Maximum enlightenment requires maximum education. Blacks have traditionally stressed education even at the risk of death during American slavery. It's up to those of us who recognize what education can do to demand that teachers teach, educators educate, students learn and that school[s] serve as places for enlightenment rather than holding tanks for ignorance, [or] fosterers [of] drop outs, cop outs and scapegoats."¹

^{* * *}

Wisconsin's image of itself as a progressive state has not always matched reality in the field of race relations. Black suffrage was defeated several times at the polls before a favorable decision was obtained in 1866 from the Wisconsin Supreme Court by early civil rights pioneers Ezekiel Gillespie and Judge Byron Paine of Milwaukee.² Several antidiscrimination statutes were enacted in Wisconsin before World War II with the help of black lawyers such as William T. Green and George De Reef, but the laws were seldom enforced and de facto segregation was common.³

Since that time the struggle for equality has forced Wisconsinites to confront segregation and discrimination repeatedly, a process that has continued to this day.

Lloyd Barbee, a lawyer, a legislator, and an influential voice for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), led the modern civil rights movement in Wisconsin for many years. Barbee's gentle manner concealed an iron determination that served him and his cause well. Barbee occupies a unique place in Wisconsin legal history and civil rights history. He was a skilled lawyer, an influential state legislator, an active NAACP member and leader from a young age to his death, and a courageous proponent of legislation promoting race and gender equality and prison and court reform. Barbee was a visionary: he regularly took up causes that would not be confronted by society at large until years later, such as gay rights and abortion. This article tells only a small part of his story. In this year marking the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education,⁴ it is fitting to recognize Wisconsin's most influential figure in implementing that decision.

Early Years: Memphis to Milwaukee (1925-1960)

Lloyd Barbee was born in Memphis, Tenn., on Aug. 17, 1925, the youngest of three sons of Earnest and Adlena (Gilliam) Barbee. His mother died when he was six months old.⁵ At an early age Barbee embraced his father's and brothers' love of the arts, listening to classical music and literature on the radio. From the very beginning he showed signs of being someone special.⁶

Barbee grew up in the Depression South, which was highly segregated in every aspect of life. Although his family did not suffer the immense poverty that marked the lives of many black Americans in the 1920s,⁷ Barbee's father taught him early on about the hard times that he and other blacks experienced. Racial prejudice was part of Barbee's everyday life in Memphis, but he was fortunate to grow up in a family that challenged preconceived limits and urged him to fight injustice.⁸ Barbee's father was a painting contractor, the first African American member of the [Tennesee] state contractor's union.⁹ His uncle also was a businessman, employing about 10 people building houses and churches. The Barbee family also included many teachers, who helped to ingrain in Barbee a love of learning and a thirst for knowledge.¹⁰ His father was fascinated by great orators and exposed Lloyd and his brothers to grand speakers and the "art" of protest at an early age.¹¹

Barbee attended segregated schools and joined the NAACP at the age of 12. At age 17 he experienced what he described as "outrage" when noted activist A. Philip Randolph came to Memphis and black church leaders were afraid to let Randolph speak in their churches about war and civil rights. Lloyd was very upset that the church leaders "had no backbone."¹²

After high school, Barbee served in the Navy from 1943 to 1946. While remaining active in the NAACP, he attended LeMoyne College in Memphis, earning a B.A. degree in 1949. Faced with threats to his safety and disgusted with the atmosphere of the Jim Crow South, Barbee concluded that there was no future for him in Memphis. He moved to Madison in 1949 to attend law school on a scholarship at the University of Wisconsin, joining other early African American trailblazers at virtually all-white universities.

Regrettably, life in Madison gave Barbee "new insights into the many shades of discrimination" and brought home to him the fact that racial prejudice was not confined to the South.¹³ He sadly realized that "conscious racial discrimination was common, and unconscious racism among the educated was appallingly common."¹⁴ Angry about racial slights at the U.W. Law School, Barbee dropped out after his first year but later returned and earned his law degree in 1956.¹⁵ He continued his affiliation with the NAACP, rising to become president of the Madison chapter in 1955. In 1961 he was elected president of the state branch of the NAACP.

