On Murray Street, in 1974, I was unaware that there were lines, invisibly drawn on the streets, that separated whites, from blacks; rich from the poor; and the east from the west. We tricked and treated, at night, with no parents and no one was snatched, propositioned or attacked with a bladed apple.
When we moved from Murray Street or Oz, as I like to refer to it today, I had no idea I wouldn’t fit in “The Projects” of Westlawn. I hadn’t a clue, that I “talked funny, walked funny,” or that there was anything wrong at all with my having an odd obsession with Kiss posters, marrying Andy Gibb and fighting imaginary bullets as Wonder Woman, in the “ghetto!”
It was 1979 and my life changed markedly when we crossed the line into the West. Crossing that line was a forced choice, as my mother had to live where she could afford to live. We all know, where living is affordable, other costs of living are still high.
Everything that I knew was challenged. All of a sudden, I couldn’t play with the White kids, the few that were living in Westlawn at the time. All at once, I realized nothing would ever be the same, because not only were we in an area where everyone was mostly black, but we were in an area where anything outside of those prison-like structures, called “home,” was foreign.
Fast forward to 2010, I have lived all over the city, in some pretty poor places, where even the roaches weren’t friendly, to other areas, where I wondered if I’d fallen into utopia. Blogging about the changing tapestry of Milwaukee would be an opportunity to cross some lines again, this time, sharing my perspective of unique cultural sights (and insights), nuances, happenings, activity, and inactivity, as they occur or are presented to me.
There is no black Milwaukee. I’m sticking by this. However, being black in Milwaukee is a colorful experience that those who aren’t black in Milwaukee rarely get a glimpse of (perhaps intentionally, perhaps by default). My experiences, as a writer in this town (for more than 15 years), has allowed me to discover where I fit in, and where I may have to squeeze in. Still, Milwaukee has some untold stories, that are fun, heart wrenching, sad, silly and sometimes, solemn.
During my freshman year in college, my Sheboygan roommate, we’ll call her “Candy,” drew a line with her foot, on the carpet, in the middle of our dorm room. She said she never lived with a black person and really didn’t know how. She preferred I stayed on my side and she said she’d stay on hers. For anyone who knows me, they know, I have difficulty with boundaries.
I crossed her line often, sometimes when she was around, but mostly, dancing when she was absent. I danced a colorful, “na-na-nah-boo-boo” dance on her proverbial head. I knew that we both had to share in this experience, void of bizarre self-imposed boundaries.
Today, and in this blog, I go to places – “white-people” go. I eat food “white-people” eat and enjoy quite a bit of culture, “white-people” produce – though I am a proud Black woman and all. I cross community lines, daily, wantonly and brazenly. Not to be irritating or to cause mayhem of any sort, but because I too am Milwaukee. Since I don’t happen to see “Black Milwaukee” erupting from the concrete anytime, soon, we will just have to SHARE and agree to do some line crossing – and maybe even some line dancing.
