The Destruction of Black Milwaukee (1950-2022): A History of Racial Inequality & Injustice

By Dr. Michael Bonds

The Destruction of Black Milwaukee (1950-2022): A History of Racial Inequality and Injustice provides the most comprehensive study of Black Milwaukee since Joe Trotter's 1985 Black Milwaukee: The Making of an Industrial Proletariat 1915-45. In The Destruction of Black Milwaukee, the reader will learn how institutional racism, public policies, and individual racism contributed to racial inequality and injustices in the city of Milwaukee to the point where Milwaukee is considered the worst city for African Americans to live in the United States. The readers will learn how institutional racism, public policies, and individual racism perpetuated these practices over decades. As outlined in chapter 2 of The Destruction of Black Milwaukee, it shows that based on almost every major socioeconomic indicator (unemployment, poverty, income, welfare reform, and more), Blacks in Milwaukee rank at or near the bottom nationally. The Destruction of Black Milwaukee explores racial inequality in the areas of housing (redlining, racial covenants, home loan denial, refinance denials, gentrification, evictions, etc.), business (business loans denials, racist policies, lack of enforcement of policies, etc.), education (graduation rates, test scores, suspensions, etc.), limits of electoral politics, health disparities (infant mortalities, teen pregnancies, suicides, homicides, etc.) and hospital closings, and the criminal justice system (police killings of African Americans, rape, illegal frisks, brutality, etc.). The Destruction of Black Milwaukee also discusses the role that Black gangs, African American drug dealers, and Black-on-Black homicides contributed to the destruction of Milwaukee's Black community. Moreover, The Destruction of Black Milwaukee discusses the role of Black serial killers and White serial killers in causing deaths and chaos in Milwaukee's Black community during this period. The Destruction of Black Milwaukee concludes with a discussion on the outlook for African Americans in Milwaukee.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Newman Springs Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Aug 18, 2023
• ISBN: 9798887638140

Book preview

Table of Contents

Title

Copyright

List of Tables

Chapter 1: Introduction

Chapter 2: Socioeconomic Status (SES): The Base for a Permanent Impoverished Community

Chapter 3: African American Politics: Incorporated but Powerless

Chapter 4: Education—the Vicious Cycle of Miseducation

Chapter 5: The Underdevelopment of Black Businesses

Chapter 6: Housing—Locked Out of the American Dream

Chapter 7: Policing with an Iron Fist (Killings, Brutality, and More)

Chapter 8: Crime: Destruction from Within and Outside

Chapter 9: Health: Limited Access and More Disparities

Chapter 10: Conclusion: The Permanence of Racial Inequality

Bibliography

About the Author

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The Destruction of Black Milwaukee (1950-2022)

A History of Racial Inequality & Injustice

Dr. Michael Bonds

Copyright © 2023 Dr. Michael Bonds

All rights reserved

First Edition

NEWMAN SPRINGS PUBLISHING

320 Broad Street

Red Bank, NJ 07701

First originally published by Newman Springs Publishing 2023

ISBN 979-8-88763-813-3 (Paperback)

ISBN 979-8-88763-814-0 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Iwould like to dedicate this book to all the African Americans, including my parents, who migrated to Milwaukee in search of a better quality of life and opportunities, only to have their dream mostly unrealized.

I would also like to dedicate this book to all the people who have fought to improve the quality of life for Milwaukee's African Americans from the period 1950 to 2022.

And finally, I would like to dedicate this book to future generations of people who will continue this battle to improve life for Black Milwaukeeans.

List of Tables

Chapter 1

Introduction

The impetus for writing this book, The Destruction of Black Milwaukee (1950–2022): A History of Racial Inequality and Injustice, is grounded in my experience as an African American in Milwaukee's central city during the late 1950s to the present. I wrote this book in part to understand the larger forces that shaped my personal life story, which serves as a microcosm of what hundreds of thousands of Black Milwaukeean experienced over this period.

