6SWF0000_Sifting and Winnowing and Film Burning Transcript.rtf

- Hello, and welcome. I'm Jon Miskowski, Director of PBS Wisconsin. In partnership with UW-Madison's Public History Project and the UW Archives, we present "Sifting and Winnowing and Film Burning." In 1962, Lloyd Barbee, Stuart Hanisch, and others sought to show housing discrimination through a film that included hidden camera footage. Privacy concerns by UW administration sealed that film for nearly 60 years. That suppression prompted national attention at the time and protests across Wisconsin. 

Through the efforts of UW digital and media archivist Cat Phan, and UW-Madison Public History Project director Kacie Lucchini Butcher, the original reels have been unsealed for this premiere tonight. 

The film and audio have aged, but thanks to our engineers working with our colleagues at UW Comm Arts, they have worked to restore the content to make it understandable for audiences. 

While the content is obscured by age, the archive is still a powerful witness. Thanks for joining us as we share this story. 

Tonight, we're using a tool called OVEE. In this tool, you can post comments and questions for the panelists in the chatbox to the right of your screen, and if you have any technical difficulties during the screening, you can ask for help in the chat. 

Some folks in our audience tonight have strong connections to the filmmakers and the film, and we encourage them to use the chat to introduce themselves and share their stories. 

PBS Wisconsin continues our focus on racial and social justice. You can tune in to PBS Wisconsin for continuing broadcasts, and at our website, you can find our racial justice resource page with content and resources for schools, family, and community groups. 

So welcome, and here's UW-Madison digital and media archivist, Cat Phan. 

- Good evening, everyone. I'm Cat Phan, digital and media archivist for the University Archives at UW-Madison. I am so excited for tonight and to learn from the stories and expertise of all of our panelists. I was asked to briefly summarize how this latest chapter in the story of this film, "Racial Discrimination in Housing," got started, so tonight, we're going to start at the university archives. Although the film reels have been living quietly inaccessible in the archive stacks these 60 years, the lore of the film has lived on and on beyond the walls of the university. I became aware of the film a few years ago when the archives received a question from a documentary filmmaker who said to us, "I'm working on a segment on housing for my film, "and was told that in the 1950s, "the UW made a film with law students and Lloyd Barbee "that demonstrated how pervasive "housing discrimination was at the time, "but then the film was confiscated and locked away in the archives," and they asked us, "What do you know about the film? "Do you still have it? Is it available? Can I see it?" 

This filmmaker got some of the details wrong, as we learned, but we did look into it. I talked to the university archivist at the time, and he said, "Yes, I know of this film. We do have it, but it's restricted." 

We double-checked the description we had of the film, and it said restricted. We pulled the boxes with the film, and all the boxes were stamped restricted, so quick note on restrictions in the archives. When things are restricted, in simplest terms, it means that people are not permitted to see it. Now, there are materials in the archival collections that may be restricted for valid reasons. For example, there may be materials that contain private information, such as social security numbers or medical information, or a collection may contain information on a vulnerable community, such as undocumented individuals. 

But for this film, we had no clear notes documenting why, who, or for how long these restrictions were to be in place, so we looked into it a little further. I won't go into detail because the next speaker will, but the short version is that we learned the university had approved and then later claimed objection to the techniques used to capture some of the footage in the film, so ended up taking the film and locking it away, quote, under seal in the university archives. 

Now, we felt that these were not valid reasons for restriction, and that those reasons should be challenged, so we challenged them. For us, that meant putting a case together, and sending it to the Madison Office of Legal Affairs, asking if they would review the decision, and if we could have permission to remove the restrictions. The Madison office checked with the UW System legal counsel because this situation involved the Board of Regents at the time, and eventually, after a lengthy analysis, responded back to us saying, "Yes, these restrictions can be lifted, "and the archives can provide access to this film "according to your standard policies," which was really great and welcome news. 

From there, it was a matter of getting the film digitized, which was a journey unto itself. The archives thanks all those who helped with that process, including our friends at the UW-Madison Public History Project, PBS Wisconsin, and the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, and so with that quick setup, it's now my job and my pleasure to introduce the next speaker, UW-Madison Public History Project director Kacie Lucchini Butcher. 

- Hi, all. My name is Kacie Lucchini Butcher, as Cat said, and I'm so excited to be here with you all to share a little bit more about the research behind this film and some of the history behind this film. And it has been a long time coming for us to get to this day, so I can tell you that all of us who worked on it are just absolutely thrilled to be able to share this history with you today. So, as Cat said, I'm the director of the UW-Madison Public History Project, so just a little background on that project.

The project came out of a 2018 report that detailed the history of two groups on campus in the 1920s who bore the name of the Ku Klux Klan. The project was created to expand upon this work and to investigate the histories of exclusion, discrimination, and resistance at the university. 

Part of our mission statement is shown here. Our aim is to recover and acknowledge the history of exclusion on campus through the voices of those who experienced and resisted it. 

In the process of researching housing discrimination, particularly the immense challenges faced by students on campus, Cat Phan told me about this film. I immediately became invested, and began researching its history and working with Cat to be able to share it with you all tonight, so let's get back to the history. 

I'm going to start by giving you just a little bit of background and showing you some archival documents, and a really special thanks to Stu Levitan for researching and writing about this history in his book "Madison in the Sixties." 

The film UW restricted was originally tentatively titled "Racial Discrimination in Housing in a Mid-Sized Northern City," and here are some of the stills from the film you're gonna see tonight. It all began back in 1961 when Lloyd Barbee, pictured here on the left, approached the UW Bureau of Audio-Visual Information to produce a film on housing discrimination in Madison. From the beginning, he was clear. He planned to use undercover filming techniques to capture the unvarnished truth of housing discrimination in the city. 

After getting approval from the UW Board of Regents and securing funding, Stuart Hanisch, pictured on the right, joined onto the project to produce the film. The concept was that Black and white actors posing as renters would respond to housing ads across the city. Hanisch would then use hidden microphones and cameras to document housing discrimination in real-time. Between September and December of 1961, Hanisch filmed 13 interactions between actors and homeowners. 

After a screening of the rough cut, the university said it could not, quote, "in good conscience release the film," citing primarily privacy concerns. 

The rough cut is what we'll be showing you this evening. 

In an effort to salvage the film project, Hanisch and Barbee proposed to block the faces and house numbers in the film. UW rejected this proposal. 

Hanisch and Barbee also asked to purchase the film rights so that it could be released without UW's participation. UW also rejected this proposal. 

UW vowed to move forward and make the film using actors and reenactments to better protect the privacy of those originally filmed. 

On the right is a newspaper article from the "Daily Cardinal," the details of the negotiations between Barbee and UW. On the left, you can see Dean Adolfson, and on the right is Lloyd Barbee. 

In response, Hanisch resigned in protest. In a written statement, he said, "I do not, in all honesty, feel that I can participate in the university's perfidy. I have no alternative that can honor the numerous parties who have given so willingly their financial support and time to bring about the realization of this film." He continued, "I have no alternative that honors my own self-respect except to tender my resignation of my current appointment to the faculty." 

In response, then-president Conrad Elvehjem released a statement. He said, quote, "The historic freedom of the University of Wisconsin faculty members to seek the truth and publish their findings has resulted in great advances in almost every line of endeavor. It is our belief that such freedom extends to films, and that properly used, film techniques can be a potent force for social progress." 

