Highlights Archives
The Desk of a Civil Rights Pioneer
A leader in her community and an active participant in the women's and civil rights movements, Vel Phillips built a career full of "firsts" as a woman and an African American in Wisconsin. In May 2006 Phillips was one of five inaugural recipients of the Wisconsin Historical Society's first annual History Makers Award. In the months that followed, the Society talked with her about the donation of objects that symbolize and document her distinguished political and judicial career. In January Phillips donated the desk she used as a Milwaukee alderwoman to the Wisconsin Historical Museum. This desk is in our Museum's collections.
Born on Milwaukee's South Side in 1924, Velvelea Rogers Phillips was the first African American and the first woman elected to the Milwaukee Common Council in 1956. Phillips attended Howard University and was the first African American woman to graduate from the University of Wisconsin law school in 1951. As alderwoman, Phillips worked on behalf of women and minorities, participating in nonviolent protests against discrimination in housing, education, and employment. In 1962 she introduced Milwaukee's first open-housing ordinance, which finally passed in 1968 after six years of protests, race riots, and violence that had earned Milwaukee the nickname the "Selma of the North."
Phillips resigned in 1971 and was appointed to the Milwaukee County judiciary, the first woman judge in Milwaukee and the first African American judge in Wisconsin. And, in 1978, she ran up another first when she was elected secretary of state, the first woman and African American to win state office in Wisconsin.
Although retired, Phillips remains active in her community, working with America's Black Holocaust Museum, the NAACP, and several committees and boards. In 2002, she chaired the successful congressional campaign of Gwendolynne Moore, Wisconsin's first African American and second female congressional representative.
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:: Posted March 2, 2007
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