After graduating, Barbee encountered difficulties in earning a living as a black lawyer. He worked as an examiner for the state government and served on both the state and Madison human rights commissions. In 1958 he initiated an in-depth report on racial discrimination in housing in Madison, the first such report done on a Wisconsin city. In 1961 he organized his first sit-in, a 13-day, round-the-clock vigil at the State Capitol rotunda in support of fair housing and equal opportunity legislation - the first demonstration of this type in the nation. In 1961 he succeeded in changing the name of Nigger Heel Lake in Polk and Burnett counties, Wis., to Freedom Lake. Barbee also drafted the proposal for the first comprehensive civil rights ordinance, which subsequently passed in 1964 as the Madison Equal Opportunity Ordinance.

The Fight to Desegregate Homes and Schools in Milwaukee (1960-1976)

The turmoil generated in the South by the U.S. Supreme Court's 1954 decision in Brown and by Dr. Martin Luther King's civil rights crusade¹⁶ did not reach Wisconsin and other northern states until the early 1960s. In 1962 Assemblyman Isaac Coggs, who was already fighting for stronger enforcement of Wisconsin fair employment laws, encouraged Barbee to move to Milwaukee and run for an Assembly seat. Barbee met with NAACP general counsel Robert Carter, who was a leading attorney with Thurgood Marshall in the Brown trial, to discuss strategies for dealing with school desegregation in Northern cities. Carter and Roy Wilkins, head of the national NAACP, had identified Barbee as "a skilled lawyer who understood the complex and evolving case law on Northern school segregation" and as an "experienced protest organizer."¹⁷ They encouraged Barbee to move to Milwaukee and energize the local NAACP, and in late 1962 Barbee moved to the city that would remain his home for the rest of his life.¹⁸

Local operation and control of schools had long been a cornerstone of Wisconsin's education system, and the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) had operated a neighborhood-based school system for many years.¹⁹ In response to the Brown decision, MPS in 1958 began a program known as "intact busing," under which large numbers of black students and teachers were bussed to white schools but remained in segregated classrooms.²⁰ Up to 1962, both Milwaukee housing and schools had proven resistant to integration. As a result, most blacks lived in the city's "Inner Core" area, which was plagued by substandard living conditions.²¹ At that time, blacks made up approximately 6 percent of Milwaukee's population. By 1965 blacks represented 10.2 percent of the city's population. A 1960 report concluded that Milwaukee had the most pronounced pattern of racial separation in the nation.²² Barbee saw a chance to attack segregation in Milwaukee by using the strategy, first employed in the case of Taylor v. City of New Rochelle (1961), of showing that although residential segregation contributed to school segregation, "the [school] board's own actions (and inactions) had reinforced and intensified the racial segregation."²³

Barbee quickly impressed his new neighbors in Milwaukee: in 1962 he was chosen to head the Milwaukee branch of the NAACP and in 1964 he was elected to the Assembly, where he served for six terms.²⁴ Barbee's constituents wanted quick action to combat segregation, and they got it. A few weeks after his election to the Legislature, Barbee demanded that MPS desegregate its schools and presented a desegregation plan that called for selective busing to achieve a more even racial balance in the schools. Barbee's demand triggered a sharp internal struggle within MPS. The conservative faction prevailed: MPS informed Barbee that neighborhood schools had to be preserved at all costs and that selective busing was not acceptable.²⁵ Barbee responded by warning a meeting of Milwaukee lawyers that racial injustice was not confined to the atrocities then taking place in the South but also existed at home. "If the Brown decision means anything," said Barbee, "it means that school segregation is unconstitutional wherever it exists, north or south."²⁶

During the mid-1960s Barbee repeatedly reminded Milwaukeeans that their schools violated the U.S. Supreme Court's holding in Brown that segregation was inherently unequal. As evidence, Barbee relied upon the increasing numbers of mostly black schools and MPS's practice of placing black teachers only in black schools. He called upon school administrators "to act affirmatively" to eliminate segregation or risk a legal battle in the courts and mass protests in the streets. Both local white authorities and the established black leadership responded defensively to Barbee's charge of segregation. They argued that segregation in Milwaukee was due to geographic patterns over which they had no control, and they suggested that Barbee "attack job discrimination and housing discrimination" instead.²⁷

Barbee formed a desegregation coalition of community leaders who supported his cause, and in January 1964 he led the coalition in its first confrontation with MPS. The meeting began with school board chair and attorney Harry Story directing Barbee to be seated apart from the other members of his coalition. Barbee resisted this attempt to split up the coalition and walked out of the meeting. This action cemented Barbee's reputation as someone who would not compromise his values and made him a hero to some factions, because he passed up a clear chance to enhance his own personal importance in favor of maintaining unity and preserving the coalition.

