Frederica Freyberg:
In other news, to understand why Milwaukee ranks as one of the most segregated big cities in America, two Wisconsin based researchers have been taking a close look at housing records and the racially charged language in them. “Here & Now” reporter Murv Seymour shows us how the Mapping, Racism and Resistance project inches toward the finish line, despite the recent loss of federal funding. Some viewers might find the language in this story disturbing.

Emilio De Torre:
This project is incredible. It’s important. It is not historical. It is alive.

Murv Seymour:
From a place known as the hub for learning…

Emilio De Torre:
And it needs to flourish so that we can continue to push back against racism and segregation.

Murv Seymour:
… something historic is happening at Milwaukee’s downtown Public Library.

Derek Handley:
It’s one thing to say, “Oh, there’s systemic racism.” It’s another thing when you see the language.

Anne Bonds:
It’s jarring. Whites only, Caucasians only, colored people.

Murv Seymour:
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee professors Anne Bonds and Derek Handley have been busy for nearly three years.

Anne Bonds:
These covenants cover housing that is now predominantly occupied by African Americans in Milwaukee.

Murv Seymour:
The two have been leading an effort that peels back the hateful history of racial covenants in Milwaukee County, and how the language in them has helped shape Milwaukee along racial lines. A racial covenant is a clause written into property deeds that forbid the sale, lease or occupation of a property to a person because of their race, ethnicity, or religion.

Anne Bonds:
We have this deep history of racial segregation in the city and I’ve been wanting to know more about it, and I started digging into racial covenants.

Derek Handley:
I sometimes ask my students, you know, why do you think there are Black communities in these different cities that you go in? By seeing these maps, you can get a better understanding to that question. A lot of Milwaukee was part of or the Black population were part of the Great Migration. They came here with hope. There were certainly jobs. Over a period of time, Black people knew what places they were not supposed to be.

Murv Seymour:
After searching nearly 5 million documents from 1910 to 1960, the Mapping Racism and Resistance project found – get this – 32,506 racial covenants blended into the language of housing deeds throughout Milwaukee County.

Anne Bonds:
We were searching for certain kinds of language: words like whites only, Caucasians only. We knew that terms like negro and colored and African and Ethiopian would probably appear because that’s the language that was being used at the time.

Derek Handley:
We’ve seen covenants that mention no Italians. We’ve seen covenants that mentioned no Mexicans.

Murv Seymour:
According to their research, not every racial covenant explicitly said no Blacks or no colored person. Some said white only or Caucasian only. And Bonds says in practice, all of the covenants they found targeted Black people. The one exception, Blacks could live in white only communities if they were working there as a servant.

Anne Bonds:
Derek and I could never have identified all of these racial covenants without the work with the community.

Murv Seymour:
From Milwaukee County to California, more than 6,000 volunteers, many of whom were in the audience helped transcribe their findings. They used a site called Zooniverse to discover and meticulously document racial covenants and the language used in them. Mary Roberts says she became a transcriber because of her passion for history.

Mary Roberts:
You’d have one, two, three, four, five items of things that you couldn’t do on a property, and then all of a sudden, there it was a racial covenant. It’s one thing to learn in your history books about how segregation happened, or to read about the Fair Housing Act and to read about the civil rights marches. But it was really a whole other experience to be reading property deed after property deed after property deed with these racial covenants in it.

Murv Seymour:
Once found, each racial covenant is verified and documented by five different people, word for word, regardless of its racially discriminatory tone.

Anne Bonds:
One person was so offended by the language that was used in the covenants that they didn’t want to transcribe that language. Some of these are like a — they’re, they’re a sucker punch. People find these, and the general reaction is, whoa, like, I don’t want this. I don’t want to be associated with this. And for many people of color that encounter these, it’s very devastating to think about living in a place that was constructed through this kind of racial exclusion.

Derek Handley:
This is something that has always been known within the Black community. And now we have the evidence to show people.

Anne Bonds:
Racial covenants prevented access to the best and most well-resourced neighborhoods.

Derek Handley:
We learned of the story of the Columbia Savings and Loan.

Murv Seymour:
What did this bank near North Avenue, the 16th Street Bridge on the south side, a historic landmark to the north, and a 1950s Wauwatosa home to the west, all have in common?

Derek Handley:
The founding of that institution was because of racist housing covenants.

Murv Seymour:
They represent examples of resistance in the Mapping, Racism and Resistance project. Located in the heart of what’s known as the Bronzeville community on Fond du Lac Avenue, this Columbia Savings and Loan bank rescued Black families by offering mortgages at a time when white-owned banks wouldn’t. More than 100 years later, from a new building, the bank remains in business today. It’s Wisconsin’s only Black-owned bank. This historic land marker celebrates resistance from St. Boniface and its fearless priest, Father James Groppi. Groppi once led nonviolent civil rights marches for 200 straight days across the 16th Street Bridge, which at the time was considered an imaginary racial boundary between the predominantly Black north side of Milwaukee and the then predominantly white south side of town. And when you think of Wauwatosa, Derek Handley says…

Derek Handley:
Think about Zeddie Hyler and his brothers sitting at night with shotguns.

Murv Seymour:
Zeddie Hyler migrated from Mississippi to Milwaukee in 1944. He worked at Milwaukee’s downtown post office. In 1955, he became the first Black property owner in Wauwatosa.

Lora Hyler:
Restrictive covenants is just a very stark reminder of what was going on during the day.

Murv Seymour:
That’s his niece proudly sharing a tiny piece of the story of Zeddie’s against-all-odds journey to build his dream home in Wauwatosa.

Lora Hyler:
He was very ambitious. I have photos of him, and he’s posing with an all-white contingent of privates, and he’s the sergeant.

Derek Handley:
Mr. Hyler and his brothers would sit out there with shotguns in the evening to protect the property from being vandalized. This is occurring at the same time as the Montgomery bus boycotts in Alabama.

Murv Seymour:
Lora Hyler tells this audience Uncle Zeddie was able to build his dream home in Wauwatosa thanks to multicultural resistance. The home is now considered an historic landmark.

Lora Hyler:
There were 37 or 39 white women in the city of Wauwatosa who were upset with the treatment that he was receiving, showing up for the meetings, getting denied, and they basically pulled together a petition, which all of them signed.

Derek Handley:
And he had his white friend buy the property. And then after the white friend bought the property, he then sold it to Zeddie.

Lora Hyler:
And they said, given the Bill of Rights, this man has a right to live any place that he can afford to. So we demand that his approval be granted.

Murv Seymour:
Handley and Bonds say the history and impact of racial covenants in Milwaukee is only part of the story of segregation in Milwaukee. The site is still being tweaked, but they encourage people to interact with the Mapping, Racism and Resistance website to learn about racial covenants in their community.

Anne Bonds:
You can zoom into neighborhoods, and you can look to see where the racial covenants were and what the language was, the year that they were implemented. We can get rid of these in our records, but that doesn’t mean that they haven’t already done the job that they were meant to do.

Murv Seymour:
To help set the record straight while helping fix housing failures of the past, Anne Bond says Wisconsinites should pay close attention to what’s happening in Washington state, which has done similar research.

Anne Bonds:
There’s a new state law that allowed people to, you know, actually pay to have these records removed and the funds that were raised through that removal process that were then reinvested in a fund for first-time home buyers.

Mary Roberts:
There’s a lot of generational wealth that was — that, that one whole segment of our society was cut off from building. We really have to face that if we’re going to try and solve it.

Murv Seymour:
Reporting from Milwaukee, I’m Murv Seymour for “Here & Now.”