He continued, quote, "To me, and to others at the university, the use of hidden cameras and microphones to force individuals to testify against themselves has overtones of the police state and violates a basic freedom guaranteed in our constitution." 

I could probably go into that quote and unpack that all night, but I'll let you all sit with that for a little bit. 

It's interesting to note that in 1931, Elvehjem publicly supported racial covenants in the Nakoma neighborhood of Madison. These covenants were a powerful legal tool that barred people of color from owning or occupying houses in large swaths of Madison. 

Local news media was quick to note, however, that UW appeared to be acting with what they called a moral, not a legal judgment of the film controversy. Many newspapers used the following quote: "The state of Wisconsin has no privacy law, and the state Supreme Court has not recognized a common-law right of privacy."

So, to be very clear, what Hanisch and Barbee were doing was not illegal at the time, and UW would have been well within its legal bounds to release the film.

As the controversy mounted, the NAACP picketed the UW-Extension offices in Madison and at other Extension sites across the state of Wisconsin, including Kenosha, Racine, and Milwaukee. 

Among those picketing the Extension offices, the wife of one Extension bureau chief and the son of another. When I first saw this newspaper article and read the details, honestly, my first thought was, "That must've been a pretty awkward dinner conversation that night." 

So, where did this whole idea of film burning come from? Clearly, we're gonna show you the film, so it wasn't burned, but UW had publicly stated that they planned to film reenactments based on a certified typescript, and then they would, quote, "Dispose of the original footage." 

This got mistranslated to the public, and somehow word spread that UW planned to burn the film once the reenactments were complete. There was such an uproar that UW then publicly clarified that they would not burn the film, but instead, they would send it to the UW Archives and restrict it from being publicly accessible. T
he public reacted swiftly to the rumors of the film burning. UW administrators were flooded with letters and phone calls voicing concerns over UW's handling of the controversy.

 I chose this letter, which was written by a Dodge County judge and a UW alumni, Joseph Schultz. I pulled this 'cause I think it has a couple good quotes. 

One of his first ones is, "The burning of films, like the burning of honest books, is not in the Wisconsin tradition." He goes on, and he notes that Mr. White, who was part of the Bureau of Audio-Visual Instruction, said that he sincerely doubted that anybody could make this film and not get in trouble. 

Schultz's response was, quote, "Mr. White should be made aware of the fact that troubles have plagued most truth-seekers, including Aldo Leopold, Newton, Socrates, and Jesus Christ." 

He also ends by noting that privacy law is not tort in the state of Wisconsin, and his direct quote is that, "Truth is a defense to any action of libel." 

Opinion was really split on the film controversy at the time. I'm gonna take a quote from Stu Levitan 'cause he put it so aptly: "This controversy really split what we would consider traditional allies during the time." 

The Wisconsin Civil Liberties Union voted unanimously to support the administration and condemned the hidden cameras and microphones as a, quote, "Unwarranted invasion of privacy." 

The Americans for Democratic Action sided with the NAACP and called for the film's release, praising Hanisch for his quote, "Courage, honesty, and integrity." 

The UW Student Senate sided with the UW administration, and urged the university to continue investigating housing discrimination, quote, "By all methods which do not infringe on the civil liberties of individuals." 

The "Daily Cardinal," with a new sophomore editor, strongly endorsed the NAACP proposal to show the original film, but with the identities and addresses obscured as a quote, "Reasonable resolution to a thorny conflict." "Reenactments," the "Cardinal" editorialized, would, quote, "seriously detract from the impact of the film," while retaining the documentary aspect would, quote, "graphically illustrate the need for tougher fair housing laws." 

The film quickly gained national controversy when U.S. Representative Clayton Powell, a Black Democrat from New York, demanded a copy of the film and threatened to pursue a subpoena to get it. On the right is the original telegram he sent to UW. 

UW refused Powell's request, calling it a publicity stunt, and they released the following statement: "The university will stand firm in its resolve not to release any materials, film or otherwise, that can enable identification of individuals committing discriminatory acts." 

UW held strong in its conviction, and the film was restricted. In April of 1962, the UW Archives received 10 cans of film reels and magnetic tape with a letter that stated, quote, "These materials are not to be used or released "except on the specific authorization "of the university administration." 

As Cat noted, these are the boxes that they were stored in. I snapped a photo. The red ink that you see, that's the restricted stamp that's all over these. There's also, on the side, you'll notice a little skull and crossbones. We're unsure if that's related to the contents of the film. We're unsure if it's related to the film's condition, which films deteriorate over time, but clearly, whoever pulled these boxes would have been given a symbol that these were restricted. 

One of the questions I've repeatedly been asked is: would anybody at the time at UW would have thought this was a bad idea? Would anybody have doubted that the film should have been restricted? 

Wanted to bring up an example of a controversy that came to UW soon after the film controversy. After the film was restricted, there was a controversy surrounding segregation in Greek life on campus the following fall, in October of 1962. Beloit's chapter of the Delta Gamma sorority had pledged a Black student and then kicked her out of the sorority, citing their national constitution, which forbid Black members. 

In response, UW-Madison moved to remove the Delta Gamma sorority from the UW-Madison campus completely. Embroiled in yet another national-level controversy, then-president Fred Harvey Harrington received another mass of letters and phone calls, including the one pictured here. A self-described concerned housewife wrote to Harrington expressing concern that the university was always conceding to the desires of the NAACP. In response, Harrington said, "But as to your main point," quote, "you may rest assured that we are not yielding to pressure from the CORE or the NAACP. Have you heard of our stand on the housing film case?" 

I found this letter while researching the Delta Gamma case, and was kind of awestruck by the relation to the housing film. My first and only thought was, "Wow," and my second thought was, "I need to find Cat and show this to her," and I think it shows that UW saw this as a place where they did take a stand against someone who they would have traditionally been allies with. 

UW did eventually move forward with the making of the film without Hanisch or Barbee. Jackson Tiffany, from the Bureau of Audio-Visual Information was assigned the project. Tiffany hired actors, who reenacted four scenes from Barbee and Hanisch's original film footage. 

The film was released in the fall of 1963, and it briefly reignited the controversy around the film. These are stills from the film, and the film did not receive positive praise when it was released. This could have been because of the controversy, but many of the people who were in support of remaking the film were the ones who were also giving it bad press when it came out. I pulled a couple quotes from newspapers: 

"Gone was the suspense and spontaneity." 

"It raised more questions than it answered." 

"Quite punchless." 

"It will substantiate views already held by some viewers, not challenge them." 

I had the opportunity to watch Tiffany's film and to see the reenactments, and I have to agree with Barbee and Hanisch. A lot of the punch was lost in the film. I mean, it really is a different film experience, and I think that last comment about substantiating views, it really showed a lot of racist housing incidents, but didn't challenge why people shouldn't hold those views. 

Then the film kind of faded out back into the analogues of history, and here we are today to finally show it to you all. 

There's a couple notes I wanted to share with you about the film before you see it. The video, the visual and audio quality are poor. Part of this is due to filming techniques. You have to remember they were doing undercover filming techniques in 1962, so much of the filming was done in the back seat of a car, and the passage of time. The film has been sitting in the archives, and films do degrade over time. 

