10thirtysix

(bright music plays) - Hello, I'm Portia Young.

Up next on "10thirtysix," a familiar face joins us to talk about her new documentary that brought about a racial exchange, twice, with positive outcomes.

Plus, students and veterans come together to produce more than just beautiful art.

And a salute to some special women who brought a national historic landmark to Milwaukee for the sake of our veterans.

(bright music plays) "The Exchange in White America, Kaukauna and King 50 Years Later."

That's the name of a documentary produced by former Black Nouveau host and veteran journalist, Joanne Williams.

It's about a controversial play that brought Black and white high school students together, first in the 1960s, and then 50 years later.

(jazz music plays) - [Linda Plutchak] It wasn't scary.

I was just pretty much astonished at some of the things I saw.

- [Joe McCarty] I started crying because I was so...

I just felt so uncomfortable.

- [Phyllis Wilson] It was like, okay, go in and let's see what happens.

If somebody looks like they want to take my head off, it's like "I'm not here."

- [Allen Kemp] There are a number of things that could have happened to this 16-year old kid in that place in 1966.

- [Joanne Williams] This story is about a high school student exchange between Rufus King High School in Milwaukee and Kaukauna High School up in the Fox River Valley.

And a social studies teacher at Kaukauna High School wanted his kids to have a broader view of the world.

So to do that, he was going to have them perform a play.

The play he chose was "In White America," the history of African-Americans from slavery to civil rights.

This all happened in 1966.

- [Paula VanDehev] I mean, my Dad took heat for this.

Not everyone agreed with the idea of this play and this exchange.

I think he kind of liked that, 'cause I think it proved his point that we need this play.

- [Christina Kellogg] It was a very exciting time.

I mean, there was a Civil Rights movement that was happening and people were dressing differently.

The change was in the air.

And it felt like we were part of something that was good and necessary.

- [Martin Duberman] The great American myth that you can pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, that there aren't any obstacles to getting ahead, like race, class, gender.

I mean, it's all myth.

But it remains the centerpiece of American ideology that anybody who wants to get ahead can get ahead and it's nonsense.

- [Robert Smith, PhD] We're right on the precipice, we're right at that moment where that radical element is emerging and starting to sort of take the lead around what we would consider movements for equality.

And so, maybe '66 is that pivotal moment where you can have a racial exchange that has a meaningful impact.

(film rolling) - You know, it's rather strange coming up into a small town.

Milwaukee's a large town and well, Kaukauna is very small.

You have to get used to it.

It's very hard to adapt to.

(jazz plays) - [Thomas Schaffer] We were known as "That's the guy with the foreign car."

That was a minority.

And you didn't even think about skin color minorities.

So that's radical.

(they laugh) Add to that the idea that you're going to have hosts who will have Black kids here.

I think that's radical, too, for a lot of the people out there.

- I think in 1966, the Black population of Kaukauna was one.

- It's really hard to know who's a good guy and who's a bad guy.

- They were very brave to say, "Yes, we're going to do this."

- I don't know.

Where is Kaukauna?

And how far up north is Kaukauna?

(film rolling) They want to go out and meet you, but they're sort of afraid.

- [Joanne Williams] The impact of the experience of the exchange on the people who were involved stayed with them their whole life.

I believe it's something that happened in Wisconsin that nobody knows about unless they were involved in it.

But everybody should know about.

Because it's a way for people to get to know each other and a way for people to learn to live with each other.

- [Thomas Schaffer] To talk about "In White America" as a work of literature that has an impact upon your life, that was important.

The image of the sagging American flag is exactly what I wanted the kids to see.

- [Interviewer] Do you think this is the kind of production that can bring people together?

- Absolutely.

Especially when you see kids do it.

- After 500 years of barbaric treatment, the American Negro is fed up with the unmitigated hypocrisy of the white man.

- If God intended for the races to mix, he would've done it himself.

He put each color in a different place.

- Look at me, look at my arms.

- [Joanne Williams] So 50 years later, it was revived at Rufus King High School with a new generation of high school students, a multi-ethnic cast.

- I'm being tried here for fighting for the rights of my people who are still second-class citizens in this United States.

You want to shut up every Negro... What happened back then is still happening now, just in different ways.

And this is something that we wanted to express and get out and it was great we got to do that with our cast.

It brought us all closer.

- [Interviewer] Was it emotional for you?

- A little bit, a little bit, a little bit, yeah.

- [Interviewer] How so?

- 'Cause times can be troublesome knowing that I can walk out the door and not make it back home.

I can be pulled over simply because of my skin for no reason.

- I find it very distressing.

We should be so much further along.

To think we're... (they get choked up) We were so much farther along even in the '60s.

- Emmett Till.

- Trayvon Martin.

- Teresa Wilson.

- Kathryn Johnston.