As a youth during the early 1960s, my family of thirteen was forced to move because Wisconsin was planning the construction of the I-43 Expressway through Milwaukee's Black community. My family was the last to move from the house where we lived on North Seventh Street and West Wright Street corner. Soon after, the State of Wisconsin demolished the house, we moved directly across the street to a corner house on the east side corner and watched them demolish our old house. Around 1962, my family moved to West Fifth and Wright Street. Then in 1966, my family moved to North Sixth Street and West Meinecke Avenue. This house was located three blocks from the 1967 Riot that occurred on North Third Street. I remember watching the Wisconsin National Guard patrolling our neighborhood, telling people to go in their houses because of the night curfew Milwaukee Mayor Henry Maier imposed to control the riot.

In 1968, my family moved to North Fifth Street and Garfield Street, in Milwaukee's Black ghetto. Then we moved again in 1971 as part of the federally-funded urban renewal program that cleared slums where my family lived. The urban renewal program was known as Negro Removal because thousands of African Americans in low-income housings across America were displaced. The urban renewal program replaced low-income housing units with new developments such as highways, stadiums, new businesses, along with middle-class and upper-class housing units and more. Many low-income housing units were demolished under the urban renewal program. Those low-income housing units were never replaced (Adelman 2003; Wikipedia 2021). In 1971, my family moved to a well-maintained working-class and racially integrated neighborhood at the time, part of the brief moment of partial integration that a few Milwaukee Blacks experienced. In this neighborhood, many African Americans were first-time homeowners. But as was the pattern in Northern cities across America, in less than two years, rapid White flight transformed it into a predominately African American neighborhood.

During the 1960s–1970s, many African American adults in the community had long-term family-supporting jobs working in local factories. Multiple family members and generations of family members without a high school diploma were employed in a wide range of factories such as Allis Chalmers, Globe Union, Johnson Control, A. O. Smith, American Motors, and more. My parents, who were Southern sharecroppers, also worked in some of these factories after migrating to Milwaukee in the 1950s. Milwaukee, during those years, was a beacon of hope for Southern Blacks.

In the 1980s, however, I watched many of these factories shut down, moved out of state, or moved to the city's hyper-segregated White suburbs. Thousands of Blacks lost access to family-wage jobs that these factories provided. Unemployment in the Black community skyrocketed as a result of these lost jobs. I watched the accompanying disinvestment and decline of Black-owned businesses, and the jobs they provided disappear as they closed, or immigrants purchased them.

As my neighborhood declined, it became drug infested. Drug addiction increased. Some young adults who might have been factory workers or college students in previous years became drug addicts or drug dealers. With the drug trade and the justice system's obsession with the war on drugs, my neighborhood was inundated by violence. Since the mid-1970s, fifteen people who lived on that block or who hung out on it were killed. All of the homicide victims, with the exception of an elderly lady killed by her nephew, were Black males. On the same street where I lived, several people, including myself, obtained college degrees and PhDs. But this was not the usual pattern, given the barriers we faced.

I attended predominately Black schools from kindergarten until my twelfth-grade graduation. During the 1960s through the 1970s, the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) required students to attend their neighborhood schools, even though the facilities in Black neighborhoods were in terrible physical conditions, and their schools were deeply underfunded. When my family moved from North Fifth Street and Garfield, I had to leave Roosevelt Jr. High School, even though I wanted to stay. I could not remain at Roosevelt Jr. High School because of MPS's neighborhood attendance policy. It required students to attend school close to their homes. As an adult, I would learn that MPS's attendance policy was designed to maintain Milwaukee's housing racial segregation pattern. This pattern resulted in students being racially segregated. In 1976, the same year I graduated from high school, a federal court ruled MPS's racially based attendance policy unconstitutional. In 1979, the federal court issued a consent decree to desegregate MPS via busing. This order did not do much to integrate the schools as Black students were disproportionally displaced from their neighborhoods. At the same time, Whites fled MPS several years after the decree order was issued.

