Milwaukee’s "Mason-Dixon Line"

They say childhood experiences are like injuries; some will leave small invisible scars that are hardly ever noticed.

Others result in open wounds that will be painful for the rest of your life.

My participation in this city’s open housing marches fit that latter category. Not only did the marches introduce me to the cancer of bigotry, ethnic intolerance and institutional racism (aka apartheid), it made an indelible imprint on my unconsciousness that has remained with me to this day.

I must sadly confess to holding lingering prejudices and stereotypes about this city as a result of that campaign, and more specifically, the Southside that wisdom, experience and even Christian tenets have not been able to exorcise.

Four decades after that experience, I maintain the illogical belief that "most" Southsiders are either prejudice, racist or religious hypocrites.

I recognize that’s an unfair generalization, no better than the baseless prejudice and stereotypes I’ve fought to dispel about Black people over the years.

But I can’t help it. I too am a victim of ethnic biases.

I was but a child, for the most part, unaware of the depths of racism and prejudice when I joined the open housing campaign. In truth, I wasn’t entirely aware of who and what I was: a Black child living in a segregated neighborhood, unable to fully participate in the rites of citizenship; hated by people merely because of the color of my skin. As a Black Milwaukeean, my movements were restricted to a small area of the city. I was forbidden from attending certain schools and shopping at various department stores outside the boundaries imposed by racist Whites.

My grandmother lived directly across the street from St. Boniface Catholic Church, and I was drawn to the hoard of people and the uplifting activities that occurred every day during the spring and summer of 1967.

I soon learned that the rallies and marches were the by-product of fruitless efforts by Alderwoman Vel Phillips to end housing discrimination in Milwaukee. The city’s first Black alderperson, Phillips had introduced a fair housing ordinance in each of her first four years in office. Her efforts were akin to spitting into a strong wind, as her colleagues, who made no secret of their desire to maintain the walls of apartheid, met each resolution with strong opposition.

That system of apartheid affected not only housing, but public schooling, banking, and cultural activities. Not only were the schools intentionally segregated, but other Jim Crow laws forbade Black non-property owners from filing complaints against the police department.

Black people were truly second-class citizens, isolated, forgotten, and castigated.

My visits to St. Boniface exposed me to the civil rights movement and efforts to tear down the walls of apartheid.

Organized by the local NAACP, protestors undertook a 200-day campaign that shook the foundation of apartheid in Milwaukee. Each day we would gather at St. Boniface before marching to the Southside by way of the 16th Street viaduct. Across the "Mason Dixon Line," as we called it, we were greeted by mobs of Whites whose racist epithets illuminated the depth of racial antagonism. We were threatened with bodily harm, assaulted with racist slurs that were just as painful as the rocks and bottles that bombarded us.

The police looked on, some smiling; a few applauded the counter demonstrators.

The NAACP Youth Council and Commandoes were entrusted with maintaining order, in essence ensuring the marchers paraded in an orderly fashion (if we stepped off the street we were subject to arrest). A harder task was for them to restrain those marchers who considered retaliating against the bigots who bombed us with weapons and epithets.

I vividly recall the chants, not to mention the scar that hides under my graying hair, a permanent reminder of their hatred. It is the by-product of a brick or rock that was cast by a cowardly bigot without the courage to confront us man to man.

The other "scars" are invisible, but equally damaging. They are scars on my soul, created by images of the signs held by White children my age and younger that made such declarations as "Go back to Africa," "keep the animals on the Northside jungle," and my favorite, "buy your niggerburger here."

It’s obvious that racism is a "manmade" disease, passed on from generation to generation. Obviously, the parents of the young bigots educated them from birth. Along with the ABCs, they were fed a steady diet of racism, bigotry and prejudice.

I would venture to guess that few, if any, of those children had even met a Black person prior to the marches, and if given an opportunity couldn’t articulate their rationale for hatred beyond the one liners fed them by their parents. But that doesn’t mean they haven’t refined their hatred since then. Thus, I can’t help but assume that the seeds planted by their parents have germinated over the years.

