Civil Rights

Click on TV to see NAACP Youth Council Commando Prentice McKinney talk about his plans for marching against segregated housing. (From the WTMJ-TV Collection)	National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) The Milwaukee Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was organized in 1919, eight years after the establishment of the national office in New York. From 1930 to 1949 the organization was inactive, but was then revived by a group of young people discouraged by difficulties encountered in gaining job promotions Membership grew greatly throughout the 1960s. One of the the group's most dramatic moments came during the summer and fall of 1967. Due to proposed freeway expansion, thousands of African American families were to be displaced from their homes. Finding new housing in a city without equal housing laws brought the issue of segregation to a head. Lead by the NAACP Youth Council Commandos and assisted by Father Groppi, citizens marched every day and night for two weeks. The Mayor called in the National Guard and imposed a curfew on the city. Whites on the South Side rioted in response and Milwaukee was held in siege. Like Father Groppi, the head of the Youth Council Commandos, Prentice McKinney, spoke powerfully and eloquently to the press. He used the media as well as demonstration to give immediacy to the plight of inner city residents and the effects of segregation. The NAACP and communication: The NAACP and Father Groppi were accused of inciting violence with their 1967 marches just to get attention. Is violence a necessary element of protest? Is it an affective way of communicating a message? The NAACP not only spoke to the public at large, they communicated among themselves. How does this help strenghthen their message? In the Archives: The collection contains correspondence, files on political action and discrimination cases, and subject files that illuminate numerous issues which faced the Milwaukee branch, such as its effort to ban the Amos n' Andy television program, because of its offensive stereotyped black roles.

Father James Groppi

Father James Edmund Groppi, Roman Catholic priest and civil rights activist, was born in Milwaukee.

Groppi's early civil rights activity included participation in the 1963 "March on Washington," work with the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) movement in Mississippi during the summer of 1964, participation in the "Selma-Montgomery March" in March 1965, and work with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference voter registration project, led by Martin Luther King, Jr., during the summer of 1965. That same year he became the advisor to the Milwaukee chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Youth Council and began protesting segregation in Milwaukee public schools. In his capacity of NAACP advisor, he organized an all Black male group called the Youth Council Commandos. The Commandos helped to quell violence during the "Freedom Marches" and, with the NAACP Youth Council, mounted a lengthy, continuous demonstration against the city of Milwaukee on behalf of fair housing.

Father Groppi and communication:

Father Groppi appeared on television and at government meetings frequently during his most active years. He not only used protest and demonstration as a means to communicate the injustice inherent in racial segregation to the public, but he also used the media. He was ahead of his time in delivering sharp, soundbite like comments to the press.

In the Archives: The collection consists primarily of correspondence, largely responses to Father Groppi's civil rights activities. Most of the unsolicited responses occured during 1967-1968, when Groppi became a controversial national figure because of his activism in support of racial integration. There is also a scrapbook of newspaper clippings, writings including speeches and sermons and two tape recordings of Father Groppi speaking.

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