The Inner Core; Conversations from the Inner Core; Frank Zeidler and Richard Budelman

I was a part of our continuing project on the inner core of the city of Milwaukee will be broadcasting programs on this topic each Sunday at 2:00. The first programme in the series the Abrams narrative was heard last week several days ago Roy Vogelman visited with former Milwaukee mayor Frank Zeigler and with Mr. Richard booed a woman who was press secretary to Mayor Meyer. First he talked with Frank Zeigler who was mayor of Milwaukee from 1948 to nine hundred sixty. Mr. Zeigler There has of course been an enormous amount of discussion and dispute and debate the situation of the inner city of Milwaukee or the core area as it's sometimes called. And perhaps we could turn to you at this point as a resident for 20 years this very area. Milwaukee too. Look ahead as it were to give us your impression of what the Corps might be like in five years or ten years or even 20 years. In other words where do we go or where do you go from here.

Mr. Valma and let me just go back into history a little bit. The word core inner core was a word which I coined originally in 1059 when I gave a report to the Malki Common Council on the difficulties that were appearing in the inner city of Milwaukee. I had witnessed a minor riot at 12th and Wright Street in Milwaukee. And from this I had a committee created to make a study of the social and cultural and family and other kinds of problems in the inner city with the recommendations. This report was published in April one thousand nine hundred fifty but unfortunately my successor in office saw fit not to use it and all the report is still valid and its recommendations are valid. One has almost to sneak it out of the public library in order to get a hold of it. Now the conditions have continually deteriorated in the city since about 1960. In the inner core and I predict that they will continue to deteriorate to an even worse condition. This is because a psychological chasm

has been allowed to arise between the negro and white community of the city of Waukee largely fostered by the policies in the city hall of the mayor and the Common Council which promoted a kind of a separateness and system of apartheid. There was an attempt in the last seven or eight years by the public administration in the city of Milwaukee to either play down the difficulties of the inner city or to ignore them or to try to smother them by appointing committees which did nothing. And as a result the moderates in the inner city were thrust aside and the militants came forward. This militancy took the form of picketing first of the Eagles Club them of Judge Cameron's home and the home of other jurists and other people. And finally it exploded in the form of a severe community civil disturbance. At the end of July and August of this year. The result of this civil disturbance was to create a further breach between the white people and the Negro

people of the community. One that is very difficult to now overcome. The white people view the negro as in this as a sale and as a potential person who will beat or slug or or mug a white person. And there has been a further flights now of the white people from the inner city. In addition to this the merchants in the streets affected now find it very difficult to maintain their operations and to stay in business. And there is a wholesale movement of business off of 3rd Street Green Bay Avenue North Avenue and other places. It is true that some merchants are staying. Other merchants are breaking up there for the fronts of their buildings. Still others are putting up a very small windows where once they had great shoal disk display windows. But many community services which were to be found in the inner city at the beginning of this year are going in addition to this there has been since about

1960 when I left office to the present time a calamitous collapse in property value in the inner city of Milwaukee. Because of Milwaukee segregated conditions the property value in the inner city has dropped so that it may be and said to be worth only one third to 40 percent of its value of six or eight years a goal. And this is meant severe loss to former white owners without meaning missteps and necessarily a substantial reduction in the cost of the buildings purchased by Negroes from white realtors who in turn have bought it from white owners so that there is a feeling among many white people that the presence of a negro in a community brings a calamitous drop in property values and there's a feeling on the part of the negro that he is being exploited in the purchase of housing and this further has caused a division. Now the Common Council of the city of Milwaukee and the mayor are faced with the need for giving some