Where are those children today? Are they police officers, loan officers, maybe teachers or politicians? How many today believe we’re savages, uncivilized, sub-humans? How has their attitudes impacted on Milwaukee’s status as the third worse city in the United States for Black people? Have they rejected a mortgage loan, contributing to Milwaukee’s ranking as hosting the highest Black mortgage rejection rate in the country? Have they profiled a Black driver, or participated in the Frank Jude "lynching?" Have they flunked a Black student, or "miseducated" him or her based on their assumption that we are genetically inferior?

I know for sure some of those racist babies are today racist adults, and our society pays a price for their attitudes, seeded 40 years ago in response to our quest to obtain equal rights and protections under the law.

A few years ago, WTMJ radio news reporter Sherry Preston asked me to participate in her master’s thesis research project. Her paper dealt with the geopolitical ramifications of the open housing campaign, how it changed Milwaukee.

The most illuminating part of her thesis was the comments from an unidentified White adult who as a child carried one of those racist signs 40 years ago. He confirmed my theory about the evolution of racism, and sadly, how the cancer of racism continues to eat away at our culture and society.

When asked if he regretted his participation, he responded negatively. In fact, he was unabashed in stating that he continues to view Black people as the scum of the earth. Everything taught to him by his parents about Black people has been confirmed by crime statistics, out of wedlock births and other visual manifestations of our uncivilized behavior, he said.

Who would want to live next to a "darkie" whose uncivilized nature is manifest in littered, roach and rat infested housing? No grass, barred windows to keep out the criminal neighbors, beer cans and bottles decorating our front yards. The "fact" that we don’t keep our properties clean, that we’re more interested in procreation than productivity, reject educational opportunities, and don’t recognize that welfare spelled backwards is "farewell" to human dignity and self respect, is proof positive that we are an immoral and apathetic people.

Remorse for his participation in the anti-open housing movement? Hell no, he said.

If a Black person tried to move into his Southside neighborhood today, the White man would either join his neighbors in chasing the "darkie" away, or as a last alternative, relocate himself.

But it wasn’t just the realization that many Southsiders share that White man’s attitudes today that fuels my "prejudices." I’ve amassed dozens of examples over the years that his views are manifest.

I recall the curious and frequently hated stares of his neighbors a few years ago when I would take my son to basketball practices at a Southside school. On more than a few occasions cops shadowed me.

I wrote a few years ago of not being served at a Southside restaurant, and my subsequent complaints that fell on deaf ears.

And then there was the incident at a Southside comedy club that was anything but funny. As it turned out, I was the only Black person in the club, having arrived early to review a Black comic at the invitation of his agent.

The opening act did a routine that included his confusion over Milwaukee’s designation of geographic areas for various ethnic groups. He said he was told that "Southsiders" were German and Polish, and eastsiders were liberal Danish, Swedes and immigrant Indians and Europeans. To his question of which ethnic group lives on the Northside, a White patron responded "niggers," an assertion that drew chants and cheers.

Being outnumbered 200 to one, I immediately made the decision to leave the establishment after shouting a few ethnic slurs over my shoulder, thanking God that I made the decision to park my car a few feet from the door.

Am I being unfair in my generalizations? Is my decision to avoid patronizing Southside businesses groundless?

One of my favorite expressions goes: "Knowledge is power; the absence of knowledge is ignorance. The abuse or misuse of knowledge is stupidity."

Where does my prejudice lie within that framework? Am I ignorant, or stupid? Am I a hypocrite for harboring prejudices while at the same time making a career out of fighting racial injustice and intolerance?

Next week, I will pose those questions to participants at the commemoration program marking the 40th anniversary of the open housing marches. The event will include exhibits, workshops and study groups. On Saturday afternoon, I will moderate a panel discussion at UW-Milwaukee that will focus on sociocultural changes since the marches. We will explore how the marches changed Milwaukee’s cultural paradigm and how much, if any, attitudes have changed since 1967.

Hopefully, something will be said or offered during the session that will exorcise from my subconscious this cancer of prejudice I have carried for 40 years.

Who knows, maybe the White bigot will also participate. Maybe we’ll end up cleansed of our irrational prejudices and emerge from the conference walking hand in hand in a new spirit of brotherhood.

Yeah right. And maybe Scooby Doo will serve as a character witness at Michael Vick’s sentencing hearing.
Hotep.