It has been captioned so that it's easier for you to view, and so that you can better understand the audio. 

Narrator captions have been added to help convey the film's original intent. You will not hear a narrator audio, as it was never recorded, but you will see narrator captions on the bottom of your screen. 

And I just wanna confirm this film has never before been seen. You are part of the public who is viewing this film for the first time in 59 years, and we could not be more excited to show it to you, so we've finally arrived at the moment you've probably all been waiting for. We're going to show you Barbee and Hanisch's rough cut of the film they made in 1962. 

Please stay tuned after the film for a panel discussion with two of Lloyd Barbee's children, Daphne and Rustam, as well as Vanessa McDowell, the CEO of the Madison YWCA, and Betty Banks, a born-and-raised Madisonian community leader and local historian. Without further ado, let's roll the film. 

- Mr. A: Oh, I'm sorry, talked to your wife, and I'm interested in seeing the apartment for rent. 

- Mr. B: Well, I'm not gonna rent it to you.

- Mr. A: I beg your pardon?

- Mr. B: I'm not gonna rent it to you. 
[footsteps clunking]

- Mr. C: Hello, hey, we'd like to see the apartment you have here for rent.

- Mr. D: No.

- Mr. C: Huh?

- Mr. D: No.

- Mrs. C: Don't have the apartment?

- Mr. D: No, I don't.

- Mr. C: Well, you rent it out already or what?

- Mr. D: No, but it's spoken for.

- Mr. C: It's spoken for?

- Mr. D: Yeah.

- Mr. C: This is for sure?

- Mr. D: No, it's not for sure.

- Mr. C: Well-

- Mr. D: But I'll tell you-

- Mr. C: Uh-huh?

- Mr. D: I'm sorry, but I can't let you have it. Not in this neighborhood.

- Mr. C: Uh, why is that? The people in this neighborhood or are...

- Mr. D: Yeah. I guess you know why. 

- Well-

- I'm sorry it's that way, but I don't wanna have trouble with my neighbors. 

- Mr. C: Okay, well, thank you. 

- Mrs. E: He's a salesman, and we, my husband showed him the apartment, and I think he's going to take it.

- Mr. A: I see. Well-

- Mrs. E: It is, it's strange. It was just a coincidence, but it happened.

- Mr. A: I guess I'd sort of assumed that since I'd called and made the appointment, that you would probably hold it, at least until I got here.

- Mrs. E: Yes, well, it's just one of those things. We're kind of anxious to get rid of them. 
[indistinct] so...

- Mr. A: I see. Well, thank you. 

- Mr. A: Hi, Mr. How are you?

- [Mr. F speaks faintly]

- Mr. A: I called your wife earlier about renting the apartment next door 
[indistinct].

- Mr. F: Yeah, yeah, she was telling me.

- Mr. A: Uh-huh?

- Mr. F: Well, I'm sorry, we don't feel that we can rent to colored people.

- Mr. A: Oh, why not?

- Mr. F: Uh, some of the other people... Myself, I don't have anything against you, anything like that. 
[indistinct]

- Mr. A: Well, have you checked with the other people and...

- No.

- All righty. 
[footsteps clunking]

- Ms. H: Ooh, back into the cold. All right, then, we'll call you on Saturday morning.

- So tomorrow morning then.

- That's tomorrow morning.

- Yeah.

- Uh-huh.

- Ms. G: About what time?

- Mr. G: Oh, I'm there from eight in the morning until noon.

- Ms. H: All right.

- Mr. I: So I'll be there all during the morning, and just give me a call there.

- All right.

- All right.

- Okay?

- Okay.

- Ms. G: I think [indistinct].

- Mr. I: Oh, all right.

- Ms. G: Bye now. 
[car door slams]

- Mr. A: Well, thank you. 

[indistinct] around?

- Mr. J: I don't believe so. I don't know the man.

- Mr. A: I see.

- Mr. G: That may be his station wagon there [indistinct].

- Mr. A: I beg your pardon?

- Mr. G: That may be his station wagon across there. 

- Ms. K: Hi.

- Ms. H: Hello.

- Ms. K: We were interested in renting the apartment upstairs, and we were wondering if the rental agents have been around, if you know anything about it at all.

- Ms. G: We had telephoned before, and he spoke-

- Ms. K: Oh, Mr. Dickerson-

- Ms. G: Is that? Oh. 
[chuckles]

- Ms. H: Well, sorry to disturb you.

- Ms. K: [indistinct] anyway.

- Mr. L: Hi.

- Hello.

- Hello there. My brother called before about renting the apartment.

- Mr. L: Oh yeah, yeah. I'll see if I got the key here. Have the key? Oh good.

- There you go.

- Mr. L: Thank you, Mary.

- Ms. G: Thank you.

- Ms. H: Thank you. 

- Mr. L: You wanna grab that key, son?

- Mr. M: Yeah, I'll get it. 

- [Mr. L speaks faintly]

- Ms. G: Could you tell me what this is?

- Mr. L: Oh, this is [indistinct]. 
[footsteps clicking]

- Ms. G: Hi, we're looking for the rental agent. Do you know if he's around at all?

- Man: No. Office is closed till Monday.

- Ms. G: The office is closed until Monday. Do you know what time it's open on Monday? 

- Hello

- How do you do?

- Woman: Um, I came by on Friday about an apartment that you had listed, I thought, in the paper on Friday. Is it possible that I might see it?

- Woman: Well, I can show you one [indistinct].

- Woman: We wanted to see it together, but we were told that you didn't open on Saturdays or Sundays, so... 
[footsteps clopping]

- Mr. O: This is the one advertised for 14 nine?

- Mr. P: 14 nine, yeah.

- Mr. O: Mm-hmm. 

- [woman speaking faintly]

- Hello.

- Hello. 
[door clunks]

Oh, come right in. 
[indistinct]

- Mr. P: I heard him yelling. 
[woman speaking indistinctly]

Oh, that's too bad. 
[door clunks]

[people speaking faintly]
 
[footsteps clopping]

- Mr. O: Mm-hmm. 

- Mr. P: [indistinct] a dining room space, and, of course, this way to the basement. Do you wanna see the basement?

- Mr. O: Yes, yes, we might as well have a look.

- Mr. P: All right, bye, Norma. 
[people speaking faintly]

- Mr. O: Thank you. 

- Man: There. Hi.

- Mr. R: Hello there, Mr.

- Mr. O: Yep.

- Mr. R: Mr. Allen.

- Mr. O: How do you do?

- Mr. R: She isn't home, so I don't know what we can do.

- Mr. O: She isn't home yet?

- Mr. R: No, their kids are getting out of school over there, and she's always home with them. She ought to be home by this time. She may not be home till four. Might not be home 4:30. I don't know.

- Mr. O: I'd like to see it. I don't know. Well, somebody's inside there.

- Mr. R: A little kid might be home, I suppose. I just called again before I left the house. 
[door clunks]

- Oh, there you are. How are you?

- I just called. Did you just get home?

- Mr. T: Just now, yeah.

- Yeah, you just came home now.

- Some way or another, [indistinct], but I'm sure she should be home tonight. In fact, I'll even come over for that and give her the pitch, and the background, and everything, and... But when these people come to see [indistinct]neighbor's house. Of course, they'd come and defend their property values. Now, you know-

- Well, the problem is they don't stop to ask their neighbors. Their neighbors might not even care. They don't know that for certain.

