Fair housing marches remembered 50 years later
Display focuses on civil rights issues
On Aug. 28, 1967, the Milwaukee NAACP Youth Council and its adviser, Father James Groppi, began to march.
Civil rights activists including Ald. Vel Phillips and Wisconsin Assembly member Lloyd Barbee would join them as they went on to march for 200 consecutive days in a push for a fair housing ordinance in Milwaukee.
In honor of the movement’s 50th anniversary, the Wisconsin Historical Society highlights the roles of the NAACP Youth Council, Phillips, Groppi and Barbee in the school and housing desegregation movements with a new traveling display, “Crossing the Line: The Milwaukee Fair Housing Marches of 1967-1968.”
“It’s part of a history that I don’t think many people learned about in school, certainly not in suburban schools like I went to,” said Kristen Leffelman, field services representative in Milwaukee for the Wisconsin Historical Society. “It’s important for people to know that these protests happened outside of the South and that in Milwaukee there was — and still is — issues.”
The display, which consists of four freestanding, double-sided banners, includes archival photographs, documents and maps, along with text written by the historical society.
Two versions of the display will travel through 2018 to various libraries, schools and local historical societies around the state. One copy of the display will be exhibited at the Wisconsin Black Historical Society and Museum in Milwaukee for all of Black History Month in February.
“It’s an important anniversary, 50 years, and it’s an important time since there’s been unrest in Milwaukee — specifically in Sherman Park last year,” Leffelman said.
While the display focuses on the past civil rights issues and movements in Milwaukee, it also offers a glimpse into the segregation that still exists in the city today, according to Leffelman.
Nearly five decades after the federal Fair Housing Act passed, a 2013 study by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee found fewer than 9% of black residents in the Milwaukee metro area live in the suburbs — the lowest rate in the country. Even as major metro areas across the U.S. have modestly desegregated since the 1980s, Milwaukee’s rate of blackwhite segregation has barely budged.
Clayborn Benson, Wisconsin Black Historical Society director, sees the display as a great opportunity to inform younger generations of the solutions that protesters can bring about. But he also hopes it encourages people to reflect on injustices they can continue to fight against.
“(The display) recognizes the people who took initiative to march and protest against segregation politics and how you can make a change,” Benson said. “But the truth of the matter is it hasn’t totally changed since that period. The struggle is continuing.”
The Wisconsin Historical Society partnered with the Milwaukee County Historical Society, Wisconsin Black Historical Society and Museum, UW-Milwaukee and the March on Milwaukee 50th Anniversary Coordinating Committee to develop the display.