bordering Laos.

Forty years ago, this year, Thao and his relatives were the first Hmong family to be sponsored by a Lutheran church in Wausau, Wisconsin. Tens of thousands of Hmong followed, direct from Thai refugee camps. Thao embraced the small, scenic city of Wausau as his new home. The area was mainly a dairy-farm community that was also known nationally for its paper mills and insurance company. Thao loved the Wisconsin River, which split the city in half. He wanted to love the people, too, but the locals didn’t exactly welcome him. Despite being a war veteran, many people confused him with the enemy—assuming he was Vietnamese or, worse, Viet Cong. Thao says he sometimes had to remind people he fought for freedom, not communism. “Even today,” he said. “People don’t know why the Hmong are in Wisconsin, and coworkers, they don’t care to know why we are here. We couldn’t stay in our country because of our involvement with the white man. We’ve given Americans 100 percent of our heart, but they’ve only given us 20 percent.”