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I'm Jon Miskowski, from Wisconsin Public Television.
We haven't officially started yet.
Otherwise, they wouldn't let me speak if we had started.
I'm supposed to ask you to turn off your cell phones.
Part of the reason we want to do
embarrassment if your phone went that, aside from the immediate
conversation, so not only would you embarrass yourself with this
group, but with a statewide audience, as well, so an extra
incentive to be good. We are recording this for
Wisconsin Public Television.
Wisconsin Channel, for a series Wecalled University Place.ur
If you don't know about it, I hope that you'll go online
and look for it or watch it on
Wisconsin Channel. Wisconsin Public Television's
symposium forums, from It's a series of lectures,
This documentary we're going to usee a clip from is going to be
broadcast nationwide on May 16, on Public Television.
Mark Samels will tell you more
But I'm supposed to ask you ato behave.
( laughter )
Actually, this is a story about not behaving,
so that's a bad place to start. I think this is a really
inspiring part of the story.
And I think Paula Bonner, of the We'll start in a minute.
Ilto welcome you officially.ng
Thank you very much, Jon. Good evening, everyone.
I encourage really
(laughter) uncontrollable behavior.
It's wonderful to be here I detonight. do.
Thank you all for coming. It's a tremendous pleasure for
the Wisconsin Alumni Association
Television and their incredible tstaff as we take opportunitiesc
like we have tonight. We've done similar kinds of
programs in other parts of the
It's a great partnership. You know, I was thinking,
in fact, I asked Helene whether the date of tonight's program
happened to have been deliberately chosen.
She looked puzzled
I said, well, I find it really and she said, "No."
that April 12, 1861, kind of interesting to think
Today is the 150th anniversary was the 150th anniversary.
American Civil War. It's very interesting
for us right now
to also think about that. And to go 75 days after April
12, to June 26, 1861, the 13 original graduates of the
University of Wisconsin, led by a grad named Charles Wakeley,
came together, put a dollar in
and founded the Wisconsin Alumni Association.
So, we are in the midst of
for our 150th year. bOur mission statement, theyn
founded themselves because they were concerned about the support
from the state legislature
This is true. to This is true.e--
I'm not making this up. To take care of their
13-year-old, because that's how old our university was at that
point, to take care of our
As alums, they needed to come together to support and promote
the university and each other.
still very involved in advocacy and many other things, as well.,
100 chapters around the world,
publications, "On, Wisconsin," three award-winning
"Forward Under 40," international travel and
especially a point of pride is the development of a lifelong
learning program now, over 100
online, around the state, actior around the nation.pus,
Tonight, you are participating
I'm just delighted to see you in all here.ose.
Do come out for some of our celebration activities.
June 23, in fact, we will have
new flavor of Babcock ice cream thcalled Mad Grad, a medley.l
So come down for some free
and look for other activities. ice cream, that'll be great,
turn the mic over to a great I am very pleased to welcome and
been the director of Wisconsin friend, James Steinbach, who has
They cover a six station area. Public Television.
friend, please welcome James. He's ( applause )an and a good
I'll be brief,
for important things. beBut I do want to say,ere
what happened 50 years ago, was important.
This evening is a small part of a conversation recalling that.
But what people did, often young
made a difference. people, did 50 years ago,
participate in this conversation And the fact that you're here to
It's important too. That's what Public Television
hopes to do, is to be able to help us tell the stories, so we
remember, so we share them with each other, so that we remember
what's important. I want to thank you for your
support of Public Television, and Radio, and for coming
this evening. I'm going to introduce
Mark Samels, because if you're
American history, you can't use those words without talking
about American Experience,
and finest storytelling program on television anywhere.
Mark is the executive producer
I've known him for, hmm, of American Experience.
That's long enough to actually maybe 25 years.
gets. belHe's a terrific executives it
director and producer.
in the notes that you get, you One of the things that it said
I'm not going to tell you all the notes, but one of the notes-
said that among other things, what he's done is to bring in
the personal voice into the programs that they do.
Some stories can only be told that way.
There are stories that we can take a step back, and we can
really take three steps back, and really think it through and
analyze it, and some have to be really told by people who were
there.
is really extraordinary in that This progway, I think.out to see
I want to thank Mark for
Television, and all of us-- This program, and all the work
that you do, so Mark, you're up.
Thanks. ( appThank you.
Thanks for coming down. It's always great to come back
to Madison. It's great to come back and work
with Wisconsin Public Television, and now the Alumni
Association.
I promise. My envelope is in the mail,
This has been a long and really Awonderful journey with thise.
program.
actually, when I was talking to my daughter who was in college,
not here, a bit to the south in Chicago.
She said, "I'm just taking
this teacher." this awesome class from
amazing book, dad. An amazing class,
the way you pick shows to make She said, "You know, sometimes
have to wonder about, but this one is a show, dad.
You should really make this into a film."
So, I read the book, and we got the rights to the book and
decided to make it into a film, because she was right.
It had all the elements of an amazing story.