psychological recognition to the problem that there needs to be reduced a tension between the negro in the white community and that the easiest and best way to reduce this would probably be by the passage of an open housing ordinance. Something similar perhaps not nearly as stringent as the Madison ordinance. But the emotional conditions that have arisen with the white people in this deterioration have such have been such that it appears difficult to persuade a majority of the Common Council to pass this ordinance and the mayor instead of showing the necessary leadership that he ought to have ducks the issue and throws it back to the common consul. The problem of the mayor's leadership and one hand and of the Reverend James groping on the on the other hand is a problem with the walk ins have to face with well a mayor nationally speaks in terms of being for ending these conditions of segregation and locally all his actions reinforce the methods of segregation in the

city of Milwaukee. He takes positions which are clearly recognized as being that which he thinks the majority of the people of the city favor namely the continuation of segregation by the growth be on the other hand by some ill conceived activities. In the form of discipline civil rights marches and so forth has created the impression among many white people that he and his group but will who are almost a paramilitary group the National Association for the management of Colored People used commandos they have created the impression in the minds of many people that they are a military group who will smash up storefronts burn houses and throw fire bombs indiscriminately. These are unfortunate conditions and it will be very difficult to deal with them. Now if this condition is allowed to continue what will happen

will be that business and industry will tend to move out of the city of Milwaukee. The city will become funded with a reduction of its tax base because of the loss of this industry but its social problems will be greatly increased. And so all of the city of Milwaukee faces a difficult fiscal situation in the future. My belief is that the only answer at this moment is for the white people of the community to recognize that they must pass some kind of an ordinance granting equal opportunity and housing to begin to end the psychological division that occurs in the city. Some means must be. Both found to prevent the leadership of black separation and the black apartheid from taking over simply because the whites will not respond to any moderate requests from moderate negros or moderate white leaders. The role of the clergy of course is very important in this community and it is gratifying to see that the religious leaders of the

community despite some very severe criticism of them by their own parishioners have recognized the gravity of the situation and Irish furnishing the leadership in this event. One can only wish that more of the elected officials would recognize what is going on and do that which is right in Milwaukee the whole question of democracy is at stake. Can democracy the parliamentary process give people a form of justice which democracy demands namely equal opportunity and housing and jobs and. The right to a person of happiness in life. Or Will democracy be used in the way in the walky that the majority in the local government will simply sit hard and fast and tight on the kind of de facto apartheid had. With that we have at the present time and prevent the democratic process from solving the great social problems that exist. I am at this moment

rather pessimistic about the situation I live in the inner city I know what the whites in the inner city feel about these things there are part of me Mr. Zeigler but I think a lot of people have the impression that the core area is populated entirely by Negroes and that isn't quite the case is it not. Lee I cannot give you the percentages now but if the conditions continue it will be entirely populated by by Negroes there was a quite in a movement of whites after the riot. But there are many white people living in the inner city many of them all people who have held on to their homes and there has been a fairly good relationship between whites and the girls. There are a great many community councils in the inner city who are trying to do their work. But as long as the political climate of the city of Milwaukee is as it is it becomes very difficult for these people to act constructively. Now there are many constructive things going on in the inner city and I do not. Wish to recycle them all to you for example. Example A consortium of Catholic women's colleges are beginning projects in the inner city the University of Wisconsin has projects

in the inner city there are many community councils block clubs and other organizations actively working in the inner city. But as long as the psychological burden rests on the Negro community namely that the negro does not have equal opportunity in housing all of these other efforts become minor in the in the great mental pattern that is created. To what extent mysteries are there would you say that the negro living in the core area is trapped there. It would be interesting to know how many Negroes have managed to get out of the area and find housing in other parts of the locky certainly some of them must. Yes a number of Negroes have gotten out and I would presume that if Negroes had sufficient amount of money more of them could move out of the inner city in a matter of fact. Some are but the proportion is relatively small and it is frightening to recognize that when you move from say Buffalo street to Holcomb street along locust that you immediately pass from one from the Negro district into the white district the color line is that sharp one block apart from twenty

