Looking Back
April 1, 1970:
Major league again
A U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge in Seattle gave final approval of the sale of the Seattle Pilots, a struggling expansion franchise, to Milwaukee Brewers Inc., clearing the way for the team to move to Milwaukee barely in time for the start of the 1970 season. (The Brewers played their first game just six days later, losing 12-0 to the California Angels before 37,237 fans at County Stadium.)
April 2, 1969:
Bucks’ giant step forward
After winning a coin flip to get the No. 1 pick in the NBA draft, the Milwaukee Bucks sign UCLA center Lew Alcindor to a fiveyear, $1 million-plus contract. In his tenure with the team, the player later known as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar made the All-Star Game all six seasons and led the Bucks to five postseasons and the team’s only NBA title.
April 3, 1887:
Upon this rock
After using a series of meeting places around the still-growing city, St. Mark African Methodist Episcopal Church dedicated its first permanent home on this date, on what is now W. Kilbourn Ave. between N. Old World 3rd and N. 4th streets. The church was the first African-American church in Wisconsin. (The church is now at 1616 W. Atkinson Ave.)
April 3, 1956:
A woman of many firsts
Vel Phillips, the first black woman to graduate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School, was elected alderwoman in Milwaukee, making her the first female and first African-American member of the Common Council. (Other firsts for Phillips: first African-American member of the Democratic National Committee, first African-American woman to be a judge in Wisconsin, first woman and first African-American to be elected to statewide office, as secretary of state.)
April 8, 1968:
A march to remember
Four days after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tenn., 14,000 (police estimate) to 25,000 (organizers’ estimate) people marched down Wisconsin Ave. to honor the civil rights leader’s memory. The Milwaukee Sentinel called it the “biggest rights march” in the city’s history.
April 14, 1953:
Braves win No. 1
Less than a month after announcing the franchise was moving from Boston to Milwaukee, the Braves played their first game at County Stadium, winning 3-2, on a home run in the 10th inning by Billy Bruton.
April 20, 1999:
See ya, Park East Freeway
Mayor John Norquist, County Executive F. Thomas Ament and Gov. Tommy G. Thompson agreed on a spending plan for $241 million in federal transit money, a plan that included $21.6 million to demolish the Park East Freeway. (Facing legal challenges and other delays, demolition of the freeway spur wasn’t completed until 2003.)
April 28, 1945:
Duck and cover, Gertie
A story and front-page photo in The Milwaukee Journal alerts the world to a mallard duck nesting on top of a piling in the Milwaukee River near the southwest corner of the Wisconsin Ave. bridge — “the busiest bridge in Wisconsin.” The duck, nicknamed Gertie by Journal reporter Gordon MacQuarrie, becomes a national sensation, the subject of two popular children’s books and, decades later, immortalized in a series of sculptures on Milwaukee’s RiverWalk.
April 29, 1928:
Down by the Riverside
Looking for a prestige replacement for the 20-year-old Majestic Theater, the RadioKeith-Orpheum theater chain built a new theater in the Empire Building at what is now Wisconsin and Plankinton avenues, on the west bank of the Milwaukee River. According to an advertisement in the April 29, 1928, Milwaukee Sentinel, the 2,558-seat Riverside Theater debuted on this date with a “gala opening bill” featuring Ezra Buzzington’s Rustic Revelers, “Winkel the Whiteman of the Wurlitzer” and “The Big Noise,” a 1928 silent comedy with Chester Conklin and Alice White.
April 30, 1968:
Fair(er) at last
The Milwaukee Common Council adopted an open housing ordinance with stronger provisions than those in a then-new federal law. The measure still fell short of the all-inclusive bill — banning discrimination for all types of housing — that Ald. Vel Phillips had proposed six times during her tenure with the council.
Sources: Journal Sentinel files; wisconsinhistory.org; “Greater Milwaukee’s Growing Pains, 1950-2000: An Insider’s View” by Richard W. Cutler; stmarkame-milwaukee.com