As I attended college at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee (UWM), I saw optimistic minority students enrolled in classes at the beginning of the semester become demoralized by mid-semester. Many minority students would be given remedial courses while taking out thousands of dollars in student loans. Some would eventually leave UWM without completing their college degrees. In my freshman year, the former director of student financial aid, a White female, told me that UWM was a revolving door for Black students since they were inadequately prepared. And the institution was not conducive for Black students because of its hostile racial climate. She advised me about what I needed to do to be successful at UWM. I took her advice and obtained all my degrees, including a PhD from UWM.

My Blackness would shape my life after college graduation in Milwaukee. I completed my undergraduate degree in less than three years but then was unemployed for three and a half years along with other Black graduates at the time. We watched from our position in tenuous part-time jobs or unemployed as Whites who hadn't even finished their degrees worked full-time professional jobs. These unemployed Blacks had bachelor's degrees, master's degrees, law degrees, and more.

As a college professor, I published numerous academic articles about a wide range of public policies (education, welfare, housing, politics, business, etc.). I found that regardless of public policy topic, race reared its ugly face operating in similar ways, even as different people and leadership were present.

As a policy and budget analyst for the City of Milwaukee for twelve years, I saw how public policy decisions that appeared race-neutral impacted Black Milwaukee negatively. These included decisions related to minority businesses, politics, federal funds, policing, and more. Furthermore, I observed the continuing disinvestments and decline (loss of Black-owned businesses, terrible housing conditions, and more) in Black neighborhoods as I drove through the city.

These experiences occurred in the context of several events. Over these seven decades, the Black community increased in population size and, in theory, political clout. Thousands of African Americans came to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, from Southern states (Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, etc.) and other states in search of better job opportunities and a better quality of life in the late 1940s and beyond (Collins 2011; Geib 1993; Harpole and Weare 1996; Schmid 2019; Trotter 1985, 2007). The city's African American population grew at a phenomenal rate between the period 1950 and 2011, rising from 20,545 (3.21 percent) in 1950 to 232,654 (39.3 percent) in 2011, an increase of 1,032 percent (American Factfinder 2013). By July 2018, African Americans accounted for 41.5 percent of the city's total population (United States Bureau of Census 1952, 2018). In 2020, African Americans accounted for 38.8 percent of the City of Milwaukee Population of 577,222 (QuickFacts 2021).

This book examines the trajectories of African Americans' experiences in Milwaukee from 1950 to 2022. In this book's study period, Blacks were increasingly elected to public offices at all local government levels. Blacks were also appointed to crucial management and cabinet-level jobs with significant policy authority, budgetary authority, and personnel authority. But these apparent increases in Black power did not translate into better life chances or experiences for other Blacks in the city (Bonds 2004).

During these same decades, major federal legislation and legal decisions to advance racial equality for African Americans and other minorities were approved. For example, the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s led to the passage of primary federal legislation and significant court decisions in a variety of areas (housing, voting, public accommodations, education, employment, and so forth) designed to advance African Americans and other minority groups' demand for racial equality. These included the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Civil Rights Act of 1968 (Fair Housing). The United States Congress supported President Johnson's War on Poverty that created the Community Action Program (CAP), Education and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), Head Start, Model Cities, and more. These programs helped low-income and minority people. The US Supreme Court ruled in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education, Topeka, Kansas, that separate and equal facilities were unconstitutional, thus banning racial discrimination in education and other areas (Bell 2004, 1980; Braun 2001; Browne-Marshall 2013; Johnson 2000). These changes provided African Americans in Milwaukee with a sense of optimism.