- Mr. V: Oh, yeah. I think you'll learn, if you haven't looked around this town much, you haven't, obviously, have you?

- No, I haven't.

- Mr. V: Yeah, you'll-

- Mr. U: And, uh, what do you do [indistinct]?

- Mr. O: I work for Farmer's Mutual. Well, I guess you don't have anything.

- Mr. U: I'm sorry, honest to God, we are very low [indistinct]. 

- Mr. O: Well, okay. Thanks a lot.

- Mr. U: You bet. 
[traffic rumbling]

- Thank you all so much for being in attendance today. I hope you all enjoyed the film. I hope the hype was worth it. We were so happy to be able to share this with you all today. 

Now we're gonna move into the next portion of our program, which is having a panel conversation with some very distinguished guests. First, I'd like to introduce two of Lloyd Barbee's children, Daphne Barbee-Wooten, an attorney, and Rustam Barbee, also an attorney. If you'd like to see more details and information, all of our panelists are so accomplished I'm not gonna read out their full bios. They are available below your screen. 

Now, over to Daphne and Rustam to share a little bit more about the film and its place in their family, and also their initial reactions to learning that it was unrestricted. 

- Aloha, everyone. My name is Daphne Barbee-Wooten, and I'm in Hawaii right now, but as I watched the film I had a lot of sadness and joy mixed together. Sadness because they almost got away with it. They almost burned and evaporated the film, and it was the film... 

A picture tells a thousand stories, and this film demonstrates reality in Madison in those days, that a lot of African American students could not get housing, that housing discrimination was very prominent in Madison, and the way to prove this, of course, is actually have the film, or nowadays we have videos. Thank goodness we have videos, and iPhones, and all kinds of phones where you can actually film racism, and so there was the sadness is that they almost got away with it, but then there's joy because they didn't. 

Because now, 60 years later, and even though my father has passed, and Mr. Hanisch has passed, all of you are able to see the film, and make comments on it, and understand what was going on in the '60s, so that was my initial reaction, and also, I'm sure, I'm sorry that my father didn't live to see this day, but he paved the way for a lot of the anti-discrimination laws, and it didn't stop him, even though the university was trying to banish it and hide it, he went on, and won election, and helped to get the fair housing laws established, so thank all of you for finding it. I just love that. 

- Yes, good evening, everybody. I'm Rustam Barbee. I'd also like to thank Cat Phan and Kacie Butcher for their efforts in locating and lifting the veil from the cover up and hiding this important film. 

Also, I believe that George Allez, who participated in the film project with Stuart Hanisch and my dad, is participating here this evening also, so I'd like to thank George and say hello to him. I believe Stu Hanisch's son is also present. I'd like to say greetings to him also, so boy, isn't that something that the University of Wisconsin, the student assembly, the ACLU, and the Unitarian Church, as reported by Stuart Levitan, all supported hiding this documentary film. 

In doing such, they made a choice to support the interest of protecting the identity of bigots and racists over the interest of Black people to get housing in Madison, Wisconsin, so the restriction, and the label restricted with the skull and crossbones on the boxes of the film smack of J. Edgar Hoover. 

My dad was not timid in calling out racism and bigots during his lifetime, and he often spoke to Daphne and me about who he called phony white liberals who paid lip service to civil rights, but when push came to shove, their support was not there anymore, so I really do appreciate the film being uncovered, and now people can see it, and thanks again. 

- Thank you both so much for being here, and Daphne, I wanted to put you on the spot really quick. Can you tell us and tell the audience a little bit more about why this film was so important to your father and the kind of place it has in making your family? 

- Okay, well, this film is very important. As I stated earlier, it's evidence. It's actual proof. An actor, an act, wouldn't do the same, wouldn't be the same thing. It's raw footage, and he was the president of the NAACP in Madison at the time. NAACP raised funds for the film. The film was gonna be shown in Madison at the Union. They had gathered the crowd. They were ready to show. It was a very exciting moment, and it was proof that there needed to be fair housing laws in Wisconsin, and to have it pulled under the rug was very disappointing to my father, to say the least, as well as to Mr. Hanisch and George Allez. 

It's important to... It's historical, of course, but in our family, it was important. It wasn't something he dwelled on. He did talk about it, but he didn't dwell on it. What he did is he just went on and became a state legislator, and fought for fair housing, and fought against discrimination, so it motivated him, and in some way, I think he always thought one day it's gonna come to light. I mean, that's what I believe. He didn't say that to us. 

He didn't spend a lot of time on that negativity, that it was taken from them, but he and Stu Hanisch became very good friends, as well as George Allez, I think friends for life because of what happened, and I understand Mr. Hanisch quit his lofty position as a professor of film in University of Wisconsin, but yeah, it was one, it's a piece of the puzzle, but it isn't the full puzzle, the full lifespan, but it's a very important part that was hidden for so long, and so again, I wanna thank all of you for bringing this forth, and you know what it makes me do? It makes me wonder how many other films have been banned or have been hidden with the skull and crossbones. Makes me wonder.

- We'll let the curious archivists in the crowd maybe do some digging in their respective archives and see what else we can find. I'd like to introduce next our other two panelists, so first up, we have Betty Banks. As I said earlier, Betty Banks is a born-and-raised Madisonian. She's a community leader and a local historian. If you wanna know more about her bio, you can, again, see that information below, and Betty, just to start, tell me what your initial reactions were to seeing this film. Oh, you're muted, Betty. 
[chuckles]

- I had three reactions, actually. First of all, I wanna say that I was 17 years old at the time that there was a sit-in at the Capitol that Lloyd Barbee led, and it took place from June through August, and it was for a human rights bill. My grandmother was the oldest person to sit in, and she was 85, but that's, I thought about that, the fact that Lloyd Barbee was one of our heroes, and we all were proud that he took the positions that he took. 

I also thought it was interesting that the young girl that was in this film, I think that in the work that I do with families, I often talk about how we need to take opportunities to talk about discrimination, and here this young girl was living that experience, and what an opportunity to be able to talk with her about discrimination, and so I am very appreciative that it has been shown. It needs to be part of our history of fighting for human rights because it certainly laid the groundwork for other things to happen. 

- Thank you so much for that, and I'll introduce our last panelist here, Vanessa McDowell, again, such an incredible record, so I'm not gonna read her whole bio, but you can see it below. Vanessa McDowell is currently the CEO of the YWCA Madison, and she's really a proven leader, not only in the human services field, but also in the city of Madison, so Vanessa, what were your kind of initial reactions to seeing this?

- Yeah, thank you. Well, first of all, I wanna thank you all for uncovering this. I mean, I think this is something that continues to need to get uncovered, and to your point, Daphne, I was thinking the same thing: How many other things do we need to go into the archives and find? But what it brought to mind were a couple things. 

When you were looking at the neighborhoods, I was looking in the chat, and people are starting to recognize a little bit some of the neighborhoods, and what's interesting is that the same thing, it's like the remnants of what we saw then is still playing out today in Madison, so those same neighborhoods are still white. 

When you talked about the, I appreciate you talking about the covenants 'cause that was a real thing where it specifically stated that colored people were not allowed in this area or in this neighborhood, and I know specifically you pointed out Nakoma, and that's interesting because my mom was a housing discrimination tester in the '80s, and so she actually went out and was doing these testings, and she was doing it in the Nakoma neighborhood, which I see now is because of these covenants, right? 

