Ignored for Years, Black Milwaukee Voters Hold Power in 2024

MILWAUKEE — When Diane Blaylock’s parents migrated to Milwaukee from Lena and Canton, Mississippi, they immediately went to work. Her father was employed by Rex Chain Belt, a manufacturing company that produced chain links for agricultural equipment. Donning a knit Green Bay Packers cap, she reminisced about a time when Black people had more opportunities in Wisconsin’s largest city.

“They were working-class people,” Blaylock, 69, said of her parents. “They were able to enjoy some of the fruits of their labor. We as children did, too.” 

Milwaukee’s decline from its industrial heyday and the impact it had on the white working class here is well-documented, but the city’s Black residents — who are its largest racial group — suffered, too. As Election Day nears, Black voters in this crucial swing state — particