Milwaukee had a false image as a “kind of paradise” filled with “gemütlichkeit” (geniality) that city leaders cultivated in the 1950s.
That image was shattered during the civil rights struggles in the 1960s that included the riot in the summer of 1967 and often-violent open housing demonstrations, said journalist, author and Milwaukee native Rick Perlstein Tuesday.
But those struggles, he said, involved some local Jewish “heroes,” including Hinda and Dr. Jay Larkey, Saul Sorrin of the then-Milwaukee Jewish Council, publicist Ben Barkin and Rabbi Dudley Weinberg of Congregation Emanu-El B’ne Jeshurun.
Perlstein will be telling some of that story in his coming book “Nixonland: Politics and Culture of the American Berserk 1965-1972.”
He shared some of the findings of his research with about 115 people in a talk on Tuesday, July 26, entitled “How Milwaukee Was Different: The Long, Hot Summer of 1967.” Held at the Jewish Home and Care Center, the event was sponsored by the Milwaukee Jewish Historical Society, a program of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation.
Milwaukee had some things to be proud of, having been named the “third most livable” city in the country in 1950, Perlstein said. But that apparently was for its white residents only; Perlstein said that at around that time some 67 percent of its black citizens lived in “rented housing considered unfit for use.”
Moreover, any time a black family tried to move out of the city’s “Inner Core” area, it was harassed or its home was burned, Perlstein said. In the late 1950s, only one black family lived “north of Capital Drive” and that was the family of then-Milwaukee Braves baseball star Hank Aaron, said Perlstein.
Riots and marches
But in the middle to late 1950s, demands for change began to arise in Milwaukee. Weinberg apparently was among the first such voices; he delivered a sermon that included references to civil rights for blacks at Emanu-El’s centennial celebration in 1956, which Perlstein called “a gutsy thing to do.”
Activity increased with the involvement of Father James Groppi, at the time a Catholic priest, beginning in 1965. In the summer of 1966, Groppi led an effort to try to desegregate the Order of Eagles, a powerful club whose members included many of the important city and state political and legal leaders, but whose membership was closed to blacks and Jews, Perlstein said.
School desegregation and laws to forbid housing discrimination also became issues. That summer, the office of Milwaukee’s NAACP chapter was bombed, an event that “made the New York Times,” said Perlstein.
Race riots took place earlier in the summer of 1967 in several American cities, including Detroit on July 23-26. Then on July 30 in Milwaukee, rumors of police brutality in breaking up a dance sparked what became known as the Milwaukee riot. Mayor Henry Meier quickly called out the National Guard and imposed a three-day curfew on the city.
Only three people died, about 100 were injured and about 1,740 were arrested, according to the Milwaukee County Historical Society Web site, making Milwaukee’s one of the smaller of the race riots.
However, Perlstein pointed out that the violence that greeted participants in the Groppi-organized housing rights marches to Milwaukee’s South Side that followed were not classed as riots.
Yet there were some Milwaukee Jews who participated in those marches, including Barkin and Sorrin, while Dr. Larkey provided medical care to those who needed it afterward, Perlstein said. Yet Weinberg often expressed frustration that more Milwaukee Jews were not active in the local civil rights struggle, Perlstein said.
Milwaukee and its surrounding suburbs eventually did pass open housing ordinances, Perlstein said. But when asked how he would assess Milwaukee’s civil rights climate now, Perlstein said, “It is hard to say. I would guess that there are bad things going on and people are turning a blind eye to them.”
“The thing about struggles for justice is that the frontiers are always moving forward,” he said. “When one problem is solved, another pops up in its place. There’s always something.”
Perlstein now lives in Chicago. His previous book is “Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus,” which was given glowing reviews by publications ranging from the liberal Nation to the conservative National Review.
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