August 23, 1967

NAACP Youth Council Member Margaret Rozga: "After the curfews ended and the National Guard returned home, the open housing campaign soon moved into its second phase. On August 23, 1967, NAACP Youth Council Commandoes Prentice McKinney and Dwight Benning announced to the press that the Youth Council would take its message city wide.' Specifically, the Youth Council Commandoes, the direct action committee that had also become the strategy-planning unit for the Youth Council, would lead a march across the Menomonee River Valley to the south side. The Menomonee River Valley was called Milwaukee's "Mason-Dixon line," the dividing line between the black and the white communities. In fact, an old joke in Milwaukee about the Sixteenth Street viaduct, one of the bridges that span the valley, highlights the point: What's the longest bridge in the world? The 16th Street viaduct—it connects Africa and Poland." From Margaret Rozga, "March on Milwaukee," Wisconsin Magazine of History, Volume 90, Number 4, Summer 2007, http://content.wisconsinhistory.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/wmh/id/49374/show/49343/rec/6 , pp. 33-34.

NAACP Youth Council to March on Southside.” August 26, 1967. Milwaukee Courier, Page 1. Milwaukee Public Library Microfilm Collection, Microfilmed by the Wisconsin Historical Society.