It had incredible characters. It was an important moment.
But what really struck me was that after I'd read the book,
you know, I thought this is going to appeal to my
generation. It's going to appeal to boomers,
because they lived through it.
But I thought, wow, you know, it This is their story.
you know, what is it about this alsstory that appeals to her?d,
The more we got into the making of the film, that became
apparent. You'll see some of that tonight.
This is three years ago.
commissioned the film with an amazing filmmaker in New York.
We worked with Stanley Nelson,
murder of Emmett Till, which who made a film for us on the
re-open the investigation of caused the Justice Department to
We picked the best filmmaker in the country to make this story.
We wanted to get it done in time
around the country. We premiered it in January,
2010, at the Sundance Film
In the 15 months since then, Festival.
the country at festivals, we'veat forums like this.round
We've had a traveling exhibit that has traveled to 25 cities,
including to Milwaukee. I was there in February.
It's traveling around the country.
We've developed a curriculum
the Freedom Rides. for high schools all around
nationally starting this spring, It's being distributed
Perhaps most excitingly for me, we decided about a year ago that
we were going to recreate a freedom ride.
So we asked for applicants. We wanted the same age as many
of the participants in this.
apply. We asked for college students to
around the country. Beginning May 6, we are taking
40 college students on an all expenses paid trip from
Washington, DC, all the way to
They're going to be on a bus New Orleans.
Freedom Riders, having a with the original
about, really, all about cross-generational discussion
"Could you get on the bus?" And on the bus, figuratively,
means, could you make a commitment, can you put it
on the line?
to make a commitment? WhWhat will it take?d
You don't have to put your life on the line, necessarily.
But what is it that makes you,
today? you know, energized enough,
now as an analog time. In 1961, it was what we refer to
and traveled through the south, You put you know. on a bus
Now we live in a digital time.
And how can we tell when It's invisible, social media.
Last month, you could tell when something was coalescing here.
That was an analog event, very much so, at the Capitol.
We're going to have that
It's really exciting. I could talk about it more about
that later, but that's a really exciting moment.
We're going to watch the first
I just want to say, one of the half-hour of the film.
story when I first became uniinterested in it, is thatthe
I think it really hones in on something that I think is really
misunderstood about history.
viewpoint on this. And Will, I'm interested in his
history than I do. He knows a lot more about
history is anything But wbut inevitable.s that
It's made up of twists and turns
choices. that depend upon individual
inevitable. It looks like everything had to
go, one thing to the other. We had to come apart, almost,
as a country 150 years ago. We had to have a Civil War, and
we had to have the Depression for a number of reasons.
It looks inevitable.
In 1961, our leadership in It's not.
the leadership at that time of Washington, and quite frankly,
was behind the curve on this civil rights organizations,
What was ahead of the curve, particular story.
metaphor, were 18- to r25-year-olds, who said, we are
going to take the reigns of history in our hands, and we're
not going to let go.
exciting story. ThaHeaven knows we're in aand
leadership gap these days,
We need that kind of across the board.
citizen, I think is really responsibility of each and every
I think that's the enduring crstory..
That's why this story leaps across 50 years.
Fifty years ago next month is when this all began.
It leaps across it. Let's look at the first
half-hour, and then we're going to come back, okay?
Thanks.
We're going to have a conversation now.
This program is on Wisconsin
May 16, at 8:00pm. Public Television on Monday,
of a two-hour program, This is the first half-hour
I want to introduce the moderator of tonight's
conversation, Professor William Jones, from the university,
Madison campus, Department of History.
He's a graduate of Northwestern,
of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. and Will's work focuses onity
20th century US history,
in race, class and work. with a particular interest
Ulysses: African American Lumber In his book, "The Tribe of Black
was published in 2005. Workers in the Jim Crow South"
a book on race in the service sector after World War II.
Professor Jones.
( aThanks, James.
It's hard to follow that clip from the film.
I've seen the whole film, and it's really--
The rest is even more powerful, so I urge you to see it.
I want to underline Mark's point
moment as a moment of the emergence of a new generation
of leadership.
which this event represents a constellation or a coherence
between an earlier generation of
generation that really came to leadership and the new
The idea of the Freedom Rides was actually an old idea that
was first proposed during the second World War by Bayard
Rustin, who was one of the
on Racial Equality, who had founded CORE with James Farmer,
who's a prominent figure in the film we just saw.
Rustin was probably the most
non-violent civil disobedience prominent advocate of
his understanding of what had ihappened in the independencen
movement in India,
He was sort of advocating the application of these strategies
into the United States. He actually got the idea
to organize CORE
And as an organizer, during the second World War.
through the south on his own. This was actually the origin
of this strategy
actually just as an individual of Freedom Rides where he would
He'd be on a bus in his way to start resisting segregation.
to move into the black section, the soand he would say no.ll him
He, during this, was really brutally beaten,
as you can imagine. One particular incident in
Nashville, Tennessee, where he
onto the bus and started beating was arrested, the police came
Rustin got a kind of peculiar conclusion from this.
