Milwaukee's Fair Housing Movement

Milwaukee's Fair Housing Movement. . , Throughout the 1960s, Milwaukee was the site of a massive, influential Civil Rights Movement that combated racial discrimination and segregation in housing, employment, and education as a part of the broader national movement for civil rights. Founded in 1948, Milwaukee's NAACP Youth Council was a forum for youth to discuss race. In the 1960s, the Youth Council transformed into the active core of the movement, fighting racism at various city businesses, including the Eagles Club, with its discriminatory whites-only policy. In the summer of 1966, protests erupted at the club over the membership of judges who presided over the trials of people of color. The protests garnered media attention and drew white counter-protesters, who verbally and physically attacked the Youth Council. Later, from August 1967 to March 1968, the Youth Council and its protective unit, the Commandos, led 200 consecutive nights of protests for fair housing. In parallel movements, the Milwaukee United School Integration Committee (MUSIC), founded by attorney Lloyd Barbee in 1964, worked to integrate Milwaukee Public Schools through boycotts of segregated schools, protests of intact busing, and the establishment of Freedom Schools, while the Milwaukee Congress on Racial Equality (CORE), represented by Cecil Brown, addressed public accommodation and insensitive remarks made by public officials. On April 11, 1968, the U.S. government passed a national Fair Housing Act prohibiting discrimination based on race. On April 30, Milwaukee passed its own fair housing bill, six years after Alderwoman Vel Phillips first introduced it to the Common Council.