Key civil rights spots in Milwaukee

Martin Luther King Jr. visited Milwaukee several times to give speeches, and the city was a civil rights flash point during the open housing marches that followed the riots of 1967. More than a century earlier, Milwaukee was the scene of a famous fugitive slave incident, when residents helped a captured slave escape to Canada.

Here's a look at some key civil rights locations in Milwaukee. 

Joshua Glover

The story of Joshua Glover, who fled Missouri in 1852 and sought freedom in Wisconsin, is one of the most well-known fugitive slave cases.

Glover sought refuge in Racine and was working there in 1854 when his owner, Bennami Garland, learned of his whereabouts and tried to use the Fugitive Slave Act to bring him back. The 1850 federal law allowed slave catchers to cross state lines to capture escaped slaves. It also required officials and citizens of free states such as Wisconsin to cooperate and return escaped slaves to their owners.

Federal marshals arrested Glover at his Racine home and took him to the courthouse and jail in Milwaukee. A crowd estimated at 5,000 — incited by Sherman Booth, editor of the Milwaukee Freeman, an anti-slavery newspaper — broke into the jail and rescued Glover, who eventually made his way to Canada. 

Two days after Glover escaped, Booth was arrested and charged with violating the Fugitive Slave Act. Booth had become an ardent abolitionist while he was a student at Yale and was hired to teach English to African slaves awaiting trial for taking over the slave ship Amistad. He came to Wisconsin in 1848 to start the Milwaukee Freeman.

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The jail where Glover was imprisoned is long gone, but a historical marker at the northeast corner of Cathedral Square on E. Kilbourn Ave. notes the site of the old courthouse. Also, streets named for the two men — E. Glover Ave. and N. Booth St. — intersect near Lakefront Brewery on Commerce Street along the Milwaukee River. 

A mural spotlighting Glover's story is on the walls of the Interstate 43 overpass on Fond du Lac Ave. at the edge of downtown.

Underground Railroad

The same mural features Caroline Quarlles, a 16-year-old runaway slave from St. Louis who traveled to Milwaukee in 1842 via the Underground Railroad. The Wisconsin Historical Society credits Quarlles, whose name is spelled several ways, including Quarles, with making the earliest known escape through Wisconsin's Underground Railroad.

One of Quarlles' hiding places was Deacon Samuel Brown's farm at what is now N. 16th St. and W. Fond du Lac Ave. A plaque on the lawn in front of the nearby Milwaukee County Transit System administration building commemorates the story. 

When slave catchers tracked Quarlles to Milwaukee, she was taken to Waukesha, a well-known anti-slavery community, and eventually made her way to Illinois, Indiana and Michigan before fleeing to Canada via Detroit.

Museum displays

The Milwaukee Public Museum, 800 W. Wells St., features a re-creation of the home of Sully and Susanna Watson, who moved to the city in 1850 and helped form Milwaukee's early black community.

Sully Watson was a freed slave and his wife was born to free parents. Their house was located in an ethnically mixed, middle class area of skilled workers and small business owners at what is now N. 3rd St. and W. Everett St. — the southeast corner of Zeidler Union Square park. The Watson home is featured in the museum's Streets of Old Milwaukee exhibit.

The museum also has a diorama highlighting efforts to allow black men to vote in Wisconsin. Ezekiel Gillespie, a black railroad worker who owned a home in Milwaukee, sued when he was denied a chance to vote in the state election in the fall of 1865. His case went to the state Supreme Court, which ruled in his favor the following year.

Meanwhile, the Wisconsin Black Historical Society/Museum, 2620 W. Center St., features exhibits and displays on Milwaukee's civil rights history. The museum is a gathering place for the community and frequent site of meetings, forums and other events.

Cemeteries

Forest Home Cemetery on Milwaukee's south side is the final resting place of many of the city's leading citizens — from politicians, industrialists and beer barons to scientists, inventors and generals.

Founded in 1847 along the Janesville Plank Road, now called Forest Home Avenue, the cemetery is home to the graves of Booth, Gillespie and William T. Green, Milwaukee's first black lawyer.

It is also the location of the burial plots of two men who served in U.S. Colored Troop units during the Civil War.

William Reed served in Co. F, 29th Regiment, and died in 1895 at the age of 55. Horace Dangerfield, whose grave is unmarked in Section 46, served in the 13th Regiment, U.S. Colored Heavy Artillery, and died in 1893 while working as a porter in Milwaukee. 

Open-housing marches

In 1967 and 1968, Milwaukee was the scene of massive demonstrations for fair housing which began, in part, when a black couple, Ronald and Norma Britton, tried to rent a duplex at N. 29th and W. Burleigh streets in 1966, but the white owner refused.

Ronald Britton contacted Father James Groppi, pastor of now-closed St. Boniface Church at N. 11th and W. Clarke streets. He called Ald. Vel Phillips, the first African-American on the Common Council. Phillips had for years tried unsuccessfully to get a fair housing ordinance passed.

Groppi brought the issue to the Milwaukee NAACP Youth Council, and its headquarters at 1316 N. 15th St. became a focal point for marchers.

Thousands of people marched to protest housing segregation and racial discrimination for 200 nights beginning Aug. 28, 1967, with many of the marches crossing the 16th Street Viaduct — "Milwaukee's Mason-Dixon line" — to the white south side. 

On the second night, the Youth Council's headquarters, known as the Freedom House, was gutted by fire. No one was injured. Council members blamed police tear gas; the police said a firebomb caused the blaze.

Today there's no structure at the site of the Youth Council's headquarters, but the Martin Luther King Community Center, run by the Milwaukee County Parks System, is across the street.

In 1988, two decades years after the Common Council approved an open housing ordinance, the 16th Street Viaduct was officially renamed the James E. Groppi Unity Bridge.

King visits

King visited Milwaukee on at least four occasions to give speeches. He first came to the city on Aug. 14, 1957 at the invitation of the Milwaukee NAACP and spoke at Grand Avenue Congregational Church, 2133 W. Wisconsin Ave.

He returned Aug. 20, 1959 to speak at the annual convention of the National Bar Association at the Schroeder Hotel, now the Hilton Milwaukee City Center, 509 W. Wisconsin Ave.

King also spoke at the Milwaukee Auditorium on Jan. 27, 1964, and at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee on Nov. 23, 1965.

The civil rights leader's legacy is felt in many other ways in Milwaukee — in an elementary school and African-American immersion program named for him at 3275 N. 3rd St.; in a library at 310 W. Locust St. where paintings and brightly-colored artwork of King hang on the walls and, of course, along the street that bears his name.

A bronze statue of King on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive features the civil rights leader standing on a stack of books with this quote: "I have the audacity to believe that people everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and justice for their spirits."