NAACP Youth Council Sweatshirt
The NAACP Youth Council sweatshirt serves as a reminder of a period of unrest in Milwaukee’s history and as a symbol of a movement for change in the city’s housing laws. The Youth Council, along with Father James Groppi, utilized a strategy of non-violent protests, culminating in a two-hundred-day campaign of marches throughout the summer of 1967 and into
1968 that made Milwaukee a focus of national attention for the Civil Rights Movement.
In Milwaukee during the 1960’s, African-Americans and other minority groups found it difficult to obtain housing outside their own neighborhoods. Vel Phillips, the first woman and the first African-American elected to the Milwaukee Common Council, proposed an open housing ordinance in 1962, but the legislation was repeatedly voted down.
Father Groppi and the Youth Council offered their help by staging non-violent demonstrations in support of the legislation. The protests began at aldermen’s residences and grew to become larger, city-wide demonstrations. Two such demonstrations led Father Groppi and the Youth Council across the 16th street viaduct, a bridge spanning the Menomonee River Valley, which separated largely black neighborhoods to the north from white neighborhoods to the south. Thousands of counter-demonstrators threw debris, yelled obscenities and held up proclaiming Father Groppi the “Black God,” among other things.
By the spring of 1968, the protests had garnered national attention but had produced little change in the housing laws of the city. However, the events in Milwaukee and other cities around the country showed lawmakers that change was needed. The assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in April 1968 was the tragic push that turned the Civil Rights Act of 1968 into law. Milwaukee finally followed suit later that month, with open housing legislation that was stronger than that on the federal level.
For more information on the housing marches of 1968:
Rozga, Margaret. “March on Milwaukee.”, Wisconsin Magazine of History, Summer (2007): 28-39.
Aukofer, Frank. City with a Chance. Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing Co., 1968.