By Susan Wolfgram, for the Chippewa Valley Post
Milwaukee’s Sherman Park neighborhood, my childhood home, was at one time a legacy of diversity, inclusion, and multiculturalism in Milwaukee.
But for the past few decades, chronic benign neglect has turned this community and other inner city neighborhoods into “throw away” communities. I would posit that we are all one community and what happens to a group of people in one area of the state impacts all of us . . . as well as affecting our collective conscience and our sense of morality and social justice.
Since the early 1900s, Sherman Park was the only integrated neighborhood “experiment” in Milwaukee that was working . . . but things began to change drastically in the 1980s. Those changes provide the context for the events of this past summer, when Sherman Park erupted following the mid-August death of Sylville Smith at the hands of the Milwaukee police.
And that Milwaukee inner city eruption matters not just to Milwaukee, but to all of us.
What Led to August 13
I was in Milwaukee for a social justice event on the North side a couple of days earlier, on Aug. 11, and watched along with the nation as Sherman Park unraveled into chaos beginning on the 13th.
Tensions were already simmering last summer between local young people and police following minor clashes inside the 20-acre Sherman Park, which sits in the center of the neighborhood. The young people were complaining that the police were harassing them without cause; Sylville Smith’s death at the hands of the police on Aug. 13 proved to be the event that tipped some people over the edge.
Click here for a related article about a UW-Stout peace studies faculty member talking with Milwaukee middle and high school students about responding to conflict through nonviolent actions.
The circumstances surrounding Smith’s death remain unclear. Other recent fatal police shootings of African Americans in the city, such as Dontre Hamilton, an unarmed mentally ill man who was killed in 2014, have added to tensions. These events are critical and embed themselves in the collective memory of the people of Milwaukee’s North side.
The editorial responses of white suburban residents, bolstered by Donald Trump’s appearance in West Bend on Aug. 15, were messages of racist hostility; the overall message was “let the inner city burn.”
How It Used to Be
But it wasn’t always like this. Sherman Park was the neighborhood where my Grandma lived and where I spent every moment I could, taking the bus from my white suburb to the “North Side.” It’s the neighborhood where I converted to Judaism at Congregation Beth Jehudah.
Sherman Park started out predominantly German in the 1940s; in 1949 Orthodox Jewish families began moving in, and 200 of those families still reside in the neighborhood. Then, a diverse mix of people including African-Americans and progressive whites became a part of this rich tapestry.
By 1960, the neighborhood was filled with a beautiful stock of homes that still stand today albeit many of them in decay. These homes were preserved at least through the 1980s as a result of the Sherman Park Community Association’s efforts to preserve the entire neighborhood.
Changes
But things changed. Sherman Park is now 80% African-American since the white flight of the’80s.Two-thirds of incarcerated black Milwaukee county residents come from just six zip codes, two of which are in Sherman Park.
The 1980s also saw the flight of industry from Milwaukee, both overseas and to the suburbs. This flight took with it family-sustaining jobs, industrial jobs where you could earn a stable living with just a high school degree and sometimes, with a solid work ethic, without a high school diploma.
- Between 1979 and 1984 Milwaukee lost 50,000 jobs – more than it did during the Great Depression. The most prominent loss was Allis-Chalmers, a heavy machinery manufacturer with roots in Milwaukee reaching back into the mid-19th century. The firm employed 20,000 people at its peak but collapsed in the mid-1980s amid rapidly rising international competition and corporate missteps.
- Jobs moved to the suburbs, but most families in Milwaukee communities did not have reliable transportation to get to these jobs. Public bus service was not available and when light rail was proposed, to connect inner city folks with suburban job opportunities, then-County Executive Scott Walker did not follow through.
- For more than 20 years – as a Milwaukee County assemblyman, as Milwaukee County executive, and as governor – Walker has fought proposals that would make it easier for city residents to get to suburban job centers. He opposed proposals from city mayors for “an urban-suburban light rail line” and shortened or eliminated regional bus routes that cut off access to tens of thousands of jobs. It was only because of a lawsuit that Walker agreed to set aside a meager $14 million of a $1.7 billion highway project to fund bus routes to the suburbs.
- As family-sustaining jobs disappeared, many families could not keep pace with their property taxes and Sherman Park’s stately single family homes started to be broken up into multi-family dwellings. These were rented out, landlords began to neglect these once beautiful and grand homes and white families began to flee.
- The sweeping federal Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 provided funding for tens of thousands of community police officers and drug courts, banned certain assault weapons, but also mandated life sentences for criminals convicted of a third violent felony, including many drug crimes. This “three strikes” provision dramatically impacted Sherman Park and all inner city communities as it incarcerated large numbers of black males for long periods of time for minor drug offenses. One of the tragic results was the systematic destruction of families and then entire communities.
- Then came the economic collapse of 2008. Most of the remaining Sherman Park homes were in foreclosure and more jobs were lost…43% of area residents now live in poverty, the schools are sub-standard and high crime and drug addiction rates attest to the result of communities left on their own to decay.
- Since the 1980s downturn, there has been no substantial money or long-term revitalization plan from the state. Profound neglect has set in.
There has never been enough white majority support in this state to care about what happens in urban Milwaukee. White folks have always felt this disconnect . . . that people of color in the inner city are the “other,” not “us.”
No Meaningful Help
There is an unconscionable lack of empathy or compassion, and therefore there is no will to do anything about the situation except to apply temporary “band-aids” that make it appear after an incident like the mid-August eruption that the local politicians and the governor care…then, nothing.
I am so tired of politicians praising the community activists and faith communities for “coming together” and “healing” the community. This is and always has been a smoke screen for government to do nothing meaningful.
To quote Martin Luther King, Jr.: “There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair.” What will it take for all of us to realize that what happens to people in inner city Milwaukee happens to us.
“They” are “us.”
Susan Wolfgram, an Eau Claire resident, is a psychotherapist, licensed clinical social worker, correctional education consultant and professor emerita of Human Development Family Studies at UW-Stout.
Note: the home page photo shows a house on 46th Street in the Sherman Park neighborhood that has been recently redeveloped through the efforts of Common Ground, an organization comprised of religious groups, small businesses, nonprofits, schools, unions and neighborhood associations. (Photo provided by the Milwaukee Neighborhood News Association at Marquette University)