Vel Phillips: Dream Big Dreams
is funded in part by the Greater Milwaukee Foundation,
Harvey E. and Harriet V. Vick Fund,
Helen Bader Foundation, Evjue Foundation, the charitable
arm of the Capital Times, Wisconsin Humanities Council
with funds from the National Endowment
for the Humanities, Brewers Community Foundation,
Milwaukee Chapter of The Links Incorporated,
and Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.
[dramatic music]
[conversations]
>> On an overcast day in August 1967
200 men, women, and children marched across
the 16th Street Viaduct in Milwaukee.
[shouting]
On the other side of the bridge, thousands of white residents
were waiting.
♪ ♪
They shouted racist taunts, hurled firecrackers, rocks,
and bodily fluids.
Although they were battered and scared, the activists
marched again the next night and the next
and the next.
The marchers demanded what they believed was a basic right:
the freedom to live in any neighborhood regardless of
the color of your skin.
They called it Open Housing.
The public struggle for Open Housing in Milwaukee
had started five years earlier, when one woman decided it was
time for a change.
>> You are aware gentlemen that the eyes of nation,
indeed, the eyes of the world, are upon Milwaukee.
>> Her name was Vel Phillips.
>> It was like, this is my work.
>> She did things that were unheard of for her time.
>> Vel Phillips was the first African American woman to
graduate from the University of Wisconsin
Law School.
The first African American and first female alderman
in Milwaukee.
The first African American judge in Wisconsin.
The first African American and first female to be elected
to statewide executive office in Wisconsin
or anywhere in the United States.
>> This is huge.
It's just remarkable.
She surprised a lot of people.
>> But for a time, Phillips nearly lost everything that
she had worked a lifetime to achieve.
>> Big mistake.
It was not a wise thing to do.
>> Vel Phillips combined a fierce commitment
to her principles with an aristocratic grace.
And in the end, she forced her city
and her country to come closer to the ideals
that motivated her life.
>> When we measure it all up at the end of the day,
Vel Phillips is a great hero.
>> My mother would always tell us, "If you really want it,
don't dream small dreams, dream big dreams."
♪ ♪