And so it's interesting, I think, to see how, as we're talking about liberal Madison or progressive Madison, as often we're known as, is not so progressive, and I think we'll get into a conversation about how things today are still not too far. Yes, we may not have the blatant covenants that we had then, but there's still a lot of things that are happening today that are causing housing discrimination, specifically for the African American community here in Madison. 

- Yes, and that is what we're gonna be talking about today, so when we first started moving to get this film digitized and get it released, we wanted to make sure that, to talk to Lloyd's family, and when I spoke to Daphne and said, "How do we best honor the intention of your father's legacy? "How do we honor his legacy, the intentions of the original film?" 

She said, "You know, the history is important, obviously, but we wanna make sure to continue the conversation, not pretend that this is all just history." 

So, that's what our panel discussion really will focus on today. If you have any questions, feel free to drop them in the chats, and we will pose them. It can be for the whole panel or individual members of the panel. I'm gonna start with a question here first, so I think it may be easy for some in the audience to say or think, "Well, I'm glad that kind of thing "isn't happening in Madison anymore," or, "That was a really different time." Can you talk about how we're still seeing housing discrimination in the Madison community today, and really in the country as a whole? 

- I can jump in. 
[laughs]

Well, kind of continuing on with what I was saying, I think what's interesting, actually, ironically, our mayor just put out an article in regards to sort of some of the housing discrimination that we're still seeing within Madison, Dane County, and there's always sort of these plans that are put together. 

I'm gonna be bold enough to say that a lot of times the plans are put together without us at the table, which I think is problematic, and so my challenge would be that we need our voices there to talk about the experiences that we have had, ourselves, with housing discrimination here in Madison, to change the narrative here and change the story. 

What I think is interesting, too, is in doing some research, I would offer folks if you ever wanna kind of look at some data, specifically to Madison, there is a report out, and it's called the "Impediments to Fair Housing Choice," and it is sort of in draft form. I think they're still working through it, but it does give a lot of statistics around race in housing, as well as mortgages, which I think is another conversation around who's getting lended to, and who's not, and why, and so we're still seeing that African Americans are still at the bottom of lending options, as well as we're still at the bottom in terms of owning homes. I think the latest stats I saw were about 15% of Blacks in Madison own homes, which is not good, and then, when you think about, I'm always passionate about how do we start building generational wealth within the Black community? 

Because it doesn't exist, right? Because of various things that have happened through history, and when you think about all the way back to 40 acres and a mule that we were promised, we didn't get that. The GI Bill, we didn't get that. Then you got the Fair Housing Act that was supposed to be enacted, but there were so many covenants and things that were put into place that caused us also not to get that. We couldn't get housing, and so that stuff still plagues us today, and when you think about how the economic piece plays into that as well, that we're also at the bottom when it comes to poverty, when it comes to jobs, so it's a holistic approach we need to look at in terms of how we're gonna change this narrative here, specifically in Madison. It can't just be a one-sort-of-off approach. It's gotta be a lot of things that are changing at the same time. 

- It's been some time since I lived in Madison. I left in 1989, but I did go to school there at Madison West Junior High School, and at that time, the redlining in Madison, most of the Blacks lived on the south side off of Park Street. My Uncle Raymond lived there. I don't know how much it's changed. I suspect quite a bit. It didn't have the strict redlining that Milwaukee had, but generally speaking, Blacks were on the south side of Madison at that time. 

- I'd like to add the, about the stories that I have heard from families, and we're always talking about affordable housing, and the stories that families who don't have the resources to be able to live anywhere they wanna live are often shuffled into certain neighborhoods. They end up with landlords who do not take care of their properties, and oftentimes, the neighborhoods that Madison is building affordable housing in are under-resourced: no grocery store, no school. 

We know what features make a neighborhood alive and vibrant, and too often, these apartment complexes and affordable housing is built in under-resourced neighborhoods, and I think it's interesting, also, that these are the stories from many families who are under-resourced. Many of my friends who want to purchase homes, their biggest obstacles come from lenders and Realtors, and so what we're seeing is just a real cross section of how we're kept out of the housing market. 

- I agree with what you're saying, Betty, 'cause if you notice, if you recall in the film, there's this part where they go into a Realtor's office, and they are asking to buy a home, or what homes are available, and they say, "None," but then, when a white person walks in there, it's, "Oh, we have a bunch of homes for you to look at," so yeah, access to that data, although it has gotten better because now you can go on the Internet and see which homes are available, but back then you couldn't, but also, Realtors who may steer you someplace where you don't want to go or not show you a house that you're interested in, and of course, these, I think there needs to be more complaints about what happens with that. 

And, in fact, I still own my father's house in Milwaukee, and it's a ZIP code 53212, so one day, I got a bill from the insurance company that doubled the amount that I paid the year before, and I asked why, and they said, "Because your ZIP code is 53212 and there's been a lot of fires in that area." I said, "Well, I've been with you for how many years? There's been no claim. You can't just increase the rate," and so I did complain, and got, you know what? I just changed insurance 'cause these days you don't have to put up with that, but there's a lot of people who don't know any better. They don't know that you can complain. They don't even know you're being redlined, but you are. You're being targeted because it's your ZIP code. Nowadays they don't say race. They say ZIP code, you know? And I don't know if that's true in Madison, but it is true in Milwaukee; that's for sure.

- Absolutely.

- That's my two cents.

- I would just add real quick, one of the things to share a personal story, I finally sort of made the leap to wanna own my own home in like 2015, and up until that point, I was renting. I just felt like I wasn't making enough money to kind of get on my own and own a home, but by 2015 I said, "Okay, I'm gonna take this leap. I'm gonna own a home" 'cause at that time I had a great job, great credit, no debt, in a sense, an ideal candidate, right, for a mortgage, right? 

But when I went to the bank and started having these conversations, they declared me high risk, and what was interesting about that was what I figured out, obviously, was the only thing I could be high risk for was my race, and so it became sort of these hurdles I had to jump through in order to get, and I was persistent, right? I was a person that was like, "You're not gonna [laughs] do this to me," right? 

But just thinking about I had that experience myself here in Madison trying to own my own home, and ended up having to put down even... I had to ask my parents for help, right? 

And not everybody has that resource, right? And so just thinking about how much money they're asking you to put down on, for a house, which is who has that kind of money sitting around? Definitely not our community, right? 

And so it's interesting how these things are created to deter us, right? Because that could have deterred me to say, "You know what? "Forget it. I'll rent for the rest of my life," and therefore, I would never be starting to build my own wealth, which is the point, right? So there is something to ownership and building wealth that's connected, that we have not been able to be a part of, but how do we interrupt that? 

- It's also interesting to talk to people and notice the difference when a Black person goes to a lender and there are barriers, they're not, the lender doesn't look for any loopholes, doesn't look for anything. A white person does it, I know this for sure 'cause I've had white friends that say, "Well, you know, we ran up against this problem, "but they really helped us figure it out, and we were able to jump that hurdle," and that is still going on. 

