The optics, I realize, may be a little perplexing, even problematic. In the last several months, I, a 77-year-old white male, have stood multiple times in front of Black or racially mixed audiences in traditionally Black venues telling the story of Black Milwaukee with the aid of historic photographs of Black Milwaukeeans.
I’ve presented at the Wisconsin Black Historical Museum (invited by my friend and fellow historian Clayborn Benson), America’s Black Holocaust Museum, public high school classrooms, and Milwaukee Public Library branches in predominantly Black neighborhoods, where I’ve shared the podium with Clayborn.
So what’s an old white guy doing up there talking about Black Milwaukee? That’s the elephant in the room, and I’ve addressed the question at the beginning of every talk. The answer is pretty simple. I’ve been studying Milwaukee’s history for more than five decades and talking about it for almost that long. At my pre-pandemic peak, I was giving more than fifty talks and tours a year — about one a week — and my audiences were always overwhelmingly, often exclusively, white.
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There’s something profoundly wrong with that picture. Not only does it demonstrate the level of segregation in our community, but that monochrome reception also rubs against my fervently held belief that history belongs to everyone — every person of every ancestry in every neighborhood.
For all of us, history is the story of how we got to be who we are and how we got to be where we are, and that story is far too important to be the property of any single group. In a city whose population is 40 percent Black, the lack of knowledge about our African-American heritage is particularly glaring, and that deficit applies across the board.
Talks about Black Milwaukee history born out of frustration
My talks, therefore, were born of frustration and fed by a desire to broaden our shared understanding of Milwaukee’s history. I developed the programs in full knowledge of the hazards involved. Cultural trespassing is a risk I take seriously, but I also challenge the notion that members of a specific group are the only ones qualified or entitled to tell its story.
I’ve had the advantage of studying Milwaukee as my career — all neighborhoods, all ancestries — and I’ve written extensively about Germans, Irish, Italians, Poles (my own heritage), Greeks, Jews, and Mexicans as well as African Americans. Outsiders looking in obviously can’t hope to communicate the lived experience of any group that’s not their own, but insiders reaching out might have comparable difficulty placing their group’s story in its larger context.
What has been the audience response? Overwhelmingly positive, I’m relieved to report. Milwaukee Public Library staff collected written evaluations at every branch program, and more than 95 percent of the participants rated the program a perfect 5.0. There have been some lovely individual moments. A sweet woman named Wanda, who is Pawnee as well as African by ancestry, surprised me at the Washington Park library with a Black cowboy T-shirt and a gift pouch of tobacco. A senior at Riverside University High School said, “I loved the program. It was like it gave me a voice.”
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Every presentation was followed by a question-and-answer session. The one at the Milwaukee County Historical Society, a program held in conjunction with the museum’s “Climates of Inequality” exhibit, went on for a wonderfully spirited forty-five minutes, moving quickly from Q&A to audience story-telling.
There were also some challenging encounters. In a private moment after my talk at the Black Historical Museum, I asked one woman how weird it felt to hear her story from an old white guy. She paused thoughtfully and then replied, “The sad thing is we’ll listen to you more than we will to somebody Black.” Generations of cultural indoctrination have taken their toll.
Talks showed level of anger, suspicion in Black community
More broadly, it’s clear that there are a lot of angry African Americans out there, and understandably so. Most Black residents live in neighborhoods with more crime, shabbier houses, fewer trees, dirtier air, and fewer jobs than you’ll find in our city’s white communities. They don’t need to hear the numbers or read the reports; the evidence of Milwaukee’s rampant inequities is all around them, 24 hours a day.
Why should this be true, in a city doing well in many other respects? The answer is racism, and its vehicle is time. No group has a genetic predisposition to hardship. Over the centuries, however, consciously applied policies and unconsciously applied attitudes have forced African Americans to swim against the current for their entire tenure in this country. In the Q&A sessions, a high level of suspicion was evident among some of the Black participants.
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Why have so many African Americans settled on the city’s Northwest Side? I contend that they’re following the same outward migration path that took German families in the same direction more than a century ago. Not so, said one local resident; the real reason is that city and suburban authorities conspired to keep Blacks within narrow bounds from the very beginning. I also met a woman who’s convinced that Milwaukee has lost so many factories because their owners chose to shut down rather than create jobs that would attract more Black workers.
What suffers in this bleak assessment of our city’s history is citizenship. How can you feel a sense of ownership in a community that has only grudgingly accepted your presence and still withholds complete inclusion? Until the needle on Milwaukee’s scale of social indicators shows real movement, expecting broad buy-in would be pure folly.
That’s not the whole story from our Q&A sessions, I’m glad to say. A woman at the Washington Park library had nothing but praise for the county’s bus system. Another at the Center Street branch loved the festivals that fill Milwaukee’s summer months. And the written evaluations made it clear that a passion for local history knows no color line. “Great program,” responded one participant. “Thank Yahweh for history.” Another made a simple request: “More history, please.”
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And what have I learned from these forays outside my comfort zone? Plenty. I’ve gained a deeper appreciation for one of my city’s most important cultural groups and a more informed understanding of where we’re headed as a community. Our future will be radically more diverse than our past.
I have no illusions about the depth of my encounters or their ultimate impact. Every time I left a venue on North Avenue or Center Street for my safe home in Bay View, I was acutely aware of the gulf between where I had spoken and where I would sleep that night. That gulf is likely to persist, but I’m convinced that carrying the story of Black Milwaukee to the people of Black Milwaukee has been well worth both the effort and the risks.
The story isn’t easy to tell. One of the major threads in Black history, here and elsewhere, is an experience of continuing trauma. But pride and resilience are major themes as well. Telling the story in all its dimensions, even (or perhaps especially) when the teller is an old white guy, can be wonderfully permission-giving. Doors of dialogue open when honesty knocks; difficult but necessary discussions broaden the knowledge of everyone in the room. And why does that matter? Because knowledge is the prerequisite to understanding, and understanding is the necessary prelude to action.
What comes next? A series of one-off lectures seems insufficient for the importance of the story, and at every program, including the high school classes, I heard a desire for the narrative to take permanent form. With some trepidation, I’m responding. Working with Black talent and with Claudia Looze, my collaborator on the Making of Milwaukee series, I plan to create the most comprehensive video chronicle of our city’s African-American roots ever produced.
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Our one-hour public television documentary, projected to air next September, will tell the story of Black Milwaukee from the time of Joe Oliver, the African-American cook who worked for fur trader Solomon Juneau, to the Black Lives Matter movement of today. It’s a story every Milwaukeean should know. Please bear with us as the work proceeds, and get ready for what is sure to be an eye-opening experience next fall.
Reach Milwaukee writer and historian John Gurda at mail@johngurda.com.