 |
|
|
Reuben Harpole grew up at 807 W. Somers St, in
the shadow of the Lay’s potato chips and the Wonder bread plants, a stone’s
throw from bustling Walnut St., where black-owned restaurants, haberdasheries
and other establishments thrived and the Regal Theater swung to the likes of
the Duke Ellington and Count Basie.bands.
Wiped out by “progress” – housing projects and a
freeway – this one-time hub of black Milwaukee lives only in memories now. It
served as a backdrop in the saga of the struggle for racial fairness and
justice in the city, as told by Harpole and other oldtimers at a forum the
other day.
A side show developed on Facebook when two days prior to the
event a young man replied with bahs and humbugs to the forum’s announcement.
“I see no record of impact they have [on] … epidemic
conditions of Black Milwaukee,” he wrote of the panelists, starting a string of
back-and-forth commentary
No doubt, members of my father’s generation would be
chuckling now. The curse parents secretly bestow on their troublesome offspring
– may you have children like you – has been fulfilled.
Back in the 1960s we young know-it-alls scoffed at our elders
for accommodating white racism. We confronted it. We marched and picketed and
sat in and demanded equal rights. We refused to scrape and bow. No, we weren’t
loud about our superiority – well, maybe a few of us were. Mostly we were
just quietly smug. We’re putting our bodies on the line, and you didn’t.
Now what goes around has come around. So a young man
attacks a panel of older activists, saying they did nothing for the cause of
racial justice, offering as Exhibit A the continuing blight in the neighborhood
around Coffee Makes You Black coffee house, 2803 N. Teutonia Ave., where the
forum took place. It was titled “Grizzled Black Men Discuss Their Historic and
Ongoing Struggle on Behalf of the Black Community.” The eight panelists were
all at least 70 years old.
Harpole, black Milwaukee’s oral historian, related pieces of
the struggle. He noted the epic push for open housing in the 1960s. And he told
of his involvement with The Milwaukee Star in an era when black weeklies were
fresh and urgent. He was the newspaper’s advertising director.
Paul Blackman, retired labor leader, recalled a flashpoint
in the marathon series of open housing marches, when it encountered violent
resistance on the white ethnic south side: “I was on the 16th Street
Bridge dodging bottles from some of our Polish neighbors.”
He related how he led A. O. Smith steelworkers on strike,
shutting down Chrysler, Ford and General Motors in the process. The Milwaukee
plant was the world’s largest maker of automobile frames. In the end, the union
got everything it wanted. The lesson: “If you are organized, anything is
possible.”
My generation was wrong – very wrong – about our elders. We
came to realize that it was on their shoulders that we stood as we fought
racism. Our parents forged strong families through much work and sacrifice and
gave the children the security and strength to permit them to challenge the
social order.
Besides, “accommodationist” oversimplifies that generation.
My own dad, for instance, refused to surrender his dignity when growing up
dirt-poor in Birmingham, Ala., a city synonymous with racial oppression. The
rule among kids was that, when the police came, you ran. But according to
family lore, my dad refused to run, to the exasperation of his playmates, especially
his older brother. My dad was polite in dealing with the police, but he stood
his ground.
My father’s generation emerged into adulthood in the 1940s;
the panelists did so the next decade, and my wisdom teeth broke out in the
‘60s. The civil rights revolution was mainly waged by the ’50s and ’60s
generation.
It is not crystal clear whether the Facebook critic is
attacking a whole generation. He faults two of the panelists by name – Harpole
and black business advocate Curtiss Harris – charging they have sat on economic
development boards with zero benefits for the black community. But he attacks
the panel as a whole, too. And since the panelists have been involved in
Milwaukee’s and the nation’s broad struggle for racial justice – from Martin
Luther King Jr., to Stokely Carmichael, to the Black Panthers – he seems to be
pooh-poohing that struggle.
Maybe what’s at work here is the intractability of racism –
a phenomenon the struggle brought to light. You get rid of Jim Crow and, as the
late NAACP leader Ben Hooks used to put it, his more sophisticated cousin – J.
Crow. Esquire – takes over. You integrate the city schools, then whites re-segregate by fleeing to the suburbs. Sharecropping replaces slavery, mass
imprisonment of black men replaces sharecropping.
In a post after the forum, the Facebook critic said many of
the panelists were in denial that the black communioty was in a state of
emergency. Trouble is, not one panel member expressed that opinion. In fact,
they went in the opposite direction. To wit:
-
Carl
Estrada – who was wheelchair-bound and who was an activist in Milwaukee,
Detroit and New York City – called Wisconsin the “third most racist state
in the country” and urged a grassroots movement to attack the problem.
Former
State Sen. Monroe Swan intoned, “The proportion of black imprisonment
in the state of Wisconsin. is the worst of any jurisdiction in this
country, thusly the greatest anywhere in the world.” America leads the
world in overall incarceration rate.
- Harpole
said getting black businesses a fair share of public contracts remains a
struggle. - Harris
said, “We didn’t have parity when it came to economics and we still
don’t.” - George
Sanders, artist and activist who once worked for The Milwaukee Star, spoke
only briefly, but his e-mail recipients know he consantly rants about the
sad state of black Milwaukee.
The other panelists were Harry Oden, a former Milwaukee
Public Schools principal and a basketball star at the University of Minnesota,
and Mason Bullock, a carpenter.
To be sure, the hard-fought civil rights movement fell far
short of its goal. As a rule, blacks still don’t enjoy the same life chances
that whites do. The battered, grizzled civil rights warriors are passing the
torch to a new generation. Now it’s up to the Facebook critic and his
peers to change the world. Criticism has its place, but, more importantly, they
must come up with their own goals, tactics and strategies. And they
shouldn’t be too surprised if decades hence a new cocky generation belittles
their efforts.