- [Robert Smith, PhD] We should not fool ourselves to think that we are going to in some magical way get outside of this thing called race and racism.

We're stuck with that, but that's why we need these important stories.

That's why we need folks who are brave enough to challenge the color line and the racial status quo.

- [Speaker 1] There is a lot more change need to come, needs to come, should come.

You know, when they said "Joy comes in the morning?"

It need to come.

Now.

(inspirational music plays) - Joining me now to talk more about the film and its impact on race relations is the documentary's producer, writer, director Joanne Williams.

(Joanne chuckles) Welcome back to Milwaukee PBS, Joanne.

- Thanks Portia.

- This is an incredible film.

I know that our viewers are going to want to love to see it.

So I want to ask you, why did you produce this?

What was the inspiration behind it?

- You know, I'd had this film in the back of my mind, in the back of my files for more than 50 years, and I knew it was a good story.

I just had never pursued it.

And then one day I was cleaning out my garage and I came across a copy of my high school newspaper and it said "King Welcomes Kids from Kaukauna."

And it was dated 1966 and I found it in 2016.

So I said, it's finally time to tell this story.

- [Portia] Right.

That is amazing.

And that's amazing that you kept that.

- It is.

- So you knew back when you got it, to keep it.

- I don't know.

I was a teenager, but something told me to hang on to this copy of my high school newspaper.

Maybe I was a historian back then.

- [Portia] Exactly.

So you did attend Rufus King at the time.

So were you surprised back then with the positive outcome that you saw, and then again 50 years later?

- Back then, what did I know?

I was a high school kid, I just knew that there were kids that came to my high school that were from someplace else and I didn't know all that was involved in the exchange at the time.

I learned about it when I did research to do the film then I realized that I had been involved more than I knew I had.

I wasn't one of the exchange students, but it turns out that I sang in the choir for the play "In White America."

But I was always off stage, so I never saw the play.

- [Portia] Wow.

- But I, but I knew the kids.

- Okay, so what about the exchange, from what you know and from what you saw, what made that work, and what are the lessons for race relations today?

- What made it work was that it was one-on-one.

It was people getting to know each other by living with each other.

These kids went from Rufus King up to Kaukauna and they lived with families there for a month.

Then the kids from Kaukauna came down to Milwaukee and lived with families for another month.

So the exchange was two months and they got to know each other that way.

And I came to believe and the people who participated came to believe that the best way you can get to know somebody is to deal with them one-on-one, to deal in a big group or some sort of large meeting that's still sort of impersonal.

But if you can get to talk to somebody one-on-one and learn what they're really like and what their family is like, that's when, as I say in the film, things change.

And that's why the exchange itself was such a success.

- And it also helps people understand we are more alike than we are different.

- [Joanne Williams] Yes.

- I mean that's the beauty of this.

So you've been talking about the film festivals that you've entered.

You've been in the Milwaukee Film Festival.

What has that experience been?

- Oh, I premiered in the Milwaukee Film Festival in 2022.

And I got to say honestly, I don't remember much about that night because I was so excited.

I had my family there.

I had the whole team that produced the film with me there.

There was a huge audience.

I didn't expect an audience that size.

And then when the film was over, we went up on stage and we talked to the audience and we answered questions.

Then we went across the street to a bar and had a party.

So the whole experience of being in a festival was new for me and it was very, very exciting.

I've since learned more about festivals and more how to enjoy them when you're in them.

But it was... it took me six and a half years to produce this film and finally it was out there in the public.

And as I like to say I have two sons and now I have a third child.

I gave birth to a film.

(Joanne chuckles) - [Portia] Exactly.

And the gestation period was a whole lot longer than nine months.

- Oh yeah.

Oh yeah.

- So this film has been used as a training aid for the FBI for DE and I explain that!

- Well, I've screened it a lot of places.

One place was the FBI in Milwaukee and they wanted to use it to show some of their agents about these kind of relationships.

And so it's screened virtually for a lot of other offices around the state and then it's screened at the headquarters here in Milwaukee.

And that was an interesting experience.

The audience wasn't that big.

There were about 35, 40 people.

They didn't have a lot of questions but they had some questions and I didn't know how I should answer their questions.

But I'm glad I did because I think they got a little bit of a taste of this experience in Wisconsin and what Wisconsinites are like because a lot of the agents weren't from Wisconsin.

So that was interesting.

- So for viewers, for film fans who will see your documentary, what is the one thing you want them to know?

- I want people who see the film to know that we're more alike than we are different.

And the way we think about things as one of the subjects in the film says may not be the way we want to think about things.

And I want people to watch this film preferably in a theater so that when it's over, they can turn to the person next to them and say "What was your experience like in high school?

"This is what mine was like in high school."

And start those conversations because I want the film to be a conversation starter with some uncomfortable conversations, but if you can talk to a person one-on-one or in a small group, you can get to know each other and that's where we can make a difference.