Later that year, when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. visited Milwaukee, he complimented Barbee by stating: "Several months ago, the Northern Negro arose from his apathetic slumber." Dr. King encouraged Milwaukeeans to follow Barbee's lead, stating that: "A school boycott is a creative way to dramatize the whole issue."²⁸

After a series of marches and demonstrations failed to move MPS, Barbee and the NAACP formed the Milwaukee United School Integration Committee (MUSIC) in 1965. MUSIC organized a boycott of public schools and created "Freedom Schools" to take their place. MPS responded by creating an "open transfer" policy, which made it easier for black students to transfer to schools outside the inner city but did not require white students to leave their neighborhoods. The new policy backfired: many white students left the few remaining integrated Milwaukee schools, and black students who went outside the inner city for their education often ended up in segregated classes.²⁹

Barbee soon concluded that black Milwaukeeans had a better chance of achieving integration through the courts than through lobbying MPS. In July 1965 he filed a suit in federal court, Amos v. Board of School Directors of the City of Milwaukee. Barbee argued that even though MPS had not maintained an official policy of segregation, the pattern of segregation that had developed in Milwaukee since the 1940s violated the right of black students to equal protection under the law. The Amos case turned into a battle of epic proportions, consuming eight years of discovery and preparation before it went to trial.

Barbee faced opposition not only from MPS officials but also from people who agreed with his aims but disagreed with his timing and tactics. Even the national NAACP came to believe that the public school desegregation battle could not be won at that time in Milwaukee. It felt that prospects for success were greater in Cleveland and devoted its resources to that city. Barbee was largely left to fight on his own without significant help until Judge John Reynolds appointed counsel to assist him as the trial approached. Ironically, the NAACP lost the Cleveland case, while Barbee eventually emerged victorious in Milwaukee.³⁰

Barbee faced not only occupational risk but also the risk of physical danger as a result of his stand for justice. Violence against civil rights activists was all too common in the 1960s. On March 7, 1965, only four months before Barbee filed the Amos case, approximately 600 civil rights marchers in Alabama were attacked with clubs and tear gas by state and local law enforcement officers, an incident that became known as Bloody Sunday. Less than a year before Barbee filed the Amos case, the bodies of slain civil rights activists James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner were found in Mississippi. In 1963 President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and Medgar Evers, NAACP leader in Jackson, Miss., was murdered. On Feb. 21, 1965, Malcolm X, a man Barbee respected quite a bit, was murdered.³¹ In 1967, the urban riots that plagued other major American cities in the mid-1960s came to Milwaukee. In 1968, Robert F. Kennedy was killed in Los Angeles and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tenn., Barbee's hometown.

Barbee received a full measure of threats and hate mail directed at him and at his children - but he was determined to persevere, and he soldiered on in spite of the danger. His daughter Daphne recalls that the threats were frightening, but she also remembers her father saying, "these threats are not going to stop me." Barbee believed that despite the danger "if people want justice, they are going to have to keep on fighting for justice."³²

Trial of the Amos case finally began in late 1973 before Judge Reynolds. MPS argued that Reynolds should make no changes in the school system because MPS did not deliberately segregate students and because integration would not improve the schooling black children received. MPS also warned, prophetically, that desegregation could trigger massive flight of white students to suburban school districts. Barbee consistently argued that Reynolds's duty was to make a legal decision, not a practical political decision, and that MPS could not get around the central fact of the case: segregation violated black students' right to equal protection of the law.