He sort of suffered this
really impressed by the reaction beating, but then he said he was
The white people on the bus of actually started to objects.
to this and told the police to stop, because he was being
beaten right in front of them.
the power of non-violence. He said, well, this really shows
have an impact. YSo he started to advocate all
larger campaign in 1946, which
which is referenced in the film. was after the Morgan decision,
interstate transportation, The Supreme Court ruled that
transportation violated the segregConstitution.rstate
Now, this was a Supreme Court ruling that was largely ignored
by transportation companies and by local authorities in the
south.
actually similar to, and was a So in many ways, this was
They were initiated by CORE, precursor to these 1961 riots.
It was an inter-racial group, mostly of northerners, some of
whom were from North Carolina,
northern cities. but most of them were from
so like the 1961 riot. They started in Washington,
differences. There were a couple of important
enter into the deep south. One is that they didn't try to
from Washington to Chapel Hill, TheNorth Carolina, and not gode
farther into the south. They thought that this would
avoid really overt violence and intense violence.
In some ways this worked. The ride actually made it
to Chapel Hill. There were a few arrests.
There were some threats of
it all the way to Chapel Hill. violence, but they actually made
the riders were all adult men. A couple of other differences,
there were actually a number This was a conscious decision
Murray, really experienced of women , Ella Baker, Pauli
involved in planning this event. civil rights activists who were
the idea was to keep it all men, They actually didn't participate
particularly black men and to avoid that tension of having
It also reflected a conservatism white women on these rides.
Which I think would become of the earlier movement.
watch the rest of the film particularly important if you
role that Diane Nash and other you'll see the really central
Rides that I think shows perhaps young women play in the Freedom
really important role that they played in the 1960s.
Probably the most important difference was the reaction of
civil rights leaders. There were a few civil rights--
There were actually two major civil rights leaders
who supported this. A. Philip Randolph, who was
a union leader, who probably was
activist at the time. thRoy Wilkins, who would laters
actually be the head of the NAACP.
At the time he was the
And as Bayard Rustin said, every second in command of the NAACP.
for Randolph and Wilkins thought Negro leader I talked to except
He said, Thurgood Marshall, who was an attorney for the NAACP
said, you know, "Rustin you are insane to try this, just dumb."
The reaction was, this is just totally insane.
To even suggest this
Many people thought that Rustin was suicidal that he was just
trying do this to get himself killed.
One thing is what changed between 1946 and 1961
that didn't create a completely different situation, but I think
created some really important dynamics.
The most important was the
rights movement in the South. eThat played a really important
role. Northern activists had been
trying to do this for decades.
by a few activists mostly from They were sometimes joined
to which these Freedom Rides southern cities, but the degree
southerners who were willing to join them and support them was
really the critical difference. They remained extremely isolated
as you've seen, subjected to horrific violence,
but their ability to withstand
through the south really that, and continue to move
from southern activists. depended on the support they got
from southern activists started to appear in the late 1950st
partially as a result of the
racial segregation in public Brown decision which outlawed
It, in a sense, like the Morgan decision, it sort of put a moral
weight behind civil rights
The Brown decision created activism.
I think we saw in the film mass movements on both sides.
segregation at the local level both the movement to defend
the Ku Klux Klan, and evident really in the horrific violence,
that we saw in the film inflicted against the Freedom
Riders and mobilized in reaction
In some respects the sort of to the Brown decision.
earlier Freedom Ride gained would've been impossible in the
wake of the Brown decision, it heightened this issue
on both sides and really created
Civil rights activists also mobilized in the south on behalf
of implementing the Brown decision.
The most famous of these
boycott, which emerged right examples is the Montgomery bus
It was a really incredibly after the Brown decision.
transportation in the city of Montgomery, it lasted a year and
ended with the ending of legal
transportation in the city of segreMontgomery.ublic
The effect of this was to legitimize nonviolent civil
disobedience as a strategy. I think most importantly in the
eyes of civil rights activists. Leadership in civil rights
organizations saw this as a strategy that could actually
work. It also created a new generation
of Black leadership in the
We saw the role that south.
out of the Montgomery movement Martin Luther King, who emerged
the Freedom Rides-- Actually in the part you didn't
see, he plays a much more prominent role in supporting
these Freedom Rides.
this gets to Mark's point, Probably most importantly and
the role that Diane Nash plays. BlaShe's a student at Fisk see
University in Tennessee.
a student at American Baptist College also in Tennessee plays.
To a smaller extent,
the north, the most prominent figure in this would again comem
later in the story is Jim Zwerg,
actually from Wisconsin. who was a white student
Beloit College, participated in an exchange program that took
him to Fisk University for a
He thought he was just going year.
involved in the Freedom Rides dowwhile he was down there.ot
I think these students and this sort of broader cohort of
southern activists played a really critical role in the
continuation of the ride. The effect of the violence that
we saw in Anniston that would continue in Birmingham and then
in Montgomery had the effect
the original ride. of actually stalling
Tennessee and picked up the rides and continued them down to
New Orleans.
in 1961 as part of the really Weimportant, really criticalt
transformation in the broader civil rights movement.
