LoginHow residents and civil rights activists pushed Milwaukee Public Schools to desegregate
For over a decade, Milwaukee residents and civil rights figures protested racial segregation in Milwaukee Public Schools.
Students protested alongside local leaders including Alderwoman Vel Phillips and Father James Groppi.
Activists organized citywide school boycotts, with churches hosting ‘freedom schools’ to teach students amid the protests.
For years, families fought against intact busing, which maintained existing segregation in Milwaukee Public Schools.
A year of protests against school segregation wasn’t enough to sway Milwaukee Public Schools to integrate. So in 1965, Milwaukee attorney and National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) leader Lloyd Barbee filed a lawsuit against the district, arguing it intentionally took action to keep schools segregated.
Racially restrictive covenants and redlining already legally maintained neighborhood segregation in the city, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee urban studies professor Anne Bonds said.
“In a dynamic where you have a deeply segregated landscape and a housing landscape that’s been produced by design … the schools that children would attend in their racially segregated neighborhoods would reflect the patterns of racial segregation that exist,” Bonds said.
After 10 years of fighting, federal Judge John Reynolds ruled on Jan. 19, 1976, that Milwaukee Public Schools needed to take action to desegregate schools. But how did they get there?
1940s
Federal ruling states racially restrictive covenants unenforceable
U.S. Supreme Court case Shelley v. Kraemer rules that racially restrictive covenants could no longer be enforced, but the practice continues in metropolitan Milwaukee into the 1960s. University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee professor Derek Handley says covenants were not ruled illegal until 1968 with the Fair Housing Act.
1960s
NAACP leader calls for end to de facto segregation
Lloyd Barbee, president of the Wisconsin chapter of the NAACP, makes an official call to the state superintendent and Milwaukee Public Schools to desegregate schools.
MPS Board forms Special Committee on Equality of Educational Opportunity
MPS School Board President Lorraine M. Radtke establishes the committee “for the express purpose of providing a dispassionate and objective study for all the problems in this area,” she tells the Milwaukee Journal.
Schools protest against intact busing
NAACP and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) stage protests at three schools: Twelfth Street School, 20th Street School and Sherman School. A CORE and NAACP leaflet said intact busing — the practice of busing entire classes of students and teachers from overcrowded or remodeled schools into other schools without integrating them into the general school population — was “blatantly discriminatory.”
Barbee forms Milwaukee United School Integration Committee (MUSIC)
Lloyd Barbee serves as chairman, accompanied by civil rights, labor, social, religious and political groups and leaders including Ald. Vel Phillips and Father James Groppi. MUSIC starts planning a school boycott.
8,500 students attend Freedom Schools, boycott MPS
MUSIC organizes 32 freedom schools, where a mix of university professors, artists, musicians, professional teachers and individuals with professional training hold classes for a day.
Barbee files desegregation suit in federal court
Barbee files Amos et al. v. Board of School Directors of the city of Milwaukee on behalf of 41 Black and white students, arguing that MPS intentionally maintained segregation in schools. The district argues that, while its schools might be segregated, it was due to the segregated neighborhoods of Milwaukee and not from intentional action of the school board.
MUSIC begins second school boycott
For over three days, thousands of students boycott Milwaukee Public Schools and return to freedom schools organized around the city.
MUSIC begins daily demonstrations at MacDowell School construction site
MUSIC holds daily protests at the school out of concern that the school enrollment will be heavily Black students. Protesters chain themselves to construction equipment, hold all-night vigils and march from the school to the MPS Central Office.
Hundreds of students boycott North Division High School
MUSIC opens three different freedom schools for students in its third school boycott. “The selective boycott gives us a chance to do a quality job in real compensatory education,” Barbee said.
Report on Milwaukee Public Schools recommends adopting policy to reduce racial isolation
The Academy for Educational Development studies Milwaukee Public Schools for a year. The report finds that the district should reduce racial isolation but also says neither integration nor special educational efforts alone will solve problems with poor education for Black students.