- Absolutely. Thank you for sharing these stories. I think that's one of the things that stuck out to me as somebody who's researched housing discrimination in the past is that in this time period, in the '50s and '60s, it was always pitted as this, both sides: he-said-she-said, right? Where there's a family who says, "We weren't given the house because we're African American," and then the landlord says, "No, no, no. It's because I rented it to someone else," or, "Someone got here first," and what I think this film does really well is show this kind of underbelly, right? 

Show the truth of this is that people know they're discriminating. They're being very intentional about it, and you brought up, or sorry, you brought up, Vanessa, that you were talking about the Fair Housing Act of 1968 and how this was supposed to be all of these solutions, right? But what we saw in the film was a lot of instances of social discrimination: people discriminating against other people, and so the Fair Housing Act was supposed to solve all of that, and obviously, we know that it didn't, and housing discrimination remains today, and so I think probably a lot of people watching this will say, "How do we move forward? "How do we get change? "How do we make this change happen when policy hasn't always solved the problem completely? What are kind of the next steps to combat this?" 

- Well, I would start out by saying we just need to have some real conversations, right? About first of all, acknowledging that this does happen here in Madison, Wisconsin 'cause sometimes I think people think, "Oh, that happens over there, or it happens there," but no, these are real stories. These are real continued issues that happen here in Madison, and I'm a believer, really, in doing things outside of the system. 

I believe the system was set up to make us fail, right? It was set up to do what it's doing, but how do we do things sort of from a grassroots sort of perspective?

One of the things that I am very passionate about on my own that I do on the side outside of my role at YWCA Madison is I created an LLC called Madison Roots in which it is an opportunity for us to... It's Black-owned. Me and Kamal Calloway are the owners of it. We hire Black people to do our work, so we have a Black attorney. We have a Black Realtor. We have Black, you know, we're intentional about trying to build Black wealth within Madison. We're also buying homes to put Black families in so that, boom, they could start building wealth on their own. We're also buying two- to four-unit properties, things like that, to get Black people into this space of being able to own, which will translate into building wealth. 

I am a believer that we need to start having this real dialogue about reparations, and the way that I'm doing it is I'm calling for what I'm calling my white coconspirators to give to this initiative with no strings attached, meaning no, this is not for you to get a tax break. No, this is not for you to do as a charity type piece of thing. 

No, this is you saying, "Hey, I see the injustices "that have been happening for Black people for, since the inception of this country. I wanna do something real about it, but I wanna do it in a way that is hands-off and really no benefit to me as a white person," right? 

Because that's a different conversation when you're talking about this country being built on the backs of Black people and the conversation around how much people have, white people specifically, have benefited from all of that work that Black people have done, and we've got nothing in return as Black people, so how do we start honing in on that conversation? And saying, "You know what? I'm gonna start transferring some wealth." 

I'll never forget. I had an individual who reached out and said, "Hey, I just received a, what do you call it? Like, a passing down." Like, someone died in their family, right? And in their will, they passed on some money to them. 

Now, this rarely happens in the Black community, right? But in the white community, it's prevalent, right? And they were like, "You know what? I understand what happened here, and I wanna do this, and give this money as no strings attached because I understand the transferring of wealth from the white community to the Black community and all of the harm that has been caused from the white community to the Black community, no strings attached." 

That is the kind of transformational things that I think we have to start thinking about in this time because we cannot think that we're gonna get different results doing the same thing, as we know that's insanity, so we got to kind of think out of the box about how do we start changing this narrative here in Madison? 

- Betty, you're muted, but I wanna hear what you're saying. 
[laughs]
 
- [laughs] I'm sorry. When I was the director of Family Resource Center, I was determined that not only should parents learn about the ages and stages of development, positive discipline, but they really need to start talking to their kids about financial literacy, and helping even very young kids learn about savings, and really begin to understand all the intricacies of financial, how you build financial wealth. Having a five-year-old save a couple of pennies every week or whatever begins to build the process of lifelong learning about finances, and so I think that that's the other thing that we, in the Black community, we really need to think about: how do we spread this education around financial literacy so that we, as Black people, know more about it and become financially literate? 

- Another thing the film, I think, shows is that society should not protect or hide racist and bigoted behavior, as the university did in the 1960s, but expose it. Let's get it out in the open, and then you can have an honest discussion about it instead of it being kept a secret. 

- I'd like to answer one of the questions in the chat box, which is what steps were planned following the film viewing, had it happened? And I think what the steps would have been is calling for, of course, the fair housing, which eventually did pass but to expose the bigots, if you will, and to make everyone see, in Madison, that we're all human, and don't just discriminate. 

I think on a broader scale, if a person can pay the rent, it doesn't matter if they're brown, black, pink. It doesn't matter. They can pay the rent on time, they get the place, they get the apartment, and that there's a lot of diversity, and instead of excluding diversity, you should include it, and welcome it. 

Welcome diversity 'cause you can learn a lot from people who are different races, different cultures. You can learn a lot from them, and don't just have this prejudice, and assume that only white people can afford to pay. Only white people should be your... The neighbors will gossip if you have somebody other than white. 

I hope things have changed, but there's still a long way to go. You still have the redlining. You still have people who do discriminate, and they hide it. They don't say, "It's your race," or they don't say, "The neighbors will disagree," but they have other ways of doing it. 

Now they have credit checks and talk about credit checks. Lot of these management companies use credit checks, and who has... Then it's an economic disparity because if you're fresh out of high school, you don't have a good job, or you may have been fired once, a lot of the credit checks put that into their reports, and people use that to exclude people, and again, it's against the poorer people rather than the wealthier, and some wealthy people don't pay their rent. Actually, they don't rent. They don't... But still, there's a stereotype that if you're poor, and you have bad credit check, therefore you shouldn't be allowed to rent the place. That's a problem.

- And the requirement that you have to have three times the amount of the rent when you go to apply. There are application fees. You have to have three times the rent that you pay up front, so there are all, now there are just different ways to discriminate. They don't come right out and say it, but there are many barriers. 

- Yeah, that's what makes it so difficult, it seems like, is the kind of evolving, right? There's a policy that gets put into place, and then, all of a sudden, the reasoning changes, and the way that you discriminate becomes more covert, and that's what I really like about what you're all saying is that we have to think, I think, a little more creatively about the solutions to the problem beyond just policy because it's too easy to get around policy and to really get around it, to continue to discriminate as long as it benefits you, right? 

So there were a couple kind of questions about the history in the chat, which I'll just take up really quickly before I pose our next question to the whole panel. Vicky asks, do you know how the filmmakers selected the specific apartments and/or neighborhoods? 

So we know that they tested a lot of places. The 13 film clips that we have from the rough cut, those were instances where people were discriminated against, but there were many instances where they did show up, and they weren't discriminated against. Not many, I should say. There were two or three, and those tended to be in neighborhoods that weren't known for discriminating, so neighborhoods closer to the East Side, neighborhoods closer to campus, and they would send in testers, so there would be Black actors and white actors, so they would know, so that they couldn't just say, "Oh, you caught us on a wrong day," right? 