A movement that had largely been
professional activists who many vof them were in the north.y
Or if they were in the south, in very large cities,
to one that had a mass base across the south.
Bayard Rustin would later identify this as what he called
a moment in which you started to
from protest to politics, in which civil rights activists
could start to think about
the local level and even at the actuallynational level. both at
This united northern and
and also coupled this strategy southern civil rights activists
disobedience with broader political strategy that I think
we would see it evident on a
March on Washington in 1963, national level in the
As Bayard Rustin pointed out just a few years later.
rights movement to talk about a thbroad arrange of issues thatl
were related to voting rights and segregation in the south,
but also access to housing, housing discrimination,
job discrimination, and improving conditions
of employment.
opened up a much broader range He argued that this sort of
justice that would become really of issues related to economic
movement as the 1960s went on. central to the civil rights
about the impact of that We're going to talk a little bit
think you can see the emergence of a connection between southern
activism around segregation and voting rights and the way in
which it very quickly became a
at not just addressing Jim Crowe national movement that was aimed
inequality more broadly and in thenationally. racial
Perhaps just to end, I think
this sort of sustained movement that had sort of a local base of
support was able to put pressure
it becomes clear in the film on a federal government that,
moving this, and sort of put also, is very strongly resisting
a position where they really the Kennedy administration in
happening. couldn't ignore what was
captured really beautifully in Again it's something that is
you'll take time to see. the broader movie that I hope
We have time for a discussion. I guess I'll stop there.
participants in this panel I'll call up, we have three
The first one is Mark. that I'll introduce.
the executive producer of PBS American experience.
He's a native of Wisconsin, a graduate of UW-Madison.
He's also the executive producer
the film that you've just seen. Vel would you like to come up?
Vel Phillips is a distinguished professor at Marquette
School of Law.
based on her leadership Shin the civil rights movementir
in Milwaukee. In 1956, she was elected,
the first woman-- the first African American
and the first woman on
Finally we have Chris Hexter, who is an attorney in St. Louis.
He's a graduate of UW-Madison,
activist since 1960. and has been a civil rights
in St. Louis, the Congress on Racial Equality,
and also participated in Freedom Summer, which was
a program aimed at recruiting college students from northern
universities to go to Mississippi and participate
in a voting rights campaign in Mississippi in 1964.
( applause )
I'll start out with some
to questions from the audience, qbecause I'm sure you all havee
some questions also.
chance to talk. I guYou introduced the film.k a
But to say a few words about why
In addition to it being the 50th are we telling this story now?
about the story? anniversary, what can we learn
always good in history, >so that's a big reason.re
What you basically saw in this
context and the lay of the land that sets up a pretty dramatic
change that happens right after the lights came on, which is
that CORE decides to call off the Freedom Rides.
The Freedom Rides are over. They're dead.
They're done. Because what happens in
Birmingham, which we didn't see,
dramatically attacked, and is that that other bus is just
What's beginning to happen is that the national media are
starting to cover this. So some of these images are
starting to come out, so they called it off.
Word trickles up to Nashville,
Diane Nash, decides to take over and a group of students led by
we're not going to stop. and say, you know what,
have a meeting. They sign their Last Wills and
Testaments, and they decide they're going to get on this bus
and go. They get on two buses.
They leave the next morning at
Birmingham, and they continue. 5:30 in the morning, headed for
far as New Orleans, because they They actually never do get as
Mississippi, the most feared end up in Parchman Prison in
That part of the story, which you have to have the grounding
to understand where this came from, that part of the story,
I think is enormously relevant
And this certainly was not right now, because what we're--
I mean, what are we seeing right intentional three years ago.
East, but a very grassroots, now playing out in the Middle
series of revolutions, freedom chaotic, ordinary people led
It's sporadic. movements, liberation moments.
Freedom Rides were. It'sAlso, really led by,the
not exclusively, but a large
18 to 25 years old, like many of the 400-some Freedom Riders
in 1961 were. I think it's a very--
You saw the darkest part, well, actually not the darkest part.
But you saw all dark, I guess.
end. It gets very inspiring at the
Thanks. Vel, I wonder if you could just
tell us a little bit about, I think is some ways, we're more
familiar with the history of the
south than we are with the one civil rights movement in the
backyard. tI wonder if you could tell a
little bit about your story,
Well, first of all, there was aba lot of discrimination ine.
housing in Milwaukee at the time.
I lived on Walnut Street, because that's where we could
afford to live. We actually had a big house,
a nine-room house that my parents--
They wanted us to live
My husband didn't think it was a good idea.
( laughter )
My mother was a very strong person, and she would've been
really running the show.
on Walnut Street, or we lived. So I lived above a drug store
instance, I saw your middle baby As a matter of fact, a woman for
Street, where was she going? going up some steps on Walnut
oh, I don't know. AnThese young people.d,
I said mother, you should've
you know. But anyway, I was in that area.