In 1976 Reynolds issued his decision.³³ He agreed that MPS had not intentionally segregated Milwaukee schools but he concluded that MPS had acted "with the full knowledge that racial segregation existed ... and would continue to exist unless certain policies were changed."³⁴ Reynolds also agreed with Barbee that the risk of white flight was not something he should consider in making his decision. Reynolds explained that:

"The Constitution does not guarantee one a quality education; it guarantees one an equal education, and the law in this country is that a segregated education that is mandated by school authorities is inherently unequal. ... If the law against intentional school segregation is unworkable, then it should be repealed. Until then, it must be obeyed."³⁵

The months following the Amos decision were the pinnacle of Barbee's civil rights career. Having attained a successful ruling, Barbee was concerned that the legal victory would not be translated into concrete change and improvement in the educational system. "The whole system should be ordered to desegregate, root and branch," Barbee urged. "If we don't do that, then we will have engaged in a paper victory."³⁶

Barbee worked with a chastened MPS to formulate a remedial plan. This seems particularly indicative of Barbee's motivations, not merely to win the case, but to help in crafting a solution. The plan finally approved by Reynolds called for limited busing to achieve greater racial balance in Milwaukee schools, funds for specialty schools to induce white suburban students to transfer to MPS, and funds to help black students adjust to suburban schools. Although the U.S. Supreme Court had recently ruled in Milliken v. Bradley (1974) that suburban districts could not be forced to participate in desegregation of urban districts,³⁷ Barbee and MPS persuaded many Milwaukee suburban districts to join the plan. In mid-1976 Barbee had the satisfaction of seeing his colleagues in the Legislature agree to fund the plan.³⁸ Barbee suffered a temporary setback when the case was appealed and remanded for Reynolds to reconsider his decision in light of recent school segregation cases,³⁹ but after doing so Reynolds reaffirmed his order in 1978.⁴⁰

Final Years: Steps Forward and Steps Backward (1976-2002)

Barbee's triumph was not unalloyed. In the years after Amos, white flight, the school choice program, and divisions in the black community dealt setbacks to his vision of a fully integrated society.⁴¹ In his later years, Barbee acknowledged that the Milwaukee school system today is just as segregated as it was in 1965. However, he argued that there is a positive value in the fact that the segregation today does not have the overt sanction of government that it had before Brown. Like the Brown court, Barbee understood that government-sponsored segregation inflicts its own kind of damage, stigmatizing certain citizens merely on the basis of color and damaging their sense of self worth and thereby denying the nation those citizens' full talents. Barbee understood the self-destructive folly of such practices and devoted his life to removing them from our educational system. Barbee was the full embodiment and inheritor of the challenge laid down by the NAACP's Charles Hamilton Houston, one of the principal architects of the Brown victory:

"There come times when it is possible to forecast the results of a contest, of a battle, of a lawsuit long before the final event has taken place; and so far as our struggle for civil rights is concerned, the struggle for civil rights in America is won. What I am more concerned about is the fact that the Negro shall not be content simply with demanding an equal share in the existing system. It seems to me that his historical challenge is to make sure that the system which shall survive in the United States of America shall be a system which guarantees justice and freedom for everyone."⁴²

In the Legislature and in the community, Barbee was often the only voice for people or causes who had no other voice. In many circles he was referred to as "the outrageous Mr. Barbee," a role used to challenge the complacency of both blacks and whites. Like Houston, Lloyd Barbee was a workhorse who dedicated his life to helping others, for little or no pay, often so engrossed in his work that he forgot to eat.⁴³ Barbee is truly an example of how much one lawyer can accomplish when motivated by a passion to open the gates of justice to the entire human race. As his son stated:

"The most important thing I learned from my dad was that we are all only human beings - we are not black or white, ... this is our race and our condition and if we only accept this, then we can move on to deal with the human problems that we all face. ... This is who my dad was and the legacy that we, all humans, must continue to struggle with."⁴⁴

Barbee died at age 77 on Dec. 29, 2002, but his legacy has not been lost:

"I am not discouraged. I have seen more difficult times. We are not as well off as we could be, but we are better off than we were."⁴⁵

Endnotes

¹Lloyd Barbee Papers, Wisconsin Black Historical Society and Museum.

