Stories curated by Arts @ Large student interns
Directed by Adam Carr
August 2021
Watch Adam Carr’s student Zoom presentations below on YouTube or click the map above to view where the real stories took place.
This Google Earth flyover shows you the path from present-day North Division High School (in 1967 St. Boniface Church, headquarters for the NAACP Youth Council was there—the church building is now razed beneath the expanded high school) south to 16th Street where marchers crossed the viaduct spanning the Menomonee Valley for the first of 200 marches on August 28, 1967.
Led by young Black people, the protesters marched in order to change the laws to guarantee fair housing—at the time, Black people could legally be refused to own or rent homes or apartments based on race. Milwaukee was hyper-segregated, with Black people predominantly living in the “Inner Core” on the near north side. The south side was predominantly white.
The marchers were met with angry counter-protesters hurling objects and obscenities. Marches continued for 200 nights into 1968. After Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in April 1968, the law changed at the federal level, bringing a victory in the fight for fair housing and in the ongoing battle for equal civil rights for all in the United States.