fifth Twenty sixth street on Center Street that's the color line. And this is recognized by every one. And as a result. We have in effect de facto apartheid as far as housing is concerned. The proportion of negroes who got out are just too small to create any kind of a general pattern that shows freedom of movement. If there were an open housing law passed in Milwaukee would you anticipate a great exodus from the core area. I'm wondering in other words if the open housing issue is more or less symbolic and wouldn't make too much difference in the real situation. If it would be symbolic of a new psychological game or if it would be a real tangible gain in the sense that it would shake up the neighborhoods. Immediately it would be a psychological game. And ultimately I think there would be a much freer movement of Negro. There are many negroes that keep very fine properties and would make good neighbors and their helpful neighbors and I know from

experience of living among them there are some Negro families that do not have good living patterns but so are there areas in the city Malky where there are white families that don't have a good areas the worst single slum building that I've seen in Milwaukee is on the south side of Milwaukee. So I don't know why the health department permits this particular building to continue. Actually there are worse slum areas by far and other cities around the country out there than this. CORERA Yeah but the reason for this is that under the previous socialist and ministrations and under my administration we got the toughest. Housing Code in America and that cold at least up until recently was very strictly enforced. What bugs me if I can use that current expression is the failure of the city government to tear down boarded up and other kinds of abandoned houses in the inner city which have sat there for six seven eight or nine months. While some urban renewal or other process is going on this is a real failure in public administration a city more walk in as a result. These areas

are areas of vandalism of fires of all kinds of community disorder. And I'm speaking particularly of the Kilborne town area around 17th and delete and many of the parts of the inner city here the housing cold and the activities of the city government in the removing slums have been very poor. The city's program for removing all unknown slums however is very bad. The city itself identified after stalling on urban renewal for five years after I left office identified about 10 square miles of slums but proposed to clean them up at the current rates which would take 80 60 to 80 years from the known slums that they already know indicate areas that they have now. This is a bad administration. Does this mean that relative to accomplishments that other cities do you know I have seen other cities and I think that their improvements are better I have watched looked at Minneapolis and certainly in Chicago there are some very substantial improvements being made some enormous housing projects.

But I still have some mighty bad sections. Do they have of course around South Forty seventh Street but they started out from a much worse condition than we did. They don't have the same kind of housing cold or other enforcements that we had. What do you think of the role in the area of our poverty program. There's so much controversy about that and the poverty program has become identified in this community largely as a negro program and although I started the poverty program for the state under Governor Reynolds I have one great deal of charge against it. The money in the poverty program in my opinion has not gone to the poor but has gone to social welfare workers. People university degrees and other educations other educational methods. And the second concept was that the poverty program was to educate people it should have been to give them jobs and then when the jobs they could have gone into education as you know Mr. Zeigler there are two aspects to any community improvement program there is one what society or the state or the city or the public in general can do by way of AIDS

reconstruction and so on. There's another side to the client which you might say is a matter of individual initiative. What could the people of the core area do for themselves. They do have access to one of the best vocational schools in the world where they could be trained for. Pretty well-paying jobs and they have access to public libraries to educational opportunities of all sorts. They could paint up and clean up their houses in their districts. Isn't there a responsibility on the people within the section to you might say hold up their own hand. Of course there is this kind of responsibility and there is a fairly good response of the people in the inner city for example I am a president of the thirteenth Ward Community Council which is a biracial community council operating out of the new term Church of the Pitney although it's non-denominational which is engaged in this very kind of thing where you report nuisances in the areas we have fought for and got the expansion of

Garfield Park. We fought the the city administration finally to get a program for a new branch library we have fought for tree planting and so forth. And we report today that optimal Beals and broken up property we're typical of a number of such organizations in the inner city. Lars was probably the first to start in this matter. There were probably 20 or 25 such organizations and then there are smaller ones which are block clubs all of which are working in the inner city. Not only this but inner city agencies are at work in the churches of the various denominations all of whom are engaged in this activity. But there are certain things that the people in the inner city can't do by themselves. They can't bootstrap themselves up because for one reason the inner city is in a sense an economic