Black Nouveau

(bright music) (energetic music) (energetic music continues) - Hello, everyone, and welcome to "Black Nouveau."

I'm Earl Arms, and this is our edition for May.

If you're thinking about planning some summer day trips for the family, you might want to consider visiting the National Railroad Museum in Green Bay.

They have a restored Pullman Porter car with information about America's first Black labor union that was also instrumental in the civil rights struggle.

James Causey sits down for an extended interview with Milwaukee Public Schools superintendent, Dr.

Brenda Cassellius, and will visit the Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Milwaukee's 13th annual College Signing Day.

But we begin by welcoming back home one of Milwaukee's most creative and inspiring forces, former Milwaukee and Wisconsin poet laureate Dasha Kelly Hamilton.

Her latest book, "A Line Meant," brings together the voices of nearly 60 Wisconsin poets, each sharing their story and perspective, and of course, her production of "Makin' Cake."

The documentary was screened at the Milwaukee Film Festival in April, and she performed a production earlier this month at the Marcus Center.

Dasha, welcome home.

How are you?

- I'm wonderful, thank you.

Thank you, thank you.

It's good to be here.

- Good to see you.

It's been about... you said it's been about a year since you've been home.

What have you been up to in that time?

- A lot of it has been the reentry of being home, and has been glorious.

Home has been great in terms of a soft place to land, a fertile place to plant these projects.

And so it's always good to be in a good space.

- Absolutely.

So talking about "A Line Meant."

That's one of the projects I got to see, and I noticed that, you know, it's the compilation of so many different poets from all around the state, and you know, thinking about some of the themes, I saw a lot of themes around, like, water, trauma.

Going back to, I think the story about your brother or one of the poems, and you mentioned, you know, your brother.

Just talk about how stories like that unite people from all around the state, from Milwaukee to, you know, La Crosse, and just those stories bringing people together.

- It was a really powerful experience for me to put this together.

And this was an initiative from my tenure as a state poet laureate, and as a laureate, you put together community experiences that kind of reflect your relationship with the craft.

And for me, I've always been a community poet.

I've used poetry and poetry events as a way to bring people together, to give platforms to unexpected discussions.

So when I have this statewide platform, you know, and choosing what are all the things that I could possibly do, I wanted to center the voices of incarcerated writers.

I've been a volunteer instructor in prisons for almost 20 years, and in putting together tours and talking to writing communities, it's not a community that's ever considered, and understandably so.

We're not conditioned to think that way, to remember that those are people in those buildings.

So it started from that initiative.

So it was a project, and there was a website that we built, and you have this exchange happening back and forth between hundreds of poets for two years.

And then I edited those pieces into an anthology.

So to have all of these voices in one book, and I call them my gentlemen, my fellows.

So if you had to reach out to my fellows and say, "Hey, we are all in a book."

There are incarcerated writers, there are other poet laureates, there are professors, they're farmers, they're students, bankers.

There are a few people who've written their first poem ever, and all put together, you have the same prompts, but of course, our stories are gonna be completely different.

And this was an embodied celebration that we all live separate lives, that are all glorious in our own ways.

- This is one of your many works, right?

Talk about "Makin' Cake," right?

You know, this idea of recipes and bringing these ideas together.

So talk about that, putting that together, and you know, with the film festival, but also the performance at the Marcus Center.

- I was able to do this show.

I was invited to come do conversations throughout Sheboygan years ago.

They said, "We're ready for you to come to our community and help us talk about race."

"Okay, I'm coming."

So I've always dug into creativity and art play as a way to suspend anxiousness, as a way to bring people into conversations that they don't know that they're ready to have.

And so I went around town, and I had these discussions.

One was in a bakery, and I said, "You know, we can do this.

Maybe we just have to serve everybody cake."

Idea planted.

I started researching, and as an artist, and especially as a poet, you can always find a metaphor and a meaning in things, and everything has a story.

And I researched that the ingredients of cake all tell stories of access and privilege.

You had to be wealthy to have sugar, you had to have time to even be able to bake a cake.

You had to have livestock to have the dairy.

So bit by bit in doing that research, I'm able to tell the story of all of the isms of America.

