Eruptions in The Heartland

By Barbara Dolan/Milwaukee

Mesmerized by the prospect of a business boom that could produce thousands of new white-collar and service jobs, Milwaukee's civic leaders never gave much thought to the possibility of civil unrest. So it came as a shock when alderman Michael McGee proclaimed earlier this month that he was forming a Black Panther militia that would resort to "actual fighting, bloodshed and urban guerrilla warfare" unless the city did more to improve the lot of impoverished African Americans. Inner-city blacks, warned McGee, were fed up with white officials spending money on shopping malls and skyscrapers while prosperity passed them by. "It's been 25 years since Martin Luther King, and things have gotten worse for black people," said McGee. "I'm not going to let it go any further than this."

For blacks, who represent an estimated 25% of Milwaukee's population of more than 600,000, things could hardly get worse. The city leads the nation in black unemployment and teenage-pregnancy rates but ranks at the bottom in black family income among urban areas of its size. In McGee's downtrodden Tenth District, the average annual income is $5,500. "You look at our community and you see a disaster," says Howard Fuller, director of health and human services for Milwaukee County. "Then you look at other parts of the community and you see advancement. You put these two things together and it explodes."

So far, nearly 500 young black men and women have enlisted in McGee's militia, 60 of them students from the University of Wisconsin in Madison. He has become a hero to such youths because of his reputation for standing up to the white establishment. In the early 1970s he headed the Milwaukee chapter of the original Black Panthers. In 1984 he was elected to the city's Common Council, where he frequently resorts to theatrics to make a point. In 1988, for example, he wore a bag over his head in the council's annual group photograph. He and his followers often attempt to disrupt public ceremonies by loudly blowing whistles.

Now, however, McGee has shifted from theatrics to threats. While the earlier Panthers stressed self-defense, he vows that unless his demands for $100 million in jobs programs and city council representation to give blacks more clout in city government are met by 1995, his militia will "cripple" the city and "extract a measure of justice." He even jokes about taking hostages if the city does not respond to his satisfaction.

Despite the flamboyance of his rhetoric, officials say McGee has committed no crimes because he is not advocating "imminent lawless action." Indeed, the sidearm he packs in a leather holster is a slingshot. But Mayor John Norquist charges that McGee's firebrand behavior is "doing more to scare jobs away from his district" than to help it. "It's one thing to try to attract investment and capital," says Norquist. "It's another to use extortion."

At first, all McGee got for his efforts were calls for his resignation and threats to have him arrested. A group on the predominantly white South Side announced that it would form its own militia to protect the city from McGee's group. Other whites distributed racist literature in local factories. McGee's proposal to extend a street named for King into white areas seems doomed. He has also lost a fight in the council to transfer control of a jobs program from the county to the city. "We've got two worlds here," he said dejectedly after that defeat. "One black. One white. And there's an invisible Berlin Wall that separates the two."

But at week's end an organization of top religious leaders announced that it supported McGee's demands for a greater infusion of resources into the black community. While they condemned violence, the church leaders said, "There is also a danger that in our efforts to respond to each other's rhetoric, we will ignore the violence that already exists in our community." If the clergymen's intervention can produce a compromise, all of Milwaukee can say amen.