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.

Questions for reflection:

1. What organization held the press conference announcing the march?

2. What was significant about the route of their march, which would take them over the Menomonee River Valley (the 16th Street Viaduct) to Kosciuszko Park on the South Side?

3. Why do you think they decided to take the direct action of a march instead of just writing letters or speaking out in support of Alderman Vel R. Phillips’ fair housing law?

4. Why do you think they chose this issue for the march? What is so important about being able to live anywhere you choose and not be denied housing because of the color of one’s skin?

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.