Freedom Road: Fenton

"The Selma of the North": Civil Rights Insurgency in Milwaukee

Between 1958 and 1970, a distinctive movement for racial justice emerged from unique circumstances in Milwaukee. A series of local leaders inspired growing numbers of people to participate in campaigns against employment and housing discrimination, segregated public schools, the membership of public officials in discriminatory organizations, welfare cuts, and police brutality.

The Milwaukee movement culminated in the dramatic—and sometimes violent—1967 open housing campaign. A white Catholic priest, James Groppi, led the NAACP Youth Council and Commandos in a militant struggle that lasted for 200 consecutive nights and provoked the ire of thousands of white residents. After working-class mobs attacked demonstrators, some called Milwaukee “the Selma of the North.” Others believed the housing campaign represented the last stand for a nonviolent, interracial, church-based movement.

Patrick Jones tells a powerful and dramatic story that is important for its insights into civil rights history: the debate over nonviolence and armed self-defense, the meaning of Black Power, the relationship between local and national movements, and the dynamic between southern and northern activism. Jones offers a valuable contribution to movement history in the urban North that also adds a vital piece to the national story.

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Blurbs:

Think you know the full story of the civil rights era? Patrick Jones's masterful study of the movement in Milwaukee will make you think again. Meticulously researched and elegantly written, The Selma of the North provides a devastating rebuttal of many of the conventional narratives of the civil rights movement. Here a vibrant nonviolent movement in the de-industrializing Midwest grows into a Black Power movement led by urban youth and a white Catholic priest who use confrontational direct action to lay bare the fissures of racial inequality in the 'liberal' North.
--Jeanne Theoharis, Brooklyn College, editor of Freedom North and Groundwork

A well-researched, well-written, and important history. Based on a rich array of sources, this book enhances our understanding of civil rights activism in the postwar urban North and establishes a useful foundation for the comparison of similar developments elsewhere in the country.
--Joe William Trotter, Jr., Carnegie Mellon University, author of Black Milwaukee

This book fills a serious gap in the literature of the civil rights revolution, joining studies on other cities in laying the groundwork on race and civil rights in the postwar urban North. Jones tells a good story, capturing events that might otherwise be lost to history.
--Arnold R. Hirsch, University of New Orleans, author of Making the Second Ghetto

The Selma of the North is an insightful and invigorating addition to the growing literature on black freedom struggles outside of the South. Jones's important and informative account writes Milwaukee back into the narrative of the civil rights-Black Power era and in the process expands our understanding of postwar America.
--Peniel E. Joseph, Brandeis University, author of Waiting Till the Midnight Hour

The Selma of the North is a riveting new story of the civil rights movement in America, a tale on par with Selma, Birmingham, and Montgomery in its power and importance. Jones's magisterial research and magnetic prose illuminate the untold story of the battle for the urban north in the 1960s, a battle that shows how race has always been the Achilles heel of white progressives. This story transcends easy dichotomies of black and white, North and South, radical and reformist. How did a group called 'the Commandos' define nonviolence? How did a white Catholic priest become a 'Black Power' leader? If this is not a saga for the age of Obama, I don't know what is.
--Timothy B. Tyson, Duke University, author of Radio Free Dixie and Blood Done Sign My Name

Saturday, March 29, 2008

The Great Fenton Flood of 2008

Last week, we visited my brother and his family in Fenton, Missouri, which lies to the southwest of St. Louis. You may have seen stories in the news about the flooding in the St. Louis area; Fenton was one of the hard hit places.

As we drove in on Thursday evening, we knew something was wrong when it took us nearly two hours to travel the last 8 miles to my brother's house because so many roads were flooded out or reduced to one lane. When we passed one normally expansive and green park that was home to several now-submerged baseball fields, water had made it about halfway up the full-size chain-link backstops. When we drove by the next day, about two inches of metal backstop was all that now peaked out over the gray water surface; the level had risen another six or eight feet in less than 24 hours...

One of the things that impressed me was the utter patience of the water as it rose. This was not a fire and brimstone type of disaster with explosions, or a dramatic crash, but rather a slow and inexorable rise that was almost peaceful and calming as you stood near it. Yes, when you made it to the heart of the river, rather than the massive spill over areas, the water could be moving pretty darn fast, but all in all, the flood took its own time and moved at its own pace, as it pleased, and there wasn't much you could do about it but sandbag a little, drink a beer with your neighbors and watch, just stand around and watch, which is what tons of people were doing...

Here are a bunch of photos I took of the craziness (click any photo to enlarge):

Uhhhh... that road used to continue on through what, in this photo, is all water. The river usually starts way out there in the distance, just beyond that thicket straight out from where the sidewalk ends...

Whole streets were completely flooded...

You can see the difference a day made in the below photos; note the water line on the buildings is higher in the third photo, which was taken the day after the first two shots:

You can see the point of the pavilion across the water there... in what is usually a PARK!

As with most disasters, the community pulled together to help out those most threatened by the rising water:

But, you can see in these photos, that by the very next day the water had risen so high it engulfed the area where the people were sandbagging in the previous photos. Yet, the reports we heard said that the sandbag wall held and the few little buildings there were spared the worst of the flood!