“James Groppi (1930-1985) was the most famous cleric in the history of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Milwaukee. From his base at St. Boniface Church, Groppi affiliated himself with the local branch of the NAACP and became the chaplain to the Youth Group. Moreover, by 1964 he had joined forces with local attorney Lloyd Barbee, who had been demanding significant reforms in the public schools that served the African American community.
Groppi’s most extensive crusade in Milwaukee was the quest for open housing. He worked with Councilwoman Vel Phillips in her fight for a city ordinance ensuring equal access to housing. Mayor Henry Maier stubbornly opposed this measure, forcing Groppi to organize a public march across the 16th Street viaduct on August 28, 1967. Groppi and his fellow marchers walked to Kosciuszko Park, walking through a gauntlet of nearly several hundred hostile Milwaukeeans who hurled cherry bombs, bricks, bottles, feces and urine at the demonstrators. Groppi himself received death threats and saw himself hanged in effigy. The daily marches continued for two hundred days into early 1968, drawing thousands of people near and far. In 1968, a new federal Civil Rights law was passed that included long-desired language regarding housing discrimination.” (Encyclopedia of Milwaukee)
In 1967 my mother, Suzanne Jones was finishing her masters in social work at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee and for her internship she was placed at a school in Milwaukee working predominantly with the community of color in that district. There was a moment in our house that semester when my mother confronted my father and said she was going to march with Father Groppi that day. My father forbid her to go to the march and literally stood in the door to stop her. He agreed with her regarding Father Groppi’s ideas and actions, but he felt the marches were too dangerous and did not want her participating on the street. I was thirteen and It is a moment that I will never forget. Both of my parents spent their lives trying to make the public schools more inclusive and available to all students.
In the fall of 2010, Kristen Singer and I were in NYC to see a workshop of Avenue Q: School Edition, a show that we directed together later that year in Kenosha. After the workshop we asked Marty Johnson from iTheatrics what to see that night and he suggested The Scottsboro Boys. I remember walking out of the Lyceum Theatre after the show trembling because I was so affected by the message and the staging of the production. Two years ago I asked nine students from three different cultures in our Bradford High School community to be a part of the Public School Project. We met to discuss student life in the public school setting. One of our young women of color said that she felt we did not do enough to represent her culture and experiences. She felt she was the only person of color in some of her classes and that the study of American culture and the adults who were leading that discussion did not reflect her culture or look like her either. Last spring after our auditions I knew that we had the talent in our district to do a production of this powerful and plangent musical. After much discussion and thought in our department meetings we decided that it would be best to invite a director/choreographer of color to lead the production and also invite three professional adult actors to work alongside our gifted students to mentor them as we learned about the original Scottsboro Boys and the history of the minstrel show and how this controversial musical form informed and reinforced the culture of Jim Crow in the last century of our American history.
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