Two milestones
A year after Sherman Park unrest, promises for change echo past
Apolice officer fatally shoots a young black man on Milwaukee’s north side. Local activists accuse the cop of brutality. Police officials say it appears the shooting was justified.
Tension builds as a riot sweeps across neighborhoods. Leaders of the segregated city call for calm, but one alderman says this: “It was too late. It was many hours, many days, many months too late.”
In the following days, state and local officials make promises to improve police-community relations, tear down vacant homes and increase job training and opportunities. Some argue
people are responsible for their own plight and only they can change their path. Others point to systemic racism and longtime discrimination as constant obstacles to overcome.
That was Milwaukee in 1967 — and last year.
Milwaukee is marking two significant anniversaries this month. One year ago, a fatal police shooting in the Sherman Park neighborhood sparked two nights of violent unrest. Fifty years ago, another riot, this one soon followed by 200 nights of marches demanding an end to housing discrimination.
Longtime civil rights leaders and historians see parallels between the two events, in the underlying causes and the responses. They worry that without a citywide reckoning and remembrance, the cycle will repeat again: Residents erupt. Causes are analyzed, recommendations released. A bit of money flows into the community.
Yet, the root problems persist until another spark — like a police shooting — sets off a new round of violence.
“The social conditions are similar,” said Prentice McKinney, 70, who was a NAACP commando during Milwaukee’s open housing marches.
“No positive future outlet, frustrations at the level of oppression and systemic racism, and what do you get?” he asked.
“You get a riot.”
Two police shootings
Sparked by brawls with police, a racist threat and gunfire, a riot broke out on Milwaukee’s north side on July 30, 1967.
The National Guard was brought in to quell the violence that continued over four days with burning, looting and sniper fire.
By the time it was over, 100 people had been hurt, more than 1,700 had been arrested and four people, including Police Officer Brian Moschea, were dead.
On the third day, an 18year-old African-American college student, Clifford McKissick, was shot in the neck as he was running into his house. He died on the floor of his family’s home.
Police officers involved in the incident said they saw McKissick and other young people lighting gasoline-filled bottles and throwing them into a paint store. The officers said the teen ignored their order to halt.
But his family said there was no imminent danger to anyone since McKissick was running into the house. His death was followed by protests. About 500 people attended his funeral.
McKissick’s family filed a lawsuit alleging the officer who shot him used excessive force. The court found in the officer’s favor, ruling McKissick was responsible for his own death.
Decades later, a jury acquitted the Milwaukee police officer who shot and killed Sylville Smith, 23, sparking the two nights of violent unrest in the Sherman Park neighborhood.
On Aug. 13, 2016, Smith ran from a traffic stop. Officer Dominique Heaggan-Brown chased after Smith, who had a gun. The officer fired twice.
Heaggan-Brown’s first shot hit Smith in the arm as Smith threw the gun over a fence. The second shot, which hit Smith in the chest, was fired after Smith tossed the gun and fell to the ground. Heaggan-Brown told investigators he feared Smith was reaching for a second gun.
Since the acquittal, Heaggan-Brown has remained in Milwaukee County Jail on unrelated sexual assault charges.
He was fired last October because of the sexual assault case, not for the shooting. Smith’s family has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the officer and the city.
Learning from the past
On a recent Friday afternoon at the Wisconsin Black Historical Society and Museum, Clayborn Benson held up an enlarged black-and-white photo of Lloyd Barbee, an influential Milwaukee attorney.
Barbee was a driving force to end de facto segregation in schools, Benson, the museum’s executive director, told a family of five visiting from Atlanta.
Benson lifted up a second photo, this one showing NAACP Youth Council members marching armin-arm with Father James Groppi. The council’s 200 nights of marches were instrumental in securing a national fair housing law.
“Many things done here impacted every corner of this country,” Benson said.
“I know that there are these laws but I didn’t know that this was the place to start it,” one of the visitors remarked afterward.
Many people do not know this history, said Benson, who covered the open housing marches as a journalist for WTMJTV.