At the same time, Blacks in Milwaukee were fighting for racial equality. For instance, in the 1940s, the federal government forced Milwaukee's industries to end racial discrimination against minorities in hiring in defense-related firms. This discrimination ban opened up jobs for African Americans in these firms (Rosen 1998). Also, the Milwaukee United for School Integration Committee (MUSIC), the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and Black community leaders fought to end the racially segregated and inferior education in MPS. Their continued protest and legal work resulted in the 1976 federal school desegregation order when Federal Judge John Reynolds found that MPS had intentionally and unconstitutionally segregated the schools based on race. A 1979 federal decree order settled the case, and it introduced busing into the MPS System (Aukofer 1968, 2007; Dahlk 2010; Jones 2009; Stolee 1985; Taylor 1981).

During the 1960s, White Roman Catholic Priest Father James Groppi, the NAACP Youth Council, and the Commandos led African Americans in Milwaukee in marching over two hundred straight days for a fair housing ordinance. They crossed the Sixteenth Street Viaduct to what was called the longest bridge in America into constant physical abuse and verbal abuse from the White residents of the neighborhood on the South Side. The only African American alderperson, Vel Phillips, had repeatedly tried to get such legislation passed between 1962 and 1968. Still, year after year, she was the only Milwaukee Common Council member out of nineteen to vote in favor of it. In 1968, under pressure from Black and White marchers, with seven new White Council members and passage of the 1968 Federal Fair Housing law, Milwaukee finally passed an open housing law (Aukofer 1968, 2007; Jones 2009; Rogza 2009; Stolee 1985; Taylor 1981).

While Milwaukee had experienced a riot in July of 1967 in the city's Black community, it only lasted for a few hours. It was considered calm compared to disturbances in other cities. The riot's lack of damage gave people hope that the city could improve its race relations and quality of life for African Americans (Aukofer 1968, 2007; Jones 2009; Taylor 1981).

Despite these efforts discussed above to promote racial equality and improve African Americans' lives in Milwaukee, hopes of the 1960s and 1970s did not result in real change. Instead, conditions in Milwaukee's Black community got progressively worse. Since the 1980s, numerous studies have found Milwaukee to be the worst place to live for African Americans based on various social-economic indicators (Comen and Sauter 2017; Dixon 2005; O'Hare 1986; Watson 2019). In fact, in 2018, the Milwaukee Metropolitan Association of Commerce (MMAC) (not a basin of liberal thoughts) surveyed business leaders in Metropolitan Milwaukee to identify the most critical issue that they wanted addressed. Respondents identified racial inequalities as Metropolitan Milwaukee's biggest Achilles' heel (Anderson 2019a).

This book will trace the actions in multiple arenas that gave rise to growing racial disparities. I describe the blatant policy decisions made by majority-White institutions and individuals that led to Black Milwaukee's destruction.

The book is divided into ten chapters. Chapter 1 introduces the book, the rationale for it, and its outline. Chapter 2 provides an overview of African Americans' demographic and socioeconomic (SES) status over time in Milwaukee. It discusses population trends and SES indicators (unemployment, income, poverty, family structure, age group, etc.) related to Blacks in Milwaukee and the range of factors impacting these indicators (including deindustrialization, declining state aid, welfare reform, the elimination and reduction of specific human service programs, racism, etc.). The chapter also discusses Blacks' battles to join labor unions and the opposition of White labor unions. Finally, the chapter describes Blacks' employment trends as Black workers were concentrated in low-paying jobs, while Black professionals faced significant barriers.

Chapter 3 focuses on African American elected officials in Milwaukee and Black public administrators with major policy, budgeting, and personnel authority. This chapter provides an overview of African American elected officials at the city, county, and state levels; examines electoral trends in Black politics in Milwaukee; and describes the relationship among African American elected officials, administrators, and the city's mayors. I explore how multiple government units' actions weaved together to tamp down possibilities for Black empowerment in Milwaukee.

Chapter 4 reviews the racial inequities related to academic performance, suspensions, graduation rates, dropout rates, ACT preparation, advance placement courses, etc. It explores efforts to racially integrate schools but shows how those efforts have made things worse. The chapter also discusses other education options (charter schools, choice schools, suburban schools, and private schools) that African Americans enrolled their students and the disappointing outcome of such efforts.