So the show itself, I've been touring that now for, this is my fifth season, and was able to, along the way, make this documentary that explains the why of the show, but also gives a different way for people to engage in a conversation.

- And speaking of, you have a book with you, "Baker's Dozen," it looks like.

Talk about that and what you have here.

- Now, the thing about "Baker's Dozen," there's no cake involved whatsoever.

No cake involved whatsoever.

This was a novel that I wrote, and I have a friend that works in television, an old friend from high school, and he says, "You know, you should think about writing a movie."

And I'm really grateful to be guided into things that I would've not necessarily considered for myself, even pursuing this film.

I had a mentor suggest that I try a documentary, and I've surrounded myself with people that helped me figure it out.

And then with this novel, I was writing a film, but I turned it into a novel, which is my comfort zone.

So this character stayed in my head for over 10 years.

So I'm excited to introduce Shea Baker to the world.

So it's really a story about family ties, it's a story about sensuality, and it's a story about recovering apologies.

- You're back now, you're just about settled.

What else do you have going on?

- A lot of it's gonna be celebrating all of this harvest.

So I've learned along the way that you can go and go and go and go, but I'm really training my muscle to celebrate and enjoy a lot of hard work and a lot of years of visioning, and to see these different projects come into the world.

- All right, Dasha, thank you so much for joining us here on "Black Nouveau."

- Thank you, thank you.

- And welcome back again.

- Good to be home.

(energetic music) - [Reporter] For almost a century, Pullman Porters provided the best in rail travel, service, and luxury.

They helped build a Black middle class, spread information and culture, and were strong supporters of the civil rights movement.

At the end of the Civil War, industrialist and engineer George Pullman hired former slaves to work on his cars as porters.

- So when Pullman was creating these, and he kind of created this whole empire of not only building the cars, but his whole town where the cars were built in Chicago, and all the employees and everyone along the way.

So when these cars were built, and especially like our car here, the Lake Mitchell in the 1920s, it was really the top of the line.

So he wanted to make these top-of-the-line cars that everyone, all these different railroads could use.

And especially with the sleeper cars too, they were going to be the top models of comfort along the rails when you're traveling for long distances.

- Being a porter is one of the best things that ever happened to me.

I began working for the Pullman Company in 1942.

I was 40 years old.

The company taught us how to make down berths, clean restrooms, move bags, serve drinks, shine shoes, and more.

It is a 16-hour day.

- [Reporter] This avatar is part of the Pullman Porter exhibit at the National Railroad Museum in Green Bay.

It is located in a fully restored Pullman Porter railroad car.

- So on the front section here of the car, we have the 10 sections.

So you have people sitting down, just their general transportation, and then what happens is these benches will move down.

We also have berths that move down.

So we have kind of these bunk beds.

And then one of the things the porters would do is bring you a table too.

So if you wanted a table, they have these movable tables that fit into slots.

So you can have a table for easier comfort, or if you have a drink, or if you're reading or writing something.

So the seats that we saw on the front, they would convert down, the cushions came off.

It's kind of like a camper, how you'd have those seats come and make a bench.

There was another cushion then that would go on top, and then the porters from there would make the bed.

And again, they would tuck all the sheets in, wrap the blankets around.

All the Pullman cars had a specific Pullman blanket that just the passengers could use.

The porters were not allowed to use these blankets.

They would have to use something different.

- It was a thousand dollars a year when I started, about half a conductor's salary.

Tips filled in the gaps.

You first got the troop trains or the nickel plate run, you get less than a nickel in tips.

When you have more seniority, you can bump other porters off the good paying runs between the big cities, Chicago to New Orleans, Los Angeles, New York.

Frank Sinatra will give you $100, Rockefeller a dime.

- [Daniel] It was still a better job than what you could get elsewhere.

And then especially once they started moving into the unions, that really raised the quality as well.

- You've heard of A. Philip Randolph, right?

I have nothing but good to say about him.

He did the impossible.

He brought respect to the Negro man through wage, condition, and name.

I never met the man in person, but a lot of other porters did.

Randolph led our union, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, from 1925 onward.

By the time I became a porter in 1942, he was a leader for our race.

Randolph never was a porter, but he knew how to talk to them.

