Milwaukee Civil Rights
Essay Preview: Milwaukee Civil Rights
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The first article I analyzed came from the Milwaukee Star on September 25th, 1965. Entitled, Support for School Boycott Mushrooms, this article included some recent news about the activities of MUSIC and the busing debate. What struck my attention first was the fact that the NALC used the word negro, and so did the paper. I understand the use of this word was not important at the time, but it makes me think how far our society has come today when we do not need to use degrading words to describe people. This article starts off with an approval from MUSIC for the school boycott. It seems this newspaper article is almost like a flyer, in which it gives updates on the events important to the Milwaukee Civil Rights struggle. The Milwaukee Star seems to have this advantage because it was a smaller scale newspaper whose sole purpose was news pertaining to events in the black community. To me, the most interesting part about this article is the first emergence of a possible desegregated busing plan. Most of what people first hear about the desegregation of schools is from the historic Little Rock, Arkansas, so it was exciting to actually look at a document that made events such as those in Little Rock relevant to where I live. However, the article goes on to include the fact that the school board president, John Foley, immediately said no to the experimental busing because, “it would necessitate exhaustive research and discussion.” From this I find that Jones or Dougherty could have used this to their advantage in the ridiculousness in reasoning for the segregation in busing. My question to Foley would be, “What research do you need to do?” The discussion part I understand, mostly because it would probably consist of some new way to keep busing segregated. The rest of the article includes ways that people in favor of the boycott could help such as volunteering, and also a reassurance from Mrs. Davis that the committee will do everything necessary to be prepared for the boycott.
The second article I found was from the Milwaukee Journal on March 1rst, 1965, which was entitled, School Boycott Backed at Rally. It was about a one day school boycott in Milwaukee. Comparable to the first article, the writer in this one used the phrase negro area to summarize the part of Milwaukee that would participate in the boycott of elementary, junior, and high schools. From todays perspective it is easy to see the racism in using that, but even Father Groppi used the word negro, which I found in some of the WTMJ interviews with him. This article summarized a gathering of about 350 blacks to find out if the school boycott rally would happen. This article only named two civil rights leaders, Lloyd Barbee and Thomas Jacobson. The first article used many different names of the leaders and committee members of MUSIC. The Milwaukee Star also included contact information to help with the boycott, the Journal