Chapter 5 focuses on Black businesses. It traces African Americans' efforts to operate with a predominately small Black clientele in the 1950s to larger, more diverse companies in 2022. I describe the barriers these businesses faced. These obstacles range from business loan denials, racism in private and public sectors, failed efforts to fight racial discrimination, the lack of substantive impact made by minority business programs, the limited effects of lawsuits that fought the negative impacts of minority business fronts on legitimate minority firms' abilities to get contracts via set-asides programs, government entities' lack of enforcement of procurement and programs policies for minority and disadvantaged businesses. I examine Blacks' efforts to get out of traditional small retail and service businesses to describing the emergence of Wisconsin's only Black brewery, a steel manufacturing company, banks, and so forth. The chapter concludes with several case studies of nontraditional African American-owned businesses in Milwaukee and their challenges.

Chapter 6 explores housing issues. It shows how African Americans shifted from being trapped in racially segregated and deteriorated neighborhoods in the 1950s–1960s to a brief window of access to more integrated neighborhoods after the struggle for fair housing and then shifting back to racially segregated neighborhoods, and impoverished communities. This trajectory resulted in Milwaukee becoming the most racially segregated area in America. The chapter describes how forces ranging from racial segregation, redlining, racial covenants, housing loan denials, blockbusting, home value declines, and more produced this reality. And the chapter describes the numerous housing issues faced by African Americans in Milwaukee, including foreclosures, high rents, renewed and expanded gentrification efforts, housing evictions, and the struggle to rent and own homes in suburban communities.

Chapter 7 focuses on Milwaukee's African American community and the Milwaukee Police Department's (MPD) relationship. I detail ninety-four documented police killings of African Americans and patterns associated with those killings from 1948 to 2022, including a close analysis of several case studies of these police killings. The chapter lays out African American deaths while in police custody, Black and White police officers' physical rapes and sexual assaults of African Americans, police's illegal cavity and body searches of African Americans, police physical brutality, the impact of stop-and-frisk practices and mass incarceration. And it explores lawsuits by African Americans in response to hostile treatment by Milwaukee Police. Finally, the chapter examines African Americans' elusive quest for justice in Milwaukee and the many ways institutional practices and racism prevented such justice.

Chapter 8 focuses on crime in Milwaukee's Black community. It begins with a historical overview of homicide patterns in Milwaukee and how they impacted the Black community. The chapter explores the role of Black drug dealers, Black gangs, and firearms on violence in Milwaukee's Black community and the chaos this produced. The chapter discusses major Black street gangs and their leaders, as well as major African American drug dealers. I also examine the emergence of White and Black serial killers in Milwaukee's Black community and the terror they inflicted. Looking back to chapter 7, I show how the criminal system's indifference toward the Black community contributed to much of its violence and examine the impact of violence and drugs on Black Milwaukeeans.

Chapter 9 discusses hospital closings and their impact on Milwaukee's Black community and provides an overview of racial disparities related to health via historic data from 1989 to 2019 on leading causes of death (suicide, homicide, infant mortality, cancer, heart diseases, etc.) for African Americans in Milwaukee.

Chapter 10 summarizes the book's core findings and speculates about the future outlook for African Americans in Milwaukee.

Chapter 2

Socioeconomic Status (SES): The Base for a Permanent Impoverished Community

Population trends—City of Milwaukee

From 1950 to 2020, the City of Milwaukee experienced major demographic changes that impacted its Black community. The city's population declined from 637,392 in 1950 to 599,086 in 2017, a decline of 38,306 people (-6.4 percent) people. Despite this overall decrease, the city's Black population grew from 20,454 in 1950 (3.1 percent) to an estimated 248,399 people (41.5 percent) in 2017 of Milwaukee's population 599,086. The Black population increased by 227,854 (1,089 percent) (Battle 2000; United States Bureau of Census 1952, 2019a, 2019b, 2021). By 2020, Blacks accounted for 38.8 percent of Milwaukee's total population of 577,222. See table 2.1.

