In the summer of 1966, activist Father James Groppi & the NAACP Youth Council led a series of Civil Rights marches in Milwaukee and Wauwatosa. As writer and historian John Gurda tells us, he was 19 at the time and one particular night left a lasting impression on him.
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He was a most unlikely Civil Rights leader.
Father James Groppi was an immigrant’s son, the eleventh of 12 children who grew up behind the family’s grocery store in the Italian section of Milwaukee’s Bay View neighborhood.
Early in his priesthood, Groppi made a trip to Selma, Alabama, that stirred his conscience. The young cleric came back determined to join the struggle for racial justice in his hometown.
Father James Groppi meets around a large table with the NAACP Youth Council. Several of the men are wearing shirts with the word “Commando” on the back. (Courtesy of Wisconsin Historical Society)
I marched with Father Groppi near the start of his career as an activist. As the advisor to the NAACP Youth Council, Groppi condemned the whites-only membership policy of the Eagles Club.
The fraternal group’s roster included what might have been a quorum of Milwaukee County judges. How, Groppi asked, could a magistrate sit in judgment of Black Milwaukeeans when he belonged to an organization that had already judged them inferior?
Father James Groppi and the NAACP Youth Council demonstrating outside the Eagles Club at night beneath a marquee advertising a Duke Ellington performance.(Courtesy of Wisconsin Historical Society)
The Youth Council targeted one of the club’s most prominent jurists, Circuit Judge Robert Cannon. For eleven straight nights in the summer of 1966, they picketed his home in suburban Wauwatosa. The marches were quiet at first, but within a week — fanned by nonstop media attention — the number of spectators grew to four thousand, many of them openly, even rabidly, hostile.
I had turned 19 earlier that summer. I don’t recall what drew me to the scene — budding sympathy or just idle curiosity — but I found myself on the west side, near the line of march, one warm August evening.
As the picketers approached, I thought, “Well, you can watch, or you can march.”
Seconds later, I was one of the relatively few white people in a group of perhaps two hundred headed to Wauwatosa.
The mood was light at first, almost festive, but the atmosphere changed radically after we crossed the city line at Hawley Road.
By the time our group reached Cannon’s home, we were in the eye of a storm, separated from a mob of jeering, taunting spectators by a cordon of police officers and National Guard troops.
After we had marched back and forth for perhaps an hour, Father Groppi said a few words and we headed back to town.
It is at this point that my memories became indelible.
One of the organizers — thinking, no doubt, of the symbolism — put me and a Black teenager at the head of the line, carrying an American flag between us.
We marched directly behind a wedge of National Guardsmen in full battle dress, with their rifles at the ready and bayonets fixed.
Father James Groppi (center) and the NAACP participate in a civil rights march. Police are armed and escorting the protestors. The marchers are passing an establishment named Johnny’s.(Courtesy of Wisconsin Historical Society)
The scene was surreal, almost dreamlike, and verging on nightmarish.
As we headed east on Wisconsin Avenue, a crowd of young white men shadowed us from the sidewalk like running dogs.
Father James Groppi sitting with several of his fellow marchers, some in Milwaukee N.A.A.C.P. Youth Council shirts. Groppi has taken off one of his shoes.(Courtesy of Wisconsin Historical Society)
Some of their taunts were directed at me personally.
“[N-word] lover” was the most common, but I also heard, “Do you want your sister to marry one?”
Never before had I felt so angry, so scared and so exhilarated all at the same time.
Both the goons and the Guardsmen were gone by the time we crossed the Wisconsin Avenue viaduct.
Our ragtag group of demonstrators made it all the way back to the Freedom House on North Fifth Street, where the mood, after the evening’s adrenaline had worn off, was decidedly quiet.
Father Groppi himself seemed just plain tired, but I recall being impressed by his obvious physical courage as well as his moral stamina.
A Youth Council member gave me a ride to my car. Soon I was back in the suburban safety of Hales Corners, where it seemed, that night, at least, as if nothing had happened since the beginning of time.
Father Groppi is seated in the back of a police wagon with police officer after being arrested in front of his parish for the second night in a row.(Courtesy of Wisconsin Historical Society)