White Hawley School parents protest busing children to MacDowell
Renovations at Hawley Road School (now Hawley Environmental School) are set to start in February. As a result, predominately white students will be bused to MacDowell School, which was 50% Black, under the district’s intact busing program. Nearly 100 angry parents attend an informational meeting about the changes. Some raise concerns about crime, while others believe the move is an attempt at racial integration. Nine parents are charged with violating state attendance laws by refusing to let their children be bused to MacDowell.
1970s
After 17 years of intact busing, MPS school board votes to end practice
Though Black students are bused to white schools, races are still segregated in different classes. School board member Robert G. Wegmann visits Cass Street School and sees students segregated even in the cafeteria, with “a row of white, a row of Black,” he tells the Milwaukee Journal.
MPS Board limits transfers into Riverside High School to keep school integrated
White enrollment at Riverside High School drops from 70% in 1971 to 40% in 1974. Without the transfer policy, the Milwaukee Journal reports white enrollment will drop to 36% during the upcoming school year.
MPS Board approves action to prevent eight additional schools from becoming all Black or Latino
In addition to Riverside, the plan targets Washington High School, Custer High School, Steuben Middle School, Edison Junior High School, Kosciuszko Middle School, Wright Junior High School, Muir Middle School and South Division High School. The plan would create school-community committees at all schools, including Riverside. The board anticipates regulating transfers of students from outside neighborhoods.
Lee McMurrin becomes MPS superintendent
Known for his work opening magnet schools and managing integration plans in Toledo, Ohio, McMurrin leads the district through the bulk of its integration plans in the late 1970s.
Judge John Reynolds rules MPS must desegregate
After a lengthy legal battle, Reynolds says MPS must develop a plan to desegregate its schools. “I have concluded that segregation exists in the Milwaukee public schools and that this segregation was intentionally created and maintained by the defendants,” Reynolds says.
After extensive protests from the Coalition to Save North Division, the school board votes to abandon North Division magnet school plan
Milwaukee Public Schools decides to drop its plan to turn North Division High School into a magnet school after the Coalition to Save North Division takes legal action and reaches an out-of-court settlement.
Golda Meir School (then Fourth Street School) re-opens as a specialty school for the gifted and talented
Fourth Street School, later renamed after former Prime Minister of Israel Golda Meir, was a predominately Black school until the district turns it into a magnet elementary school.
Triple O and Blacks for Two Way Integration stage school walkout to protest district’s burden of desegregation on Black students
About 1,300 students stage a walkout at about 10 schools, sponsored by the Organization of Organizations (Triple O) and Blacks for Two Way Integration. The Milwaukee Public School Board asks its attorney to investigate whether the district can prosecute students for disruption and promoting truancy, and cuts off $70,000 in funding for the Social Development Commission (SDC), which funded Triple O.
Rufus King reopens as a college preparatory school
The school, renamed Rufus King High School for the College Bound, is rebranded in an attempt to integrate the predominately Black school.
MPS Board announces plans to close North Division, reopen as a science and medical magnet school
Residents quickly begin protesting out of concern that district integration plans are unfairly placing the burden of segregation on Black students. Students, residents and civil rights organizers form the Coalition to Save North Division.
Timeline by Alex Klaus / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service / Report for America and Hongyu Liu / Wisconsin Watch
Last month marked the 50-year anniversary of Reynolds’ desegregation order.
Today, MPS still faces many of the challenges the order sought to address, including the achievement gap between Black and white students and ongoing segregation.
The district’s 10-year Long-Range Facilities Master Plan stated that a major area of challenge was imbalance of resources and inconsistent quality between schools.
Since the start of her tenure, MPS Superintendent Brenda Casselius has said she plans to work with other sectors to address ongoing segregation and that bridging the achievement gap is one of her top priorities.
How residents and civil rights activists pushed Milwaukee Public Schools to desegregate is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