- So true.

Thank you Joanne.

Thanks for being here on "10thirtysix" and again, congratulations on the film.

- Thank you.

- [Portia] Now to another type of relationship building.

Students at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design teamed up with some local veterans to learn about their military experiences and create large prints, some of which now hang in Old Main, at Milwaukee Soldiers home.

Producer Scottie Lee Meyers tells us more.

- Right here we have three original paintings by Jim Finnerty.

He was a Vietnam veteran.

- [Scottie Lee Meyers] Yvette Pino is always looking to showcase veteran stories.

- [Yvette Pino] He became a painter long after his service.

He's one of those artists that wasn't necessarily a painter before.

His work became very abstract and it's that abstract quality that really drew people's attention to his work.

- [Scottie Lee Meyers] As the curator of art for the Wisconsin Veterans Museum, she was asked to install more than a hundred works of art inside the newly renovated Old Main building, a national landmark that shelters veterans at risk of homelessness on the campus of the Milwaukee Soldiers home.

- [Yvette Pino] One of the things I've always done in my practice as an artist and as a curator is I've presented artwork that tells the military experience and it's always offered this bridge for people to have conversation because the imagery you're looking at gives you a safe space to tell stories that maybe aren't your own.

- [Scottie Lee Meyers] Pino's own military story led her to serve in Iraq until 2008 when she moved back to the States and enrolled into art school at the University of Wisconsin Madison, where she quickly noticed a disconnect.

- We didn't feel comfortable talking to our fellow classmates and that was leading to isolation.

So I was trying to find a way to bridge that gap and get us able to talk to one another.

Also because the students and civilians didn't actually know how to talk to veterans.

- [Scottie Lee Meyers] And that's what led Pino to start the Veteran Print Project.

In its simplest terms, an artist meets a veteran, a conversation happens, and a print is made.

- The veteran print project has partnered with schools across the country.

Most recently, and I think one of our most successful collaborations has been with the Milwaukee Institute of Art Design.

Rina Yoon, the printmaking professor at MIAD and I met several years ago and since 2018 I've been working with her in a variety of different classes with her students to pair them up with veterans or veteran organizations like the the renovation of the Soldiers Home.

- I think personally I really felt lucky to have met Yvette.

We teach art, we teach how to be creative, how to use their creative minds.

But then in terms of like how does my art communicate, who do I communicate?

What is my art about and what kind of like impact can my art have?

I think VPP project really bridges not only just the veteran but it just really a way to bridge all these you know, multiple components.

- [Scottie Lee Meyers] In 2021, the teachers decided to group MIAD students with local veterans organizations.

While the entire art and community printmaking class toured Milwaukee Soldiers Home, Grace Ranz and Grey Higginbotham were actually assigned to create a giant print that reflected its story.

- Just learning about the veterans and their experience and how they can have this like home for them is just so inspiring.

So I never even knew it existed until this project.

- I really loved learning about the history of it but I really loved this space.

I thought it was a great place for veterans to live.

- [Scottie Lee Meyers] In addition to researching the home's incredible history, the students met with Myron Webster, a Native American artist and Vietnam war veteran who told them about his art and the VA system.

- I didn't really know anything about veterans before this project, so just learning about like Myron's perspective and how much they had to go through really was impactful for me.

- We really just thought of the the things that stood out to us most about Myron, which was his presence.

So we decided to depict his figure on the far right panel and then also the geese at the top.

We really wanted to showcase the history of the Veteran Soldiers home because that was on top of getting paired with Myron, it was also about representing this veteran community.

On the far left side we have the past and then to the far right side, we have the present.

- [Scottie Lee Meyers] The woodcut of the print the students created now hangs for all to see in the basement of Old Main.

A testament to the veteran print project's ability to frame a fuller picture of what it means to be a veteran.

- [Yvette Pino] I think a lot of times when we talk to service members, we have this preconceived notion of the stories they're going to tell, and if you offer yourself up to an open dialogue, you realize that there's so many more multifaceted things about a veteran than the stereotypical story of what a veteran is.

- Did you know that a group of women were the ones responsible for bringing our soldiers home to Milwaukee?

Milwaukee PBS saluted them during Women's History Month in March in our digital first series, Women Founders: Milwaukee Soldiers Home.

Here's the first episode, in case you missed it.

(traffic running on highway) - [Narrator] Many people drive past the Milwaukee Brewer stadium (traffic running on highway) and notice what looks like a haunted mansion in the distance, (string music plays) but have no idea what it is.

- It's a national treasure.

- [Narrator] It happens to be a huge part of American history and our dedication to U.S. military veterans.

- The story of the Soldiers Home in Milwaukee starts with the women.

- I will have a soldier's home in Milwaukee and I will not stop until it is an accomplished fact and that's settled.

- And I will do it with you.

