Black History Month
There are countless figures who changed history across the state, nation: Here are just 12 of ours.
A list of a dozen prominent Black people from Wisconsin history that you should know about.
The history of Wisconsin can’t be told without mentioning countless Black figures. From the first African slaves fighting for freedom to the modern day leaders of our time rallying the public to make change, Black people have carved a path and left a stamp on the Badger state.
February is Black History Month and a time to reflect on Black lives and Black stories.
Joshua Glover (est. 1810s–1888)
Joshua Glover escaped from Benammi Stone Garland’s Missouri farm in 1852 and traveled by foot to Racine. Because of The Fugitive Slave Act, Garland was legally able to hunt down Glover and recapture him in March 1854. Garland and his men took Glover to a jail in Milwaukee with the plan of returning Glover to Missouri.
The morning after Glover’s jailing, it is said that abolitionist Sherman Booth and a mob stormed the jail. Glover was freed but then spent 40 years on the run, finding safe spots along the Underground Railroad system. After decades of running, Glover found ultimate freedom in Canada, where
he died.
In 1857, Booth Street in Milwaukee’s Riverwest neighborhood was named after Sherman Booth. In 2016, some homeowners in the area signed a petition approving the renaming of part of Reservoir Avenue to Glover Avenue. Now there is a cross where Booth Street and Glover Avenue intersect.
William Smith Noland (1850s – 1890)
An 1875 graduate of the University of Wisconsin, William Smith Noland is the first known African American to enter and graduate with a bachelor’s degree from UW, according to UW archives.
He was a member of the Hesperian Society, a campus literary club and was elected class poet by his peers. He went on to briefly attend the university’s law school.
In his death notice in the Wisconsin State Journal, Judge J.H. Carpenter described Noland as a “gentlemanly, quiet, well read man.”
William T. Green (1860 – 1911)
According to the Wisconsin Historical Society, William T. Green was the first Black graduate of the University of Wisconsin Law School in 1892.
At the time of his death in 1911, he was the only Black lawyer in Milwaukee and the only African American member of the Wisconsin Bar Association.
In the landmark case Howard v. Litt, he became the first Black attorney to argue (and win) a case before the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
The case led to the creation of the Wisconsin Civil Rights Act of 1895, which made racial discrimination in public facilities illegal. However, the law was never really enforced by prominent white leaders.
James Cameron (1914 – 2006)
Dr. James Cameron became well known for surviving a lynching in Indiana. In 1930, 16-year-old Cameron was jailed for suspected robbery, murder and rape (claiming innocence) along with friends Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith. A mob dragged all three teenagers out of jail, killing Shipp and Smith first, then turning to Cameron.
He was beaten, a noose was put around his neck and he was hanged. His life was spared after a man removed the noose from his neck. Cameron was found guilty for accessory to murder and served five years in jail, where he wrote his memoir “A Time of Terror: A Survivor’s Story.”
It became tough for Cameron to have a normal way of life in Indiana after gaining such notoriety. He had received death threats, so he decided to move. Cameron and wife thought Canada would be best, however they stopped in Milwaukee along the way and eventually made it their home.
America’s Black Holocaust Museum was founded by Cameron and is located on the southwest corner of North Vel R. Phillips Avenue and West North Avenue.
“Dr. James Cameron founded this museum about the Black Holocaust in America after visiting Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial museum in Jerusalem, Israel. He saw the many similarities between the experiences of the Jewish people and African Americans,” according to the museum’s website.
Prophet Blackmon (1921–2010)
Born William Joshua Blackmon in Albion, Mich., Blackmon served in the U.S. Army during World War II. In 1974, he settled in Milwaukee where he owned the Revival Center Shoe Repair and Shine Parlor in the now-demolished Sydney HiH building.
In 1982, his career as an artist began unexpectedly after the wife of the thendirector of the Milwaukee Art Museum saw Blackmon’s hand-lettered signs in his storefront window and bought one.
Blackmon was also a street preacher. “I stay in the streets. The greatest theology is in the streets. The troubles are in the streets. I go to areas where buildings have been torn down, where there are vacant lots and I minister to those people,” he told the Milwaukee Journal in 1982.
Vel Phillips (1924 – 2018)
Phillips had a life of firsts. In 1951, Phillips was the first Black woman to graduate from the University of Wisconsin Law School. Five years later, she was the first woman, and the first African American, to be elected to the Milwaukee Common Council.
Phillips became the first female judge in Milwaukee County in 1971. She became the first woman, and first African American to be elected to statewide office, having won the race for secretary of state in 1978.