And when I tried to move out, at that time, the real estate
people could say, well, we don't
to coloreds. rent to coloreds; we don't sell
out. You know, they were just flat
Wisconsin for three decades. They had not reapportioned in
And the Secretary of State at that time refused to okay an
election unless we had
Now, it's taken for granted, reapportionment.
you reapportion. every ten years,
Secretary of State, because he That's how I knew about the
northern part of Wisconsin were counting the trees and the cows.
( laughter )
representation. So I joined the League of Women
Voters. The Journal and the Sentinel,
which were separate at the time,
reapportionment. were both advocating
reapportionment. I went door to door for
first thing. I guess that was really the
Because we were living in the area, I was working in my area.
I saw all this, you know, space heaters, where it would be hot
in one room and then you'd go into the kitchen, and they'd
say, well, come in. And the oven would be on, and
the door would be open to heat
dangerous for children, for the kitchanyone.ch is very
I was introduced to that. I thought this shouldn't be,
so I asked my husband to run for
I said, you know, I would explain to the people in the
NAACP, you guys should be interested in this
reapportionment, and they just
just gotten out of college and I sort of treated me like I had
and they ignored it. was way up in the air somewhere,
he would run if they would Anyway, my husband promised that
But then he chickened out. redistrict.
He said, I just want to practice ( laughter )
But he said, "You have the same credentials that I have,
why don't you do it?" So his insistence was not really
so high minded, it was just he didn't want me to bother him
about it, you know. ( laughter )
Then that's when I learned. We had a -- in the green sheet,
that most of you probably don't remember the green sheet.
But the green sheet had run a story that we were the first man
and wife law team to be admitted
Federal Bar. to the Eastern District of the
time a little column called D"All Things Considered" in the
Journal, interviewed us,
He's the one that said, well, and I gto run.now him.
Actually, when I think about it,
Between '56 and '60, of course I was elected in 1956.
They really didn't know. my election, I snuck in.
My name was Vel, which is short I hadfor a longer name.ing.
They didn't know
They didn't know that. that I was a woman.
And they didn't know that I was African American.
So, it was very sneaky, really. ( laughter and applause )
But it worked.
wanted to say was that I got so involved in this whole thing.
The City Council of course
first of all, I found out after nine years, almost ten years of
marriage that I was pregnant. So they got a woman and a half,
really, you know. ( laughter )
It was rough, being on
decided for the first four years the City Council, because I
I would just listen and learn. I wouldn't do anything,
Michael, who is here. Stand up and wave at everyone.
I decided I would just listen and learn, and I did.
But I knew I wanted to work on
treated so badly by the real fair housing, because I had been
really in the back of my mind. estate people, that that was
to door for reapportionment, In any event, when I'd go door
can't vote today, I don't feel people would say, honey, I just
And I'd have to tell them that well, I'll go tomorrow.
In any event, it was an exciting you have to go today, you know.
My career, which was really very time.
but I got to know three presidents on a very personal
basis, JFK, LBJ and Jimmy Carter.
Martin Luther King, he called me, and I'd leave him hanging on
the phone if Michael was crying,
( laughter ) or something.
he'd say, no, I'm going to stay on the phone, because you're not
going to call me back.
all knew he was very special. I thiVery, very special.use we
But we didn't, at least I didn't
terms of who he is now, you know, Martin Luther King now.
The funniest thing, when I go to
Luther King, the teacher schools and talk about Martin
a friend of Martin Luther King. inYoung people don't, age is--s
They think of Martin Luther King
Washington or Abraham Lincoln. like we would think of George
So as soon as the question ( laughter )
would ask, "How old are you?" period( laughter ) the children
It was so easy. Roy Wilkens called us personally
and asked us to come to the March on Washington.
It was just, oh, that was an
I thanked him later. experience.
We just took the airplane. We didn't go on the bus.
He said it would be so important We spent the money.
were a couple, and there weren't if we were there, because we
Martin Luther King-- many law couples.
I wondered why that you didn't I took down some names.
He was so exciting. He's such a good speaker.
I got to know him very well.
And well, of course, Thurgood His gone, but he was just
the dearest man.
they both liked -- He and my husband,
I think that's the name of the or something like that.
( laughter ) drink, isn't it?
( laughter ) You don't know either?
like Gloster Current, Buwho was with the NAACP.ple
It was a wonderful time to be alive, and to be contributing.
When the City Council,
They didn't want me. they treated me--
I was using the men's bathroom. ItMy mother was mortified.at
( laughter )
She didn't even want me to go. Gosh, she just couldn't dream.
see I introduced, started on the fair housing.
Five years, I worked introducing
called me and said, itcould he join my cause.pi
Many people think that Groppi was the main one, but I had been
doing it for five years.
he joined, I didn't get Butany attention, really.il
They just sort of, you know,
it down again, and that was it, she's doinyou know.n, and vote
But when Groppi joined my cause,
fascinating, this white priest really, it was just kind of
kids, it was too much like and these black, kind of ghetto
( laughter ) Bob Flannigan in Boystown.