He traveled from New York to St.

Louis, Oakland, Atlanta, and Detroit, organizing union locals.

- The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters really wouldn't have existed without A. Philip Randolph.

Before the union existed, he was the co-editor of a labor rights magazine called "The Messenger."

And it was a very popular magazine with the Pullman Porters.

And through reading this magazine, it gave the porters this sense of labor identity.

And he was asked then to be the president of the union, even though he himself was not a porter.

He was asked because he wasn't a porter.

So his job wasn't at risk.

- [Reporter] Randolph understood the link between economic equality and social freedom.

In 1941, he threatened a march on Washington to oppose industry discrimination against Black workers.

Under that pressure, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 8802, which banned such discrimination as the United States was gearing up for war.

- And so he led the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters into the success that they found with the Pullman Company in establishing the union and getting recognized for the American Federation of Labor, and getting the stipulations and the bargaining power that they required in order to have the successful union that they had until the company disbanded in the 1960s, really.

- These tracks gave birth to the blues!

To the same old things Sweet Home Chicago (lively music) - [Reporter] Pullman Porters also contributed to bringing news and culture to new Black communities that had been formed in urban areas and other states after the Great Migration.

- [Katie] The Pullman Porters were really like the glue or the driving force behind spreading Black culture throughout America.

It's a secret that a lot of popular music is based off of African slave music, and it is because of the Pullman Porters traveling across the country, visiting a lot of Southern Jim Crow South towns, the Black portions of those towns, and experiencing the culture within them, and then taking that and bringing it to wherever they were from, or where their families were from.

- [Reporter] Filmmaker Oscar Micheaux, photographer Gordon Parks, and poet Claude McKay were all Pullman Porters, as were the fathers of Justice Thurgood Marshall, singer Dionne Warwick, and radio host Tom Joyner.

The porters contributed to the building of America's Black middle class and were instrumental in America's civil rights struggle.

E.D.

Nixon was a Pullman Porter, a union organizer, and the head of the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP in 1955.

- [Katie] E.D.

Nixon was a central figure in the Montgomery bus boycott, as, of course, was Rosa Parks, who was his secretary actually in Montgomery.

And it was through her connections with E.D.

Nixon and her position as a respected member of the community, that she was chosen to be this, like, martyr figure in not giving up her position on her seat in the bus, which then, of course, sparked the bus boycott.

And it was E.D.

Nixon's connections with being a Pullman Porter that he got the organizational know-how and resources in order to make the Montgomery bus boycott as successful as it was.

(playful music) - [Reporter] Eight years later, Randolph would lead the Great March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and economic equality.

(train horn blowing) (playful music) - A little over a year ago, Brenda Cassellius was appointed as superintendent of Milwaukee Public Schools.

Her time in this role has been filled with significant challenges, including a $46 million budget deficit and lead contamination crisis.

She joins us to discuss the district's current stability and her plans to improve literacy and close our education gap.

Thanks for joining us on "Black Nouveau."

- Of course.

Happy to be here with you, James.

- So what has been your biggest challenges so far during your first year at MPS?

- Well, there's a lot of them.

(laughs) So it's been a difficult year.

A little bit bigger than what I thought I was signing up for, but also incredibly worthy work on behalf of the children of Milwaukee.

I think the really big challenge when I first came was the lead crisis that we had, and just ensuring that we were taking care of our buildings and making sure that our students were able to come to schools that were safe, and to give parents the information they needed to make sure their homes were safe too.

And then to test students and make sure that we were able to know that the work that we were doing was continuing to keep them safe as well.

- Was there any surprises for you in your first year?

- Well, I think the finance work has been pretty surprising to me.

That's been an ongoing challenge at how deep the difficulties were within the finances.

And so, you know, cleaning that up is a big deal.

Also that the technology systems didn't speak to one another was a surprise and a big challenge, I think as well.

And then, of course, we had the vacancy challenge, you know, with the number of teachers, it was the "Journal Sentinel" who did a really good job of reporting on the vacancies and the real challenge facing not only Milwaukee, but really the whole state of Wisconsin.

- Let's talk about this $46 million budget deficit.

How did you address this and will this affect students in the classroom?