She helped lead fair-housing marches with Father James Groppi in the 1960s. She was widely recognized nationally for her activism, even having relationships with Presidents Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter.
Following her death in 2018, the Common Council unanimously approved renaming North Fourth Street between West St. Paul Avenue and West Capitol Drive to Vel R. Phillips Ave.
Hank Aaron (1934 – 2021)
Henry Aaron began his Major League Baseball career with the Milwaukee Braves, but he began his professional career in the Negro Leagues. He is best known for breaking the record for most career home runs in 1974 (which was held by Babe Ruth at the time) by hitting 755 homers. In Milwaukee, he led the Braves to the World Series twice (winning in 1957), and won the National League MVP award in 1957.
A phenomenal talent on the field, Aaron also gained a reputation of being a standup man off the field. “I’ve always said he was the greatest player of our generation. But he was a better human being,” former MLB commissioner Bud Selig said following Aaron’s death in January.
After a legendary career with the Atlanta Braves, Aaron ended his career with the Milwaukee Brewers.
Al Jarreau (1940 – 2017)
Al Jarreau is a renowned singer and musician born in Milwaukee to a minister and church pianist. He went on to record 21 albums and earned seven Grammy awards. The singer remains one of the few vocalists in Grammy history to win in the jazz, pop and R&B categories.
“Practically every night from stage, he would say, ‘I’m from Milwaukee,’” said fellow Milwaukee native Joe Turano, a member of Al Jarreau’s band for 17 years and his musical director since 2008.
The Wisconsin Foundation for School Music honored Jarreau with a lifetime achievement award in 2016, and established an endowment in his name to provide financial assistance to Milwaukee Public Schools students to participate in music programs.
Donna Burkett (1946 – )
In 1971, Donna Burkett and Manonia Evans, a Black lesbian couple, applied for a marriage license with the Milwaukee County Clerk’s Office. Burkett and Evans were part of an early nationwide effort in the 1970s by LGTBQ couples seeking marriage equality.
They were refused by the clerk, so they filed a lawsuit citing that the refusal deprived them of due process and equal protection of the law under the U.S. Constitution. A judge dismissed the lawsuit in 1972, citing a lawyer’s failure to file written legal arguments.
“The law should protect us and help us the way it does any two straight people who love each other and want to live together,” Burkett told Gay Peoples Union (GPU) News, a news magazine for the Milwaukee gay and lesbian community in the 1970s.
The couple’s actions received national attention, and they were featured in Jet Magazine. Unfortunately, the pressures and others strained their relationship, and they eventually broke up. In 2014, Burkett received an “everyday courage” award from the Milwaukee LGBT Community Center.
“If you believe in it you stand for it, you stand for something” Burkett said in a phone interview.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (1947 – )
Drafted in 1969 by the Milwaukee Bucks, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was a transformative figure both on and off the court. Although Abdul-Jabbar has said he was discouraged with the treatment of African Americans in Milwaukee.
Abdul-Jabbar has always cared about more than basketball. He was asked by many civil rights sports figures, including Muhammad Ali and Jim Brown (The Cleveland Summit) to be the athletic vanguard for civil rights in his generation after boycotting the 1968 Olympics because of the treatment of African Americans in the United States.
Abdul-Jabbar was a member of the 1971 world champion Milwaukee Bucks team. He earned three MVP awards in Milwaukee. The Bucks traded AbdulJabbar in 1975 to the Los Angeles Lakers where he went on to be the NBA’s alltime leading scorer.
Porche Bennett-Bey (1987 – )
A Kenosha organizer and activist, Porche Bennett-Bey quit her job as an in-home caretaker to focus on racial justice work following the police shooting of Jacob Blake and the subsequent uprising that occurred in the summer of 2020.
The day after the shooting of Jacob Blake, protesters and law enforcement were in something of a standoff Bennett decided to start cleaning up some of the water bottles that had been thrown at deputies. A deputy pointed a gun at her and told her to back up. After that, Bennett said, about five or six other deputies approached her.
“I’m out here for my son, that’s why I’m standing out here, alone,” Bennett said to the deputies. A deputy asked her what she wanted. She replied that she wanted to clean up.
The following night, Bennett stood with a sign reading “Black Lives Matter” in front of a line of police officers while tear gas was dispersed and objects hurled. She remained resilient, with tears running down her face, and insisting on holding her ground.
Time magazine put her on the cover as part of its “People of the Year” project. She was named one of their “Guardians of the Year.”
“I’ve always said (Hank Aaron) was the greatest player of our generation. But he was a better human being.” Bud Selig former baseball commissioner, friends with Hank Aaron, speaking after Aaron’s death