Odd Wisconsin Archive
White, Black, and Green
Today we take for granted the guarantee of equal rights under the law. But in 1950, the irate owner of a Wisconsin summer resort "accosted the executive secretary of the Governor's Commission on Human Rights, shook his finger in her face, and demanded to know the names of the legislators who were responsible for the state's civil rights act." He was angry that he didn't have the power to serve or refuse service to anyone he pleased, in his own place of business, and he wanted to know who had passed this law limiting his freedom as an American citizen. "I wouldn't know," the secretary told him. "It was passed in 1895 and that was before my time." (Milwaukee Journal, May 21, 1950)
Strange as it may seem, his angry reaction to the law which prohibited racial discrimination was not unusual. Throughout the country, including in northern states such as Wisconsin, white leaders had tried for over a century to segregate African Americans in schools, housing, employment, cemeteries, and places generally open to the public, such as theaters, hotels, restaurants, railroad cars, buses, swimming pools, and skating rinks. Between 1910 and 1940, 90% of subdivisions platted in Milwaukee contained some type of covenant prohibiting the sale of homes to African Americans, and in older neighborhoods "gentlemen 's agreements" among realtors confined black families to a few square blocks just north of downtown.
It's natural to think that the struggle to overturn such injustices started in the 1950s with Martin Luther King Jr. But in Wisconsin, the legal precedents for equal rights under the law actually date back to the 19th century and the state's first black attorney.
In Sept. 1889, Owen Howell, a black citizen of Milwaukee, was denied a seat he had purchased on the main floor of the Bijou Opera House. The black community organized a meeting in November at which 75 residents formed the Union League of Wisconsin, demanded the legislature pass specific civil rights legislation, and agreed to support a lawsuit by Howell against the theater owner.
A driving force in these events was 29-year-old William T. Green (1860-1911), who had recently moved to Milwaukee from his native Canada. Green helped call the meeting and followed the lawsuit closely, as did most African Americans in Milwaukee. Second Circuit Court judge Daniel H. Johnson (1825-1900) heard the case the following July. The jury found in favor of Howell, awarding him $100 in damages plus his court costs and upholding the principle of equal rights under the law.
Perhaps partly as a result of this experience, young William Green applied and was admitted to the Univ. of Wisconsin Law School in Madison. He graduated in 1892, the first black law graduate from the University. During his student years he is believed to have drafted the text of the first Wisconsin civil rights law, which was introduced by his Milwaukee representative in 1891. It was voted down on its first attempt, but when Republicans again controlled the legislature, in 1895, it passed, and racial segregation in public accommodations became illegal.
The 1895 law didn't alter the hostile attitudes of white business and civic leaders, however, nor was it enforced. De facto segregation persisted for several decades as is shown in the Milwaukee housing covenants cited above. As late as 1950, the same year that the resort owner above made his protest about providing equal service to African Americans, entrepreneurs in Milwaukee's black community felt compelled to issue this Negro Business Directory. On page 104 begins its listing of lodgings where black people could "vacation without humiliation." There are none listed in Wisconsin.
William Green returned to Milwaukee where for two decades he "represented practically all of his race in their trials and tribulations both in the criminal and civil courts and was a worker for the betterment of conditions among his people." When he died at the end of 1911, he was the only black lawyer who'd ever been a member of the Wisconsin Bar Association.
:: Posted in Curiosities on March 22, 2007
|