- So, of course, we had to get our audits done first.

So getting our audits done was a huge big piece of it.

Imagine not auditing your own household checkbook and knowing where your money is.

We needed to know what revenues were coming in, account for that appropriately.

And then also account for the dollars that were going out the door and to control for overspending.

And so because we didn't have those audited books, we didn't have line item sight to be able to make those decisions, to be able to put in place the controls.

Now that we had the funding year '24-'25 school year books all on the back burner, so to speak, we were able then to go and look at where did we have overspending.

A lot of that was on salaries, nutrition expenses, our transportation, overages on our healthcare costs, and compensation and benefits to our employees.

Important to do, but still cost a lot of money, and we need to make sure that we put those controls in place.

One other surprise that I found was just the difference between what some schools had and what other schools had.

So there were, I think this was kind of an open secret in Milwaukee about some schools got more resources than other schools, and we instituted a standard of care, which looks at our class size, and we were able to bring down our class sizes in some of our early grades to ensure that kids have great opportunity to learn to read, and then also balance resources, because our central office was a little bit more staffed than our classrooms were staffed.

And so that was really important for us and our fiscal health moving forward.

- One thing that you said you wanted to do when you first came here is get a lot of parental involvement.

You had held listening sessions.

Was that well attended and what did parents tell you?

- Our first listening sessions were very well attended.

We had nine listening sessions starting in the summer, going into the fall.

Then we attempted a new series of listening sessions.

There were about four of them that we did, which were not as well attended.

I was not attending those.

I was having my staff and the academic superintendents for those areas in the schools attend those, and those weren't as well attended.

So I think that people wanna see me come out, they wanna come out and speak directly with the superintendent.

So we've kind of adjusted.

So we did that for our four budget hearings that we did this past winter.

And then we had good turnout at those budget hearings as well.

So if I show up and I go out, people show up.

But I do wanna get the community used to my cabinet members coming out and talking with them more regularly too.

- Enrollment has dropped 30% since I was in school in 1987.

That leaves a lot of schools half full.

How are you gonna address these schools that are half full?

- Well, prior to my arrival, the district had already started to tackle this problem with enlisting with a contractor and having them come in and work with the community.

And they had an advisory group that looked at the utilization.

They walked all of our buildings and gave us some really good data about the utilization rate and how many students are in the school, what the cost and the ages of the school, what the deferred maintenance was, and really what your return on investment was for keeping that school open.

And they came with a list, a pretty large list of schools.

I think it's somewhere between 10 and 17 schools where they were looking to close them or merge them, but most of them were in the Black community.

And I knew that when I looked at the advisory, the Black community wasn't represented on that advisory in a way that I felt was enough for us to bring forward a recommendation.

They also brought forward then later, after bringing some of their initial recommendations and getting some of that feedback, some investments that we could do, you could do an investment strategy.

So I chose to bring that forward, and we have four schools in the 53206 neighborhood where we are making some major investments, about $20 million worth of investments, hoping that we can get out there, talk to the community, and they'll send their kids to these new schools or these schools that are newly renovated and also have additional staffing in them.

- Right, in April of 2024, voters approved a $252 million budget for MPS.

How was that money spent?

And in hindsight, was that enough?

- So they spend that money on art, music, and PE for the operating cost to buy art teachers, music teachers, PE teachers.

And that money is used, and we have also used that this coming year as well.

So we added about seven additional teachers overall across the district for the upcoming budget because it is important.

It gives groundedness and connectedness for students, it helps celebrate culture, it builds good school climate and good school spirit, and connectedness and peer relationships, and adult to student relationships brings the community into the school, vibrancy.

And so those are just wonderful ways to give back, and I'm so grateful.

I never missed an opportunity to thank all of our Milwaukee residents for their generosity in supporting the school district.

Was it enough?

I think at the time, yes, because we had the ESSER funding coming into the district.

I wasn't here then, of course, but they had additional revenue coming in because of COVID during that time.

And so that buoyed the district a little bit at times when the state wasn't giving additional aid to the school district.

But now that the state has not given that additional aid, I know that in the future it will not be enough.

And that's the hard conversation I have to have with the community.

