How Milwaukee residents and civil rights activists pushed Milwaukee Public Schools to desegregate

Explore Our Galleries

An NAACP flyer campaigning for the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, which passed the U.S. House of Representatives in 1922, but was filibustered to defeat in the Senate. Dyer, the NAACP, and freedom fighters around the country, like Flossie Baily, struggled for years to get the Dyer and other anti-lynching bills passed, to no avail. Today there is still no U.S. law specifically against lynching. In 2005, eighty of the 100 U.S. Senators voted for a resolution to apologize to victims' families and the country for their failure to outlaw lynching. Courtesy of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Some Exhibits to Come – One Hundred Years of Jim Crow

Bibliography – One Hundred Years Of Jim Crow

Claude, age 23, just months before his 1930 murder. Courtesy of Faith Deeter.

Freedom’s Heroes During Jim Crow: Flossie Bailey and the Deeters

Souvenir Portrait of the Lynching of Abram Smith and Thomas Shipp, August 7, 1930, by studio photographer Lawrence Beitler. Courtesy of the Indiana Hisorical Society.

An Iconic Lynching in the North

Claxton Dekle – Prosperous Farmer, Husband & Father of Two

Ancient manuscripts about mathematics and astronomy from Timbuktu, Mali

Some Exhibits to Come – African Peoples Before Captivity

Shackles for Adults & Children from the Henrietta Marie

Some Exhibits to Come – The Middle Passage

What I Saw Aboard a Slave Ship in 1829

Life After Hate: A Former White Power Leader Redeems Himself

Breaking News!

Today's news and culture by Black and other reporters in the Black and mainstream media.

Click Here

Ways to Support ABHM?

Click Here

February 15, 2026

Alex Klaus and Hongyu Liu, Wisconsin Watch

Black Milwaukee studetns at a protest — Vel Phillips on the hood of a bus next to Father Groppi surrounded by Milwaukee NAACP Youth Council members. This is a photo of one of the 200 marches that took place in 1968. (Wisconsin Historical Society and University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries)

A year of protests against school segregation wasn’t enough to sway Milwaukee Public Schools to integrate. So in 1965, Milwaukee attorney and National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) leader Lloyd Barbee filed a lawsuit against the district, arguing it intentionally took action to keep schools segregated.

Racially restrictive covenants and redlining already legally maintained neighborhood segregation in the city, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee urban studies professor Anne Bonds said.

“In a dynamic where you have a deeply segregated landscape and a housing landscape that’s been produced by design … the schools that children would attend in their racially segregated neighborhoods would reflect the patterns of racial segregation that exist,” Bonds said.

After ten years of fighting, federal judge John Reynolds ruled on Jan. 19, 1976, that Milwaukee Public Schools needed to take action to desegregate their schools. But how did they get there?

Head over to the original article to see an interactive timeline of the three decades of activism that led to desegregation in Milwaukee.

Learn more about the fight for civil rights and how the federal government is no longer supporting desegregation the way it did.

Discover more Black history news.

Comments Are Welcome

Note: We moderate submissions in order to create a space for meaningful dialogue, a space where museum visitors – adults and youth –– can exchange informed, thoughtful, and relevant comments that add value to our exhibits.

Racial slurs, personal attacks, obscenity, profanity, and SHOUTING do not meet the above standard. Such comments are posted in the exhibit Hateful Speech. Commercial promotions, impersonations, and incoherent comments likewise fail to meet our goals, so will not be posted. Submissions longer than 120 words will be shortened.

See our full Comments Policy here.