Black Holocaust Museum, apartments approved

By Tom Daykin , Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

A proposal to create apartments and a new home for America’s Black Holocaust Museum on Milwaukee’s north side provides an opportunity for people to better understand this country’s racial divisions, the development’s supporters said Monday.

ABHM will be re-established on its old footprint on 4th & North Avenue in Milwaukee WI. The apartment building above it in the historic Bronzeville neighborhood will be called The Griot, in honor of ABHM founder and lynching survivor, Dr. James Cameron.

It’s important to have places where people can “explore how one we are, and how there is no ‘other,'” Brad Pruitt, a museum spokesman, said at Monday’s meeting of the Common Council’s Zoning, Neighborhoods and Development Committee.

The committee voted 5-0 to recommend approval of the $16.6 million development, which will include $1.4 million in city funds. Those funds will be repaid through new property taxes from the apartments.

Maures Development Group LLC and J. Jeffers & Co. plan to renovate the former Garfield Avenue Elementary School, 2215 N. 4th St., and build a new apartment building with street-level commercial space, including the museum, just north of the former school.

The three-story former school will be converted into 30 affordable apartments.

The former America’s Black Holocaust Museum, 2235 N. 4th St., and a vacant building, 411 W. North Ave., will be demolished to make way for a new four-story building, known as The Griot, with the museum, a possible cafe and 41 affordable and market-rate apartments.

The museum was founded by James Cameron, the survivor of an attempted lynching….

The museum “has helped me better understand my country, for better or worse,” said Ald. Nik Kovac, a zoning committee member.

The development is to be completed by April 2018.

You can help make this museum a reality by making a tax-deductible donation here. Thank you!