The same factors, he said, were at play last year in Sherman Park.
“I’d say unemployment, frustration and poor housing,” Benson said. “There are all kinds of frustrations — and we’re not even talking about the police issue.”
After the 1967 riots, the federal government put together stimulus packages and sponsored conferences on how to grow businesses in the areas hit by unrest, he said.
“It was all too little, too late,” he said. “They didn’t put enough muscle behind it.”
Benson voiced a refrain often heard at community meetings around the city: Money and other resources go to the same people, the same groups.
“They’re not putting it into roots that will grow into something meaningful,” Benson said. “They’re putting them in executives’ pockets and the money never reaches the kids.”
Patricia Bridges was 9 years old when she marched for open housing. Now a co-director of Nova High School in Milwaukee, she said coming together is necessary to move forward.
“I’m not saying you walk around giving
people resources or money or homes for free,” she said. “But until we build relationships with each other, talk to each other, we’re still going to have the hell we have today.”
‘Program The Parks’
Two teens on bikes pedaled up to Vaun Mayes as he grilled brats and hot dogs at Sherman Park on a recent weekday. How much? one asked.
“It’s all free, bro,” Mayes said. “As soon as it’s done, we’ll hand them out.”
Mayes, 30, began working in the park more than a year ago, before the riot, when a video appearing to show police kicking teens out of the park surfaced online. Mayes, a community activist who had protested police actions before, reposted the video and was surprised when comments streamed in — nearly all criticizing the teens.
He and Gabriel Taylor, a friend who also lived in Sherman Park, spent a day walking around the park. They saw fights, heard cursing and watched the general disruption.
They started “Program The Parks” as a response — offering free food, getting teens jobs raking leaves or shoveling snow and organizing activities such as dance contests, movie screenings and karate.
To relate to the teens in the park, who come from all over the city, Mayes draws on his own experiences of being homeless, left to fend for himself and getting in trouble at school and with the law.
His efforts are all community-led and community-funded. Mayes often puts out a call for what he needs on social media, whether it’s food or bus passes or volunteers, and the community responds.
During “Beyond Sherman Park,” a community meeting recorded by Milwaukee PBS and WUWM, resident after resident spoke up in support of Mayes’ work and called for grant-funders to support him.
Still, his effort and others like it can only go so far. Mayes described them as “great Band-Aids.”
“I don’t think a lot of the root issues for why the riots happened have been addressed or are being addressed,” he said.
When the unrest broke out last summer, he maintained a stable presence in the park.
“I think millions of dollars came into this area” after the riot, he said. “And you can’t see anything from here. That’s part of the problem.”
A different model
Five decades after marching for his family’s right to live in whichever Milwaukee neighborhood they chose, Prentice McKinney is still at it.
“I’m into what’s happening to young people today in our community,” McKinney said. “I’m interested in finding solutions for that and getting them involved in that process.”
McKinney, who owns and operates Savoy’s, a popular bar and restaurant, thinks a different response is needed this time — one based in the private sector, not government.
He is pushing to bring Cleveland, Ohio’s, cooperative model to Milwaukee, an effort highlighted in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel project, “What Happened to Us.”
Like Milwaukee, Cleveland lost nearly half of its manufacturing jobs from 1978 to 2000. The job bust resulted in high poverty, a large number of blacks unable to find work or own homes and neighborhoods plagued by drugs and crime.
In Cleveland, large institutions pooled their money to create the co-op. Under the model, jobs are created first and then workers are trained for those particular jobs. Workers who qualify have money taken out of their paychecks to pay for mortgages on homes that were once foreclosed and sitting vacant.
The Milwaukee Common Council has endorsed the idea and approved a resolution directing the Department of City Development to create a business cooperative similar to the one in Cleveland.
In McKinney’s mind, this model allows for the community to empower itself.
“If we wait until our leaders get together and find consensus among them to bring about change for us, it won’t happen,” he said.
“The only way it will happen is when those who suffer stand up.”