²Gillespie v. Palmer, 20 Wis. 544 (1866); Joseph A. Ranney, Trusting Nothing to Providence: A History of Wisconsin's Legal System 536-40 (1999); Leslie H. Fishel, Wisconsin and Negro Suffrage, 46 Wis. Mag. Hist. 180 (Spring 1963).

³See Joe William Trotter Jr., Black Milwaukee: The Making of an Industrial Proletariat, 1915-1945, at 103-08 (1985).

⁴Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954).

⁵Quinten Barbee, A Family Remembers, Wis. Senior Advoc., Special Tribute Edition to Lloyd A. Barbee, Sept. - Oct. 2003, at 6.

⁶Dr. Sean P. Keane, Struggle for Liberation in Northern Ireland, Wis. Senior Advoc., supra note 5, at 20.

⁷Lloyd Barbee: I Remember Milwaukee, 108 (WMVS/WMVT television broadcast, April 19, 1995).

⁸Interview with Daphne Barbee-Wooten and Rustam Barbee, Feb. 5, 2004, at 18 (transcript on file with Judge Maxine White).

⁹Id. at 40.

¹⁰Id. at 17.

¹¹Lloyd Barbee: I Remember Milwaukee, supra note 7, at 108.

¹²Id.

¹³The Legacy of Lloyd Barbee, Wis. Senior Advoc., supra note 5, at 4.

¹⁴Id. at 15 (remarks of J. Quinn Brisben).

¹⁵Barbee, Lloyd A., 1925-2002. Papers, 1993-1982. U.W.-Milwaukee.

¹⁶See generally Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-1963 (1988).

¹⁷Jack Dougherty, More Than One Struggle: The Evolution of Black School Reform in Milwaukee 76 (2004).

¹⁸Id. at 76, 80.

¹⁹Lloyd P. Jorgenson, The Founding of Public Education in Wisconsin 15-22, 36-37 (1956); Conrad E. Patzer, Public Education in Wisconsin 5-10, 348-63 (1924).

²⁰Leonard Sykes Jr., Legacy of Brown Case a Mix of Hope, Frustration, Milw. J. Sentinel, Jan. 31, 2004.

²¹Frank A. Aukofer, City With a Chance 35-39 (1968).

²²Suburban Negro Ratio Lowest in the Country, Milw. J., April 26, 1965.

²³Dougherty, supra note 17, at 75; Taylor v. City of New Rochelle, 191 F. Supp. 181 (S.D.N.Y. 1961).

²⁴See Wisconsin Blue Book, 1965-66.

²⁵Aukofer, supra note 21, at 50-55.

²⁶Dougherty, supra note 17, at 71.

²⁷Id. at 72-73.

²⁸Dougherty, supra note 17, citing Milwaukee Star, Feb. 1, 1964.

²⁹Ranney, supra note 2, at 553-61; see also Amos v. Board of Sch. Dir. City of Milwaukee, 408 F. Supp. 765, 792-93 (E.D. Wis. 1976).

³⁰Interview with Daphne Barbee-Wooten and Rustam Barbee, supra note 8, at 21.

³¹Id. at 9.

³²Id. at 38.

³³See supra note 29.

³⁴Amos, 408 F. Supp. at 819.

³⁵Id. at 821.

³⁶The Legacy of Lloyd Barbee, Wis. Senior Advoc., supra note 5, at 5.

³⁷418 U.S. 717, 741-42 (1974).

³⁸Laws of 1976, ch. 220.

³⁹Armstrong v. Brennan, 539 F.2d 625 (7th Cir. 1976), rev'd, 433 U.S. 672 (1977), on remand, 566 F.2d 1175 (7th Cir. 1977).

⁴⁰Armstrong v. O'Connell, 451 F. Supp. 817, 825, 866 (E.D. Wis. 1978).

⁴¹See Ranney, supra note 2, at 553-61.

⁴²The Road to Brown (University of Virginia 1995).

⁴³Interviews with Elizabeth Coggs Jones, Lucinda Gordon, and Ann Tevik (transcripts on file with Judge Maxine White); Wis. Senior Advoc., supra note 5, at 8, 9.

⁴⁴Interview with Finn Barbee (transcript on file with Judge Maxine White).

⁴⁵Barbee, I Remember Milwaukee, supra note 7, at 108.