Groppi was a lot of fun. And they just loved it.
Even though he enjoyed the He was very, very earnest.
steal the show from me. Reporters would come up and say
when is the housing bill going
we're just here supporting Vel. to bShe's the leader here.aid,
We're here to support her.
for anything. The papers sort of played him up
a lot, which I can understand,
during those five years. because nothing really happened
when things started happening. When he joined the cause, is
legislature at the time would call me and say Vel, why are you
letting Groppi get all the
worried about credit. credI just want a bill.m not
The federal government passed the Fair Housing Law,
and that did it.
did it. But along the way, I have stayed
active. I'm now writing a book.
And I did bring a book
This young white student who got that I wanted you to see.
I'll hold the microphone, you hold the book.
Okay. I helped him with his
dissertation. We met every Saturday at the
Chocolate Factory.
For about a year. And I guess since it was all
free, he decided he'd put me on the cover of his book.
I looked at this picture
ever that young? and I think, god Vel, were you
I wanted you to see it. It's in depth on housing.
Let me see, what else?
Well, you have questions. Why don't I just pass it on
and let you have questions. Is that all right?
We're going to take a few more questions, and then we're
going to turn it to the audience.
We also have a film clip
in a few minutes. from Milw>> Oh, really?ll share
It's a surprise.
Chris, I wanted to ask you, a white student from St. Louis,
how do you end up in Mississippi in 1964?
First of all, I want
for this event. toIt's wonderful to come backon
to campus.
here. I'I'm just very fond of thiss
place.
off and on for nine years, I was a student here from 1963
I'm a double Badger. till 1972.
as well. I went to law school here
I was a faculty brat. When My father taught atdidly,
Queens College in New York. Then I'd come out
to Washington U in 1957.
It was legally segregated. St. Louis was a segregated city.
I knew about In 1963, I had been raised,
My father saw the history of Brown v. Board of Education.
Martin Luther King, that's a guy Montgomery, so he said,
So, I was pretty aware who's going to go somewhere.
A friend of mine got me involved of that stuff.
in St. Louis in the summer in Congress of Racial Equality
in high school and coming up of 1963, between my senior year
Two days after the March here.
sit-in at a St. Louis bank, which held the deposits for all
the city employees. The reason that happened is
there were no African American
level. employees above a custodial
was no law to compel that, And of course, in 1963, there
Title VII yet. because they hadn't had
When we sat in at the bank So I came to Wisconsin.
a court injunction, so it was in Stserious history.ated
If anybody knows, there was a congressman named William Clay,
many people spent months in prison because of that.
It was sort of a cause célèbre in St. Louis.
I came up to Madison. I was sort of--
And shortly after that was
church in Alabama. the bombing at the 16th Street
We had a demonstration That was first demonstration.
sort of a commemoration, down at the state capitol,
That summer, I read a lot about a mcivil rights.ce.
I read a book called
Society," by a professor named "Mississippi, The Closed
thrown out of Mississippi. James Silver, who had been
Mississippi because he had Literally had to run from
He was the only white professor on that campus who befriended
James Meredith. He had been there for 27 years,
but that didn't count when he had done that.
He had to escape. He ended up a visiting professor
at Notre Dame.
to Madison is they had a Long story short, the connection
that year. speaker's program in Madison
the United States, and among the It was sort of like politics in
Wallace, who was supposed to be oththe liberal after Jamesorge
Patterson, who you saw on the screen.
I mean, George Wallace ran as the liberal candidate, which
tells you something about the politics in Alabama.
James Silver was one of the persons on that program.
You could apply to a colloquium,
As I say, I'd read his book so I and I did.
I'd read "Mind of the South," was fso I was into that.sippi.
As he was speaking, I took out a
wrote, "Dear Professor Silver, napkin, a paper napkin, and I
I'm fascinated by the state. I'd love to go to Mississippi.
by the problems it has." I'm fascinated
I gave it to him, anyway. I said, "Could you read that?"
He took it. I didn't think I'd hear from
him.
thing to do. I mean, that's a pretty unusual
later, saying that he had contacted two white students at
Ole Miss who were working in the
underground. civil rights movement
publicly, or they would've been chased out of Mississippi.
They gave my name to people who were organizing the Mississippi
Summer Project, including John Lewis.
Another connection to Madison,
I ended up applying. sort of two things I would say.
I worked in Ruleville and LIndianola in Sunflower County.
Indianola is home of
It's where it was founded the Whithe day afterouncil.
Brown v. Board of Education.
who's an icon in the civil Ruleville is the home of a woman
Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer. rights movement,
during the summers, along with I guarded her house at night
I became very close with her. In fact, in 1975, I traveled
down to Mississippi with my kids.
My wife and I have five children, none of them are
related, and I have an African
I brought her down. I have this picture of my son
and my daughter with Mrs. Hamer.
