Milwaukee set to rename street for Phillips
A proposal to rename part of a Milwaukee street in honor of civil rights leader Vel Phillips is moving forward with strong support from a majority of the Common Council.
Ald. Milele Coggs has proposed changing the name of N. 4th St. from W. St. Paul Ave. to W. Capitol Drive to Vel R. Phillips Ave.
The measure was approved by the council’s Public Works Committee this week and will go before the full council at its next regular meeting.
Phillips, who died last week at age 95, is remembered as an unwavering voice for justice who broke racial and gender barriers.
Among her many firsts, Phillips was the first woman and first African-American to be elected to the Common Council, and remains the only African-American ever elected to statewide office in Wisconsin.
Renaming the street will “help to shine a light on great things that come from this city and great things that have been done and have happened here in this city,” Coggs said.
Phillips herself favored N. 4th St. as the street to be renamed in her honor because it was where she attended school and church, and the street ran through the council district she represented, Coggs said.
The street also runs parallel to a street renamed for her friend and fellow civil rights leader, Martin Luther King Jr.
The renaming proposal has numerous supporters, including Phillips’ son, Michael D. Phillips, an assistant district attorney in Milwaukee County.
“Unfortunately, my mother’s life has passed. But, committee, her time remains, now,” he wrote in a letter to the Public Works Committee.
“Especially in today’s challenging climate of race relations, this proposed re-naming will suffuse with permanence Milwaukee’s commemoration of its home-grown civil rights icon, a woman — Vel R. Phillips — who fought for the freedoms not only of Milwaukee’s minority citizens, but for all of its citizens,” he said.