WISCONSIN

Latino voices: USC professor was on front lines of 1968 Allen-Bradley demonstration

Avelardo Valdez, Special to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Editor's note: Avelardo Valdez grew up in Milwaukee, worked as a civil rights activist and served as editor of La Guardia, a Spanish-English language newspaper published in Milwaukee in the 1970s. Today he is a professor at the University of Southern California School of Social Work and Sociology and has written extensively on issues surrounding Latinos in the U.S.

This essay reflects on activism that grew from a 1968 protest.

It was the summer of 1968. The year has been described as one of the most socially and politically tumultuous in the history of the United States.

As a 21-year-old University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee senior majoring in social work, and a self-proclaimed organizer, I remember only one other Latino undergraduate among all the students I met at UWM that year.

Avelardo Valdez, now a professor at the University of Southern California, then a young community organizer known as “Lalo.”.

That August a group of south side Latinos, I among them, Father James Groppi and members of the NAACP Youth Council of St. Boniface Church staged an event that would thrust the Latino community of Milwaukee to the forefront of political activism.

The previous year, Groppi began leading demonstrations protesting housing discrimination against African Americans. The protests included marches across the 16th Street Viaduct into the heart of Milwaukee’s south side, sparking violent reactions from predominately white working-class residents and drawing national attention. As Groppi stated, “We crossed the Mason-Dixon line.”

On Aug. 11, 1968, I and several emerging Latino leaders met with Groppi’s group to plan a series of demonstrations against the Allen-Bradley Co., then an electronic components producer with major contracts from the federal government.

Even though Allen-Bradley was a large source of revenue for Milwaukee, out of a work force of about 7,000 employees, only about 30 were black and only 14 were Latino.

Moreover, Allen-Bradley, which sat on the eastern edge of a largely Latino neighborhood, was expanding through the acquisition of residential and commercial properties. This expansion moved primarily westward, swallowing up entire residential blocks that were converted into parking lots.

At the same time, the construction of Interstate 43 ravaged the center of this community. Latinos were caught between the expansion of industry on the east and construction of the freeway on the west.

Latino reaction to employment discrimination at Allen-Bradley and the erosion of the neighborhood was minimal, with no organized response from its residents.

Established organizations such as the Sociedad Mutualista, Hispano-Azteca, LULAC (League United of Latin American Citizens) and the American GI Forum were social in nature. Though some Latinos were aware of the existing social upheaval and how they faced the same discrimination as African Americans, they felt powerless to do anything about it.

Politicians and the white power structure of Milwaukee saw Latinos as passive, apolitical and content.

At the meeting with Groppi, we discussed a joint strategy for the demonstrations — which would cut through the Latino community — calling for increased hiring of blacks and Latinos at Allen-Bradley.

The meeting was held at the Spanish Center, then under the direction of Father John Maurice, one of the few agencies then serving the social service, financial and educational needs of Latinos.

The demonstrations would be sponsored by both the NAACP Youth Council and the Latino community, and leaflets announcing their purpose were distributed on the near south side.

More than 300 people participated in the first march on Aug. 13, drawing widespread media attention.

Milwaukee had grown accustomed to headlines about demonstrations by African-Americans. But this demonstration showed that Latinos, too, had been largely ignored by the city’s institutions and were no longer going to be passive and politically dormant.

It also sparked a heated debate between demonstrators and their supporters and those opposed to cooperation with the black community during a series of meetings at the former Our Lady of Guadalupe Church.

Leaders of the established organizations believed that the people calling for cooperation with African Americans were too young and not the true spokespersons for the community, and that no employment discrimination existed at Allen-Bradley.

Even if it did exist, they believed protesting and marching was not the answer.

Others argued that issues such as job discrimination, police brutality, inadequate housing, educational inequality and welfare rights needed to be confronted with direct action.

The controversy led to the first politically active Latino organization in Milwaukee — the Latin American Union for Civil Rights, which engaged in direct action to address these and other issues in the years that followed.

That in turn led to the creation of La Guardia, a bilingual community newspaper for which I served as editor for several years.

More than anything else, the initial march on Allen-Bradley was the catalyst for the Latino activism in Milwaukee in the following years, an activism that began to dissipate by the late 1970s.

Since then, many of Milwaukee’s economic and social disparities have increased due to state and federal policies and the disappearance of the city’s manufacturing jobs.

These increased disparities coincided with the rapid growth of Milwaukee’s Latino population — now comprised largely of Mexican immigrants, many of whom are undocumented — which faces new challenges under a political and social climate that did not exist in 1968.

For Latinos to successfully confront these new challenges they must continue to embrace the same degree of activism and courage displayed by those who gathered and marched on Allen-Bradley 50 years ago this month.