They had to have the white test case there as well. Lenore Hanisch, hello to another Hanisch family member, asks were the NAACP funds to support the film ever repaid by the University of Wisconsin, Madison? No, the film fees were not repaid. As I mentioned, Barbee and Hanisch really wanted to purchase the film, and they wanted to make it and release it through the NAACP, and the university said no, and Barbee and Hanisch did argue that the money should be given back because they had kind of deceived the donors who had given them money, but the university decided not to do that, so no, they were never given the money back, and they were kind of cut out of the process, and the NAACP was one of the most vocal people to talk out against the "To Find a Home" film that came out because, as I showed in the quotes, they thought it was punchless. 
[cell phone rings chiming music]

Oop, sorry about that. 
[laughs]

So the next question I have for the whole panel here is, this one might be best for Vanessa and Betty to speak to, but I really wanna pose it to the whole group. When people think of housing discrimination, I think many of them think purely of access to housing, which is people want a house, and if they can't get it, well, they just can't live in that neighborhood, but they can live somewhere else, but I think many of us who study housing, and who know housing, we are constantly thinking about the effects of where your home is. It can really affect many parts of your life. For example, your access to education, your access to food, as you had mentioned, Betty, your access to parks and green spaces, how much pollution you'll be exposed to in your life. Can you all talk a little bit about how you see housing discrimination and housing inequality affecting the lives of people in Madison today? 

- Sure, I'll jump in. Well, I think it's interesting. Clearly there is a connection between all of those things, right? So when you're talking about housing, employment, when you're talking about health care, all these things are related, and so when one is not working, the other doesn't work, so you can imagine, at YWCA we often are running into our residents or our participants who are struggling just to get a roof over their head, right? And so that's their first priority. 

There's something in our city called Housing First, right? Where it's an initiative to try to house someone first because understanding if I get housing, okay, that's one thing that I have solidified. Now I can start looking for a job. Now I can start doing these other things, and so they're very connected. 

I think what happens is, as I stated earlier, that if you look at African Americans, and the state of African Americans here in Madison, we're at the bottom of all of these sort of social determinants, sort of these, when you think of education, when you think of employment, when we think of housing, all these things, we're at the bottom, and so you can imagine the impact of that on our community, and how, specifically, there are different pieces that I think we're not looking at, right? 

Right now, in our city, we have this proposal that's out there that the Common Council has to decide on. I think it's May 4th, and it's around a men's shelter, homeless shelter. That's an overnight shelter. This is not, we're not even talking about shelter in terms of long-term. We're talking about an overnight shelter, and what is coming up, the rhetoric that is coming up is not in my backyard. That's talking about, "Well, we don't want that over there. We're gonna have criminals, criminal activity over there," and I wonder if that would be the conversation if 75% of the men who go to that shelter are Black, right? 

So there is sort of these conversations that continue to plague our community that are still showing the discrimination, the racism that is prevalent here, and so I think it's... Housing discrimination is sort of one piece to a larger sort of systemic thing that's going on, right? We've already declared racism as a public health crisis because it is. You think about the trauma. 

I think about, even my last week, I was struggling with watching the trial regarding the murder of George Floyd, seeing before our eyes the death of Daunte Wright, then having to see another one right after that, a 13-year-old. 

It's just compounded after compound of things that we have to experience, and it's a part of our experience that really shouldn't be a part of our experience, and so I say that to say there are all these things sort of working together that I think create sort of the scenarios that we're seeing here in Madison, and I think one of the things that, again, going back to the question about what you can do, the first thing you gotta do is educate yourself around this. You gotta see that this is still an issue. 

You gotta see why I love the question I think came up in the chat around the GI Bill. Someone is asking, "Well, why didn't Black veterans get a part of that?" You need to educate yourself, and shameless plug, but I am gonna plug YWCA. We offer trainings after trainings. We have a racial justice series training that we offer spring, summer, fall that is amazing, and it takes you from a 100 level to a 300 level in terms of understanding our real history in America, not the one that we were taught in school. 

- Yeah, and I'll add again that I think Madison struggles with this whole issue of homelessness and affordable housing. There is no reason why, and in the work that I do with parents who have babies, that a baby should be living in a van. There's no reason for that, and part of the reason is about employment and living wages, so it's all a part of the picture, so if you have a job, and you are struggling to pay rent, buy food, buy your kids shoes, that adds to the stress, so we have to look at job creation. 

We have to look at the whole idea of helping families be able to support and strengthen their families, which strengthens our neighborhoods, but it certainly isn't a simple task, but it's one that I believe could be overcome if you bring the right people to the table, and oftentimes, people don't hear the stories that Vanessa and I hear. 

- Absolutely. I love that part about strengthening the neighborhoods too. I think that people don't often think about how diversity is a strength in our neighborhoods, right? There's this misconception that that is not a strength, and it absolutely is. We got a great question in the chat that I wanna ask you all. JDP asks, I wonder what the panelists think of the performance of nonracist attitudes of progressivism. In the film, we saw so much of the, quote, "It's not me, but the neighbors," kind of rhetoric. How do we combat this specific kind of cognitive dissonance? 

- I'll go. If I was applying for a home and they said something like that to me, I'd say, "I'm not applying for the neighbor's home. I'm applying for your home," you know? So own up. Own up. I think that's an excuse, and I don't... It's pretextual, that's what we use in law. Pretext: it's not real; it's phony, and it starts with you, and you wanna change the world and make it better. Own up and change your attitude 'cause it won't get better with more people blaming other people. That's my opinion. 

- I would say, do the work, as you just said, Daphne. People have to do their own work, and you have to do your own work of unlearning and learning, right? There's some things that you grow up learning that are just not right, and you have to unlearn those things, and there's things that you need to replace that learning with, and so, again, going back to my point about educating, taking the time to educate yourselves, taking the time and taking opportunities, like I just offered, around learning about these things. One thing that I think is true, too, is not to continue to rely on people of color to explain, right? Sometimes we put the burden on people of color all the time to say, "Okay, well, teach me about this, teach me," and it's like, "No, actually, we have Google." 
[laughs]

 We have books. We have things that you can go and do your own research. We have so many trainings. We have resources. Go to YWCA's website. We got so many resources for you to start doing your own work, so I would just encourage you to start doing your own work. That's how you interrupt that sort of progressive sort of nonracist, it's not me, and then you realize, actually, it is me, and there are some things that I need to change, so you gotta do your work. 

- We have a question for Betty here in the chat. Bill asks Betty: Who are the right people to bring to the table? 

- Well, the right people to bring to a table are people who have a lived experience, people who can tell their story, and oftentimes, there are people who have good ideas. These decision-makers don't have all the answers most of the time, so when you widen the net, and actually listen to somebody who has walked the walk, and you hear something different, so I think bringing people to the table, somebody besides decision-makers, but somebody who has the lived experience, and who has the will to want to make things better and bring forth an idea. We're in the mess we're in because all these ideas didn't work. 

- Yeah, that's a great point. Getting some new thinkers at the table, and new people at the table who often aren't there. I have another question for you, Daphne, so in our conversations we had talked about not only showing the film, but honoring your father's intention, and I think anybody who's familiar with Wisconsin history will know the name Lloyd Barbee, and will understand kind of what a giant he is in Wisconsin history and in civil rights history as a whole, and you wrote a book, actually, about him based on his writings and his letters. How do we honor, yes, I also have my copy right here as well. You guys should look up "Justice For All." It's fantastic. What, for people who are watching, how do we kind of continue forward this legacy that your father left? And what are the things that you think we can be really doing today to not only honor the intention of the film, but really honor his broader legacy outside of housing discrimination? 

