- 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.
The 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.
- 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 chatbox,
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.