I Just finished sewing together all the blocks for my challenge quilt. I belong to an art quilting group called Cutting Edge and we decided to make quilts to show our own personal journey with racism. I wrote about this in my last blog post, with a picture and explanation of the center block. Some of the pictures are from my senior yearbook which gives you an idea of how
few Black girls were 'integrated' into our school. About sixteen into 850 some White girls.
It couldn't have been easy for them, to say the least. For me, it was the first time
I had ever met or talked to a Black person. I had seen Black people when we went to downtown Milwaukee to see our dentist or go shopping. But there were no Black people in our neighborhood.
For the 2020/2021 school year, Divine Savior/Holy Angels
reports that 28% of the students are students of color.
The other pictures show some of the many marches and protests of those times. There's even a picture of National Guard tanks on the streets of Milwaukee from the summer of 1967. Although that is considered the 'summer of love' it was also the summer of hate and discrimination in Milwaukee and other cities. There were 199 consecutive days and nights of marches to protest unfair housing practices (Redlining) and school bussing and segregation. Fr. Groppi was one of the leaders of the protests.
Pictures are courtesy of the Milwaukee Journal,
Wisconsin Black Historical Society, Milwaukee Public Library
and the Milwaukee Journal /Sentinel.
As time went on and I lived in other areas of the world and country I had Black coworkers, friends, and boyfriends. I currently live in a county where Blacks make up only 2% and Latinos 23%.
Wauwatosa where I grew up is currently 86% white with 5% black.
No comments:
Post a Comment