- Well, with respect to the film, enforce housing, fair housing laws and rules, okay? I think that would be very important. I don't know whether Madison has citations or tickets that they could give to landlords who discriminate. Some people don't wanna hire a lawyer to sue, but you can always do that, so I think, to honor his legacy is to enforce the laws that protect people in getting housing, in applying for loans, in getting insurance, getting a mortgage to make sure that the banks fairly treat people, and not based on a high risk, or color, basically, or being a female, single female, or single male, to stop that ridiculousness and just make sure the banks comply because a lot of these violators are the banks, and it's not just landlords. 

Have more sessions, seminar, education, if you will. Perhaps make it mandatory that at least once a year the landlords and the banks have to engage in discussions on diversity and discrimination. I can think of a lot of things that could happen. I think enforcement is very important. Having, sharing good stories. A landlord may come forth and say, "I was reluctant to rent to this young student who was Black," and then he turned up, and he became president of the United States, see? Like Barack Obama did because he was a poor student at first, although he lived in Chicago. That's close enough to Wisconsin, 
[laughs] and have people realize that looks aren't everything. Looks are superficial, and that's what I think needs to happen in terms of housing. 

In terms of the civil rights in the world, we need to elect people who are going to ensure that everyone will be treated equally, so we do have the vote. We have to make sure there's no longer voting suppression, make sure that the people's votes are counted, and I know Wisconsin had problems with the polling places just the last election, but they prevailed, and came through, and so we have to make sure we protect every citizen's vote, and then, moving on from there, do away with police brutality. 

I mean, there's a lot, and a lot of that is in the book, but we still, of course, we still have problems with police brutality and the killings of predominantly Black males, and that needs to stop, and there, again, once you have film, and the iPhone, and the videos, they can't deny and say, "Well, he had a gun in his hand," when you see him, his hands up, no gun. I mean, but back in those days, before you had the iPhones, they got away with, "Oh, he had a knife. He threatened," but now you can't do it as much, so I would just say keep pushing for civil rights. 

Keep moving forward 'cause we're not perfect. The country has not come to reckoning yet, and the country has not, for example, reparations. Country has not even come to reckoning about what happened to African Americans, 400 years of slavery, and people can't grasp their head around that, so there's a lot to be done. It didn't end. I could go on, but let someone else take it, tackle it.

- I'd like to add that I think, as families, we have to teach our kids the true history. Our kids need to know about Lloyd Barbee. They need to know about his legacy so that they feel like they need to honor that legacy. They need to understand all the things that happen over time and who the giants in our community are, white kids as well as Black kids, but especially Black kids. They really do need to understand their own history because it gives you a sense of, a strong sense of who you are when you know that there was a Lloyd Barbee out there who fought this fight, who was a warrior. That matters, and it's one of the things that I encourage families all the time to do, and so I think that it's something that we don't put enough emphasis on, and I just think that it's a very important thing to do. 

- One of the quotes of my father that Daphne has written in her book, and I'll paraphrase it because I'm sure I don't know it word for word, but it goes something like, "The battle for justice is never won. It has to be fought time and time again. Those that fail to understand this will wake up and find their gains have disappeared." 

- Wow, that's a very powerful quote. Thank you for sharing that, Rustam, so we only have a few minutes left here, and I'd like to leave it open for any of our panelists to kind of share any last thoughts, any kind of closing remarks before we end tonight's Sunday evening program. 

- I think all of us have a role to play in this battle for justice, this battle for civil rights, this battle for human rights, and whether it's getting out the vote, whether it's donating to a food pantry, whether it's just reaching out to your neighbor, we all have a role to play if we're gonna get this done, and as Black people, we didn't come this far to turn back, and I just would encourage people to really get involved in some way. It doesn't have to be, we all don't have to be big and flashy about it, but there's something that we all can do. It's gonna take all of us. 

- I would just add we have to get past the conversations. I mean, I think Madison is... We can talk ourselves to death, almost, in terms of having these conversations, but getting to action, do something. Make a commitment to do something. You've heard tonight various ways you can get involved. You've heard tonight how you can start educating yourself. You've heard how you can start being a part of some initiatives that are happening around the city that help with these kinds of things. I think it's also about being a part of the political scene here in Madison. It's about getting involved in Common Council meetings, right? 

Pay attention to what's going on around homelessness in our particular city. We have this meeting coming up on May 4th. I'm telling you right now that it's about this men's shelter. That's something hugely important in our city to comment on. We need to hold accountable the folks we put in office, right? So if we've said, we had a historic election around alders that just happened... We've never had as many people of color running, as well as getting elected in the Common Council, so exciting time, but I would also say it won't be exciting if we don't do anything with it, so we gotta use the motivation that we have right now, the excitement we have right now, to actually move, and not let this just be a moment, but be a movement. 

Let's change some things for the rest of time, for the next generation. We're now-- I think of this quote all the time. It says, "If not us, if not us, who? If not now, when?" So we have to move. It's our time and it's our turn, so I encourage us all to get involved. 

- I would just like to say, in terms of the University of Wisconsin, which I got my BA at, my philosophy degree in Madison, if you see the Board of Regents or somebody in the higher echelon do something like suppress civil rights, so suppress a film such as Mr. Hanisch and my father's film, that's very important for the community, don't just let it happen. 

You yourselves can get involved in protests like the one professor who wrote a letter and said,"You can't do this. This is inappropriate," because if you're a school of higher learning, you should be more open, and especially when it comes to racism, sexism, discrimination. Now we do have laws. At the time, in '62, we didn't even have the 1964 Civil Rights Act, but we have it now, and so if this should happen again, think more than twice. Think three or four, five times before suppressing something like this, and it needs to be exposed. 

That's what I have to say, and thank goodness for time because had it not been for time, I don't think it ever would've came out, but because of time, I think we got young progressive people at the school who actually went and found the video 'cause when I gave my speeches about the book "Justice For All," one of the people I gave a speech at, I think it was at Wisconsin Historical Society, said, "We've contacted the university, and they say "they don't have a film like that, that they never had a film like that, that if there was a film like that, it's no longer available," and I, myself, wrote a letter to them, and I got something back: "Well, we don't have it," but somebody got in there, and I think it was you guys, Kate, and all of you, you got in there, Cat, you got in there and you found it, and now the university needs to think before they say, "Oh, that's gonna be suppressed and we'll forget about it," so thank you 'cause there needs to be more exposing because the more we expose, I think the more we find out what is really going on behind the scenes. 

- Awesome. Thank you all so much for attending tonight. Thank you to everyone in the audience who watched this. Truly, it has been one of the greatest pleasures of my career so far to be able to bring this film to you all. 

Cat and I have been working really, really hard to get this to the public because it's something that we believe is important. We believe that it's something that shouldn't have been restricted in the first place, and this is our small kind of way to make amends for its original restriction is to make it accessible and show it to you all. 

I wanna thank all of our panelists who are here who helped to prepare for this event, who showed up tonight to give their thoughts and their opinions. Thank you to Betty, Vanessa, Daphne, and Rustam, and again, thank you all for attending, and for witnessing this film, and being part of its ongoing history. 

This event will be recorded and will be available in a few weeks. The film will also be available at the UW Archives, as it is now unrestricted, so again, thank you all so much for coming, and I hope you have a great Sunday night.