The Black population in Milwaukee grew significantly for several reasons. An important factor was the increased migration of Blacks to Milwaukee. Thousands of African Americans arrived in Milwaukee from Southern states (Tennessee, Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi, etc.) and other communities searching for better job opportunities and a better quality of life. Also, there was a significant growth in the Black population due to its high birth rates (Battle 2000; Collins 2008; Geenen 2006; Geib 1993; Harpole and Weare 1996; McNeely and Kinlow 1987; O'Reilly 1963; O'Reilly, Downing, and Pflanczer 1965; Trotter 1985, 2007).

Employment status of African Americans

Historically, Blacks have struggled for employment opportunities in Milwaukee's factories due to opposition from White organized labor groups. As African Americans sought a better life and job opportunities, a few Blacks entered factories as strikebreakers to work for the Illinois Steel Company located in Milwaukee's Bayview Community (Gurda 2006; Trotter 1989b, 2007; Wisconsin Historical Society 1996–2016). However, by 1904 African American steelworkers lost their jobs. White organized labor unions in Milwaukee did not want Blacks working in factories before World War I (WWI). For instance, the Federated Trade Union Council, ignored the mostly unskilled Black workers. Until World War II, White labor unions and the factories excluded most Blacks. Instead, nearly 70 percent of African Americans in Milwaukee worked in jobs such as domestic, personal services, common laborers, cooks, servants, and so forth (Gurda 2006; Trotter 1989a, 1989b).

WWI changed the racial composition of White labor unions in Milwaukee and their relationships with Blacks. Some African Americans slowly moved out of the domestic and personal service jobs that paid minimum salaries. The percentage of Black men in skilled, semiskilled, and unskilled work increased from 19 percent in 1910 to over 70 percent in 1930. Labor unions did not represent them in those positions. Despite this increase, a lot of Milwaukee factories still did not hire Blacks. During WWI, only eleven of the two thousand manufacturing firms in Milwaukee hired Black workers. Six of those eleven firms hired over 75 percent of the Black workers. Those six firms were Plankinton Packing Company, Albert Trostel Leather Tannery, Pfister-Vogel Tannery, Allis Chalmers, Falk Manufactory, the Milwaukee Coke Company, and the Gas Company. Companies that did hire Black employees assigned them to the most difficult, low-paying, and undesirable jobs (Blackman 2016, personal communication; Trotter 1989a).

Due to WWI restrictions by the federal government on immigration to the United States, there was a labor shortage. Blacks took advantage of this labor shortage and migrated to Milwaukee to find jobs as unskilled workers. Additionally, labor agents went South looking for Black workers to work in Milwaukee's packing plants, tanneries, foundries, construction jobs, etc. (Gurda 2006).

Milwaukee's White labor unions still opposed Blacks working in the factories. Frank Weber, an organizer for the Milwaukee Federated Trades Council (FTC), an affiliate of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), opposed companies recruiting Blacks to work in factories. He felt African American workers would help employers keep wages low for White workers (Weems 1983). Likewise, the Milwaukee Federated Trade Council (FTC) resisted Black migration and employment in factories. Milwaukee's White political leaders supported the FTC. In 1922, Mayor Hoan informed the Milwaukee Railroad owner that he would not support Black strikebreakers. Mayor Hoan indicated it would cause racial division. Milwaukee Road stopped hiring Blacks as strikebreakers. Besides, White workers banned Blacks from membership in their labor unions (Weems, 1983).

In the late 1930s and 1940s, the emergence of the Congress of Industrial Organization (CIO) started a new relationship between African Americans and White labor unions in Milwaukee. In the late 1930s, the CIO enlisted Black organizers and established close contact with the African American community. Leroy Johnson, a Black butcher and packinghouse worker, played a significant role in the United Packinghouse Union campaign. He helped to organize Local 681, and he helped Blacks to join