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Chapter 11 “Not a Color, but an Attitude” Father James Groppi and Black Power Politics in Milwaukee Patrick Jones In late September  Father James Groppi, five members of the NAACP Youth Council “Commandos,” and two other local white clergymen set off from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to Washington, D.C., to lobby liberal politicians for a national “fair housing” law and to attend the “Conference on the Churches and Urban Tension.”1 The conference, organized by the Methodist Church with the support of several other liberal denominations , sought to bring greater national attention to the explosive open housing drama unfolding on the streets of Milwaukee. For a month hundreds of civil rights advocates had clashed with thousands of white, working -class residents on the city’s South Side. Just across the th Street Viaduct, linking “Africa to Poland,” as the local joke went, angry white mobs chanted white power slogans, threw rocks, firecrackers, and feces, and pummeled nonviolent marchers with their fists. Milwaukee was only the latest in a string of housing clashes that rocked urban America during the mid-s, marking the issue as a key civil rights battleground in the North. Conference organizers in the nation’s capital hoped to dramatize the need for national action on this pressing issue by spotlighting the Milwaukee campaign. At a session on the first day featuring Fr. Groppi and the Commandos, leaders of Pride, Inc., a local black nationalist organization founded by Marion Barry, opposed Fr. Groppi’s close relationship with the Commandos and his role as primary spokesperson for the Milwaukee open housing campaign. A line of critics rose to castigate the white priest and his young  black companions with a list of derogatory names and Black Power barbs. “Fr. Groppi has one thing wrong with him,” one member of Pride, Inc., declared, “his color. It’s the same old case of whites using Negroes.”2 During this verbal onslaught, Groppi said nothing, but instead retreating to a corner of the room. The five Commandos stepped forward to defend the young priest and to explain that, in fact, they were the leaders of the Milwaukee campaign and Groppi was their adviser. They went on to reaffirm their conviction in Black Power but also their commitment to what they called a “not-violent,” interracial, church-based movement in Milwaukee. Following a series of testy exchanges, the meeting degenerated into chaos. It ultimately took a wedge of Commandos to get Fr. Groppi out.3 Over the next two days the local militants continued their efforts to undermine the conference. As Groppi and the Commandos met with legislators , members of Pride, Inc., told reporters that the Commandos were not authentic Black Power leaders because they allowed a white man to advise them. The group also tried to block the Milwaukee activists from participating in a scheduled march and prayer vigil at the Washington Monument . Their challenge divided the conference into black and white caucuses and few African Americans participated in the public actions. In the end, the conference broke upon the rocky shoals of competing visions of Black Power. The organizers’ attempt to bring the Milwaukee campaign to a broader national audience fizzled as the media focused more on the internal strife than on the issue of housing.4 Yet the confrontation solidified the alliance between Fr. Groppi and the Commandos, and reaffirmed their commitment to their own brand of Black Power politics. “Fr. Groppi and ourselves are together,” one Commando told reporters after the conference ended. “We would die together, even if it meant going to hell. This movement is black and white. It contains people of all colors. We do not turn anyone away who is seeking justice for the blacks and who is willing to work and sacrifice to bring it into existence.”5 Another wrote as they left the capital city, “I advocate Black Power, but not to the point that it stops any people or any man from identifying himself with a Black Power movement, even if he be white, yellow or green.”6 When the Milwaukee delegation returned home, an interracial throng of several hundred met them at the airport, chanting Black Power slogans, “We love Fr. Groppi!” and “Freedom!” Later, at St. Boniface Church, the delegation received a standing ovation as they reaffirmed the principles of their campaign. Vel Phillips, Milwaukee’s lone African American Common Council member, called the interracial open housing cam-  pat r i c k j o n e s...

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