Also, because of the lead expenses, it cost us $43 million to do the lead expenses.

We literally painted about 3,500 houses in equation to what we had to do in those 50 schools in terms of square footage and what we were trying to paint to encapsulate the lead within the schools.

So that was a huge expense.

And so with our buildings about 85 years in age, I think that there are two things that the community's gonna have to wrestle with.

One is dealing with the life expectancy of our buildings, which is running out.

And the fact that we have operating expenses where the state funding is not keeping up with the inflationary increases that are happening within our schools.

- Gotcha.

We're gonna continue this conversation online where we will talk about compensating students for perfect attendance.

(crowd cheering) - [Reporter] It was a time for celebration, almost a hundred high school students from the Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Milwaukee had their 13th annual Graduation Plus College Day Signing last month.

They received almost $13 million in scholarships.

This is a unique service offering mentorship, academic guidance, and life skills coaching to help students gain the tools they need to access college opportunities and become successful in adult life.

- Graduation Plus is a to-and-through college program at the Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Milwaukee.

Since 2008, we have served majority first-generation, low-income students in our program.

Since our program's inception, we have graduated nearly 900 scholars from the program or have helped 900 scholars.

We have a student debt rate of 96%, which means that 96% of our scholars go on to college and finish with under $20,000 in debt within a four-year period or completely debt-free.

And we provide complete wraparound support services.

Students enter the program at ninth grade, and we support them all the way until they walk across the stage in college, no matter where they go.

- [Announcer] Signing with Fayetteville State University, Laila Duncan.

(crowd cheering) - I've been looking forward to this moment since I went to a College Signing Day when I was in fifth grade, so it's a really good moment for me.

I wanna major in psychology because I really care about people and I wanna help people.

So I feel like psychology is the best way to do that.

And in my career, I wanna be a sports psychologist so that I can help athletes get through any mental challenges that may be inhibiting or impacting their performance.

I chose Fayetteville State University because I like it in North Carolina, so it'll be really nice there.

And also they have a good path to being a sports psychologist.

They have courses in sports psychology that will prepare me for my career.

I received a $1,000 HBCU Bucks scholarship and I received the $20,000 Donald Driver Scholarship.

- When it comes to college selection, we are very deliberate about teaching our families and students college fit.

Not just fit because you want to be there, but financial fit.

We are not in the business of encouraging students to leave Wisconsin to go into debt.

Our tagline is, "There's too much free money out there to go into debt over college."

So our students, we dominate in Wisconsin because of some of those last-dollar scholarships, because of some of those partnerships that happen with the universities here, and for our out-of-state students, we make sure that they understand that before you sign that dotted line, you have a four-year funding plan that tells you how much this is going to cost you at the end of your four years.

- Signing with the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Alexander Eagerson!

(crowd cheering) - [Reporter] A number of students will be going out of state for college, but many will be staying in Wisconsin to further their education as well.

- The following scholars will be signing with University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, Alverno College, Milwaukee Area Technical College, Marquette University: Aaron Calvert.

(crowd cheering) - If you had told me when I first joined Grad Plus that I would be chosen to speak at our College Signing Day and that the experience would've been what it was, I probably would've looked at you like you were insane.

Not long ago, I was shy, scared to step up, and doubtful of my own abilities.

Even if I did believe I could stand up here, I probably would've said, "That's too much work.

Let someone else do it for me."

Ultimately, my career goal right now is to become an airline pilot, but I'm majoring in Finance at Marquette, one, so that opens up more opportunities for me to expand my portfolio and get involved in different things.

And it also allows me to go to Marquette and stay involved in the community of Milwaukee, which I'm so passionate about.

I really think there's a lot here that people don't understand about the city.

I think there's a lot of room to grow, but there's also a lot of opportunity here.

So I wanna stay as involved as I can.

- Scholars, please proceed to your futures.

(crowd cheering) (celebratory music) - And that's our program for this month.

Next month, in addition to our regular program on June 11th, we'll bring you our annual coverage of Milwaukee's 55th Juneteenth Celebration on Friday, June 19th.

And be sure to look for us across all of our digital platforms.

For the entire "Black Nouveau" team, I'm Earl Arms.

Have a great evening.

(energetic music)