Milwaukee Day Post 3: The Struggle for Educational Equality
For Milwaukee Day I have cut together some excerpts from our WTMJ film collection regarding the effort to desegregate schools. The footage focuses mostly on the school boycott which took place in May 18th 1964. The boycott was intentionally held on the day after the ten year anniversary of the Brown vs. Board of Education decision which ruled segregated schools unconstitutional. The interview with NAACP President Lloyd Barbee illustrates the concentration of African-American students within the Milwaukee Public Schools and the detrimental effects of segregation. Around 11,000 students of various racial backgrounds took part in the boycott.
Milwaukee has historically had problems with segregation and specifically a problem with desegregating its school system. Lloyd Barbee mentions a lawsuit in the video, in 1976 there was a lawsuit filed against the city stating that MPS had not done enough for its black students and that their schools were still segregated. The result of this was the suburban exchange program which was known as “Chapter 220”. Essentially this was a voucher program which gave inner city kids the opportunity to attend schools in the suburbs. This seemed to work at first but it would eventually break down.
Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) provides data on their website regarding the racial and economic demographics of each of their schools. According to the most recent data collected by Milwaukee Public Schools North Division High’s student body is made up of 97% black students, as of the 2016-2017 school year.. This gives us an idea of what challenges we are still facing in trying to desegregate our schools. MPS is a very large district compromised of 76,856 students as of the 2016-2017 school year, of those 55% or 42,008 are African-American, 26% are Latinx, 12% are white, 7% are Asian-American, with less than 1% identifying as Other. The main take away from this is that only 12% of the entire district are white kids, this changes the definition of integrated schools a little bit. We’re no longer talking about integrating children of color with white children as white children make up only 12% of enrollment in the district. This is a fight we’re still fighting
The major roadblock to integration of the schools and, to integration of Milwaukee as a city, is economic standing. MPS defines economic disadvantage as those children who qualify for free or discounted meals through their meals program. Throughout the entire district 78.7% of students are considered economically disadvantaged. Looking along racial demographics 84% of Latinx and African-American, and 73% of Asian-American students fall into this category. This is in stark contrast to the 47% of white children in the district who fall into this economic stratum. The data clearly shows that since 1964, when the school boycott was organized, MPS has only gotten worse. Affluent white families have increasingly withdrawn their children from Milwaukee Public Schools.
So where do we go from here? Well I don’t have the answer for that. Part of the problem is that Milwaukee Public Schools don’t have enough funding. Public education is a vital part of creating a truly free and equal society. Without funding though it is impossible to provide a quality of education that will give children of all backgrounds a chance to succeed in life. So if this is something you really care about contact your local government and representatives to let them know you want this to change, and when the time comes get to the polls and vote.
~Cameron
Graduate Student Intern, UWM Archives, UWM Special Collections, UWM Libraries Digitial Collections and Initiatives