And I know that we can count on Hannah Vetter as well.

- Lydia Ely Hewitt, Fanny Burling Buttrick, and Hannah Vetter were part of a volunteer group of young women whose efforts eventually brought a permanent national home for disabled and homeless soldiers, now called the Milwaukee Soldiers' Home.

(strings playing) (door creaks open) These women, many of whom were the wives of prominent businessmen, started to care for Civil war soldiers shortly after the war began in 1861.

A year later, they formed the West Side Soldiers' Aid Society.

- The home was not just to be for Civil War soldiers but for those of all wars.

- [Narrator] Historian Patricia Lynch author of Milwaukee Soldier's Home, often portrayed Fanny Burling Butrick during historical reenactments.

Here is her 2013 interview about the society on the Milwaukee PBS program "I Remember."

- But these particular women who lived on the west side of the Milwaukee River began to refocus their efforts to care for those men who were passing through Milwaukee.

Either they were coming here to one of Milwaukee Civil War camps and were in need or passing through on furlough or coming back from the battlefield with illness or just needs for shelter, food.

The women were creating a temporary home.

It's on Plankington, that was Westwater Street between Wisconsin and Wells.

They started with one storefront at 207 Westwater and eventually rented four or five more.

- At the time that these women were doing it, women could not serve.

And so this was their way to serve.

- [Narrator] Iraq War veteran Yvette Pino was the art curator for Old Main, that iconic residential building seen from the freeway.

She made sure to put women's stories at the center of her work, including the founders.

- [Yvette Pino] When the women that were in charge of it had that strong business sensibility but they had strong project management sensibility.

- [Narrator] It certainly was a cause that President Abraham Lincoln believed in.

In his second inaugural address, Lincoln eloquently laid out his vision for a national soldier's home.

- [Speaker As Lincoln] "With malice toward none; "With charity for all; "with firmness in the right, "as God gives us to see the right, "let us strive to finish the work we are in "to bind up the nation's wounds; "to care for him who shall have born the battle, "and for his widow and his orphan "to do all which may achieve and cherish a just "and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."

- [Narrator] Back in Milwaukee, these women were already in pursuit of a permanent home for Wisconsin's veterans.

- Our boys are coming back maimed, crippled, helpless for life.

As members of the West Side Soldiers' Aid Society we must build them a permanent home of magnificent proportions for which we don't even have marble white enough.

- [Narrator] But their vision required funding and so they organized a month-long Soldiers' Home Fair that started on June 28th, 1865.

It featured art and natural history exhibits music and entertainment, home-cooked food, and old Abe, the famous bald eagle who became the mascot of the 8th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry Regiment.

- [Fannie] This is going to be a fair for the ages.

It's just amazing how people are backing us, and I think that we are going to be able to put on a program and give them things the likes of which they've never seen before.

- [Narrator] The fair raised more than $100,000.

It was enough to purchase 400 acres of land on the outskirts of Milwaukee.

The women's vision for a permanent soldier's home was coming to fruition and that's when things got a little complicated.

- So our West Side Soldiers' Aid Society moved to the next step, a permanent home for these heroes.

- [Narrator] By now, a couple of years had passed since Lincoln's call to build a National Soldier's Home system, and the federal government finally began looking for locations.

That's when the wealthy husbands of these women persuaded officials to build one of its first homes in Milwaukee, officially called the Northwestern Branch of the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers.

While the women were somewhat reluctant to relinquish their money, a near identical version of their vision was about to become reality.

The National Soldier's Home in Milwaukee is one of only three that are still around today.

The other two are in Togus, Maine and Dayton, Ohio.

The grounds of the soldiers home were a scenic countryside with rolling hills, flower gardens, and lakes a tranquil setting for men returning home from combat.

The public also enjoyed the park-like setting.

Patriotic celebrations and concerts attracted as many as 300,000 visitors in a single year.

Over the decades, Milwaukee Soldiers' Home and the adjoining cemetery grew as it welcomed home new generations of veterans.

Today, the Clement J Zablocki Veterans' Administration Medical Center towers on the campus.

But over time, some buildings like Old Main, fell into disrepair.

Thankfully, a recent restoration effort meant that Old Main is once again housing veterans.

It includes a women's wing where you'll find dedications to Lydia Ely Hewitt and Fanny Burling Buttrick, the women founders who deserve recognition.

- We can be proud of all that we accomplished.

- You and I are proud.

(patriotic music plays) - [Portia] Head to our YouTube channel to watch the six part series or to our website, milwaukeepbs.org you can also visit the PBS video app.

You'll also learn about a documentary about Milwaukee Soldiers' Home coming this November on Milwaukee PBS.

That wraps up this edition of "10thirtysix."

Thanks for joining us.

Remember, check us out on the web and all of our social platforms.

We'll see you next time.

(upbeat music plays)