But I was thinking about this movie, because I was thinking
about Julian Bond, and his
civil rights about wanting to do statements about the conflict in
between doing that and bringing a good aon violence.conflict
That was what the Mississippi Summer Project was.
It was the toughest.
the south. It was the tough nut to crack in
They were struggling. So the idea was to bring down
1,000 white kids from the north,
want it, but they kind of predicted that if that happened,
the eyes of the north would go
there would inevitably be down to tviolence. and that
But that violence would be
north would then see what expMississippi was all about.he
That's what Julian Bond said
were all trained. Frankly, I think people learned
from the bus Freedom Rides about
for what was going on. how to prepare people better
Mississippi talk to us in our Itraining session who said,
"Young folk, when y'all get arrested down in Mississippi
at night, do not argue
about the finer points with the State Highway Patrol
He is not interested in your of constitutional law.
high brow discussion
frankly, the violence did break But we wentout.n there and
Within the first day, three people were killed.
Then I was arrested the day the bodies were found.
I was arrested in Indianola.
parents was that I'd never get The condition I set with my
avoid it. But anyway, the connection with
Wisconsin.
to that about Roy Wilkens being a hero and being a big supporter
of the Freedom Rides. By the time I was at Wisconsin,
he was considered old hat.
were interesting. TheAnd Bayard Rustin, who wasnt
famous, one of the gutsiest people around, and he was also
the instigator behind the March on Washington.
He was the brains behind the
But Bayard Rustin became persona March on Washington in 1963.
the movement when he opposed non grata to the more left of
against the war in Vietnam. There were civil rights leaders
who implored King not to come out.
Among them was Bayard Rustin. It's just the transition.
I was involved in plays in
"lefty liberals," whatever you Wisconsin, doing plays with
We literally coined Roy Wilkens "Boy Wilkens," I mean, it was so
presumptuous in a way, you know.
doing it. That was sort of the Zeitgeist
in Madison, you know, at the
It was a wonderful campus. time.
times. I was here at the most exciting
I don't know if that answers It was inspiring all around.
Yeah, thank you. your question.
This is a clip that is from the end of a film that was produced
in 1968, on urban redevelopment in Milwaukee.
We don't have no where to move.
You won't give us open housing. Your shack, yourself--
When you have to live in a rat infested--
See your kids denied having everything that the kids have.
Then you would understand...
great problem. >> We feel that there is a
about it. AndWe all feel frustrated.done
We are tired. We marched for pretty much
200 days, and our demands went
We feel that if the black man don't get his rights, the
peaceful demonstration, which we
he has a right to violence, even have proven to the nation, that
But we do feel that it has been if heffective in some ways.sts.
But the main ways this here non-violence has not been
effective.
one that are most frustrated, Band they'll go off, I'll saye
half-cocked, and do something.
to involve the rest of the black Then quite naturally, it's going
going to sit around and watch all the kids get shot down and
fight a war, and we don't take
We know how, and we can think out and act out accordingly, and
wait for our chance.
And that puts us right in the The kids amiddle.doing that.
America don't have time.
of months what she didn't do in She h400 years previously.couple
Because as you notice here, I notice this year, we haven't
even had much snow or anything, and it's going to get hot
quicker than it did last year.
incident to set it off. I think Milwaukee is in more
trouble than any city around
greater problems that it's not this country, because it has
it. dI think on something where I
heard people say about Stokely
they used me as an example once, Carmichael and Rap Brown, and
violence. I do not advocate violence, but
I do say this.
are those that sit behind a desk The real advocates of violence
right, not Stokely, not Rap. and deny people their God-given
elected, and laws that only Bbenefit one people and not thet
other one.
Those arviolence.ocates of
( applause )
I have one more question for
turn to the audience. MissI guess, just watching can
that film,
is so much about going, sort of tthe increasing danger and thes
increasing tension of going further and further into the
south.
seven years later, where this statement, "America don't have
time," we've been trying to struggle--
Why is the focus so far north?
right? And the focus is so far north,
right? This isn't the deep south,
little bit about that. I wondered if you could talk a
referred to is "Selma of the The book that Vel Phillips
You knew about the book? North," by Patrick Jones.
He was a graduate student in the history program
here at UW-Madison. >> You have it?
I do have the book, yes.
It tells the story of the civil rights movement in Milwaukee.
I guess, one question, to sort
Milwaukee? of end my questions on, is why
And why is itcrack?a hard nut to
At the time, Milwaukee had
manufacturers, people who wanted been used by other
would go, I mean, just anything. to test a product and see how it
stuff, they would send it to Spices, and different foods, and
they said had such a mix of different nationalities and all,
that it was a good--
then it would go, you know, If ijust about anywhere.kee,
That's why I think--
The reasons people would say See, Milwaukee was very, very--
sell to you people, you know, justyou coloreds and all.don't
They were very open with their
That was a big thing for me. discrimination.
My mother, because she thought I had not--
She says, you're going on that? It's not ladylike to be running
up and down the street shouting and hollering, you know.
So I said, well, mom, we won't
We'll just be singing. be doing that.
She thought it was just Singinoutrageous, really.d all.
But she was definitely, definitely against
discrimination. She didn't like the Packers,
and of course, my children
She didn't like them at all because this Curly Lambeau, is
that the man, had said that he
people at all as a football would nevplayer. any black
I went to Howard University,
He had season tickets, and my friend was a Redskin--
And my mother said, you go to my boyfthose games? time.
Don't you know that the Redskins
than the Packers? Actually, I don't know how manye
people know this, but it took an
to hire black football players. They passed an act of Congress.s
That's a true story.
it took an act of Congress for My mother said, don't you know
The only ones worse than the Redskins?
you know. So once, my two boys heard me
telling this story to a friend
She said, oh, are you going to watch the Packer game?
And I said, oh, no, and I told the story.
And I heard, I don't know if it was Michael or Dale, I heard him
say, Dad, would you tell mom not
Bay, something that happened to tell that story about Green
( laughter ) in B.C.
ground. BThey had a lot of prejudice atg
the time. I didn't know what I was really
coming up against when I started
innocent in a way. out, because I was really very
got the credit, I just wanted a All I wanted,bill.dn't care who
And I mean to tell, every time
lose. My husband once told me, because
I had a little phrase, I'd say, well, every time I lose, I win a
little. My husband said you've said that
at least 15 times, don't say it anymore.
Find something else, you know.
It was tough going in the But council.rue.
Not only for that, but for
They didn't want me in the everything for women.
They redecorated and had two in every office.
No one in the office with me, because I was black and I was a
woman.
friends. And -- and I got to be very good
kind of in back. So she said to me once, we were
of us were first-- I made the statement that both
woman to graduate from the You know, I was the first black
Law School. And I didn't even think that was
a big deal, because there were
school. only a( laughter )n in the whole
So being the first black was not
I never used it. a big deal.
law school, because it makes me, I hate to say when I graduated
B.C.? you kn>> Yeah, B.C.! old.
( laughter )
I was the first African American But I graduated in 1951.
from the law school. woman to graduate
My husband was a year ahead of ( applause )
they'd say when they'd see the me, and believe it or not,
you're really lucky to have a two obuilt-in secretary. Dale,
This is what they'd say.
so I wouldn't take off on 'em. My husband would kick me,
I'd say, well, he might be He'd say "shh," all like that.
What are you talking about? But anyway, I graduated, and
I never used that, that first,
that I was the first. beThe black woman who was fromt
Africa was supposed to graduate,
was an abuser-- she was from Britain--
Well, from Africa, but Britain
place. had colonized this particular
I'm staying on to get my masters And she said, you know, Vel,
a barrister before my husband in lbecomes a barrister,ome
that she was separated from,
So I would say to her, don't he will beat me, and everything.
You graduate. letBy her not graduating,da.
I became the first woman. I never used it until
I got on the council. And as I told you, I did
sneak on the council. I just got in there before
they knew that I was black
( laughter ) and female.
anything for four years. Then I did not introduce
listen and everything. I just wanted to, as I said,
interesting is when Roy Wilkens Bcalled us and asked us to go.as
Oh, when I was at Howard
NAACP was, I thought, Universia white man.ident of
His name was Walter White.
He was just a white man. Do you remember him?
I was only 17 years old, I had been chosen to go.
I was very young. When I saw this man--
It was a panel. We had panels in the morning,
then lunch, then panels in the
I said to Walter White, I shouldn't have said it, I said,
I didn't know there was a white man that was the president of
the NAACP, the National Association for the Advancement
of Colored People.
Then he turned to the woman who was in charge and said, I'd like
this young lady to sit next to
that. mSo the woman said, well, yes.e
So I thought, I wondered why
So I sat next to him, and he he'd want to sit next to me.
I'm a white man. said, I noticed that you think
I said well, you look like-- He said I'm not a white man.
whitest looking black man I wI ever saw in my life.he
( laughter )
I didn't say that, of course. I just said, well, no one would
know it.
He said, let me just give you a hint, have you ever heard the
term "a little drop will do it"?
And I had never heard that. I said, what does it mean?
It means, in this America,
if you go way back and you're a little bit black, anywhere in
the line, you were black. >> The musical "Showboat."
Yes.
woman, the lead actress in >> The percentage that the
black, and that was what caused "Showall the problems.ntage
Absolutely right. But I didn't think of that
at the time.
And I learned that, as my first lesson.
When I went back to Howard
and I'm still a life member Untoday, and my husband, too.P,
Milwaukee was an interesting
My husband absolutely adored city.
Of course, he was from Omaha, and if you're from Omaha,
Nebraska, you would adore Milwaukee.
( laughter )
You would adore it. In their commercials were
Johnson's Hog Feet. I said, god, and there was
a little pond, almost, and he said, we're going to the lake.
A little pond.
the parks, Lake Michigan, So hand all that.ukee,
So that's how I got stuck in Milwaukee.
But it's been good to me. It really has.
Did I answer your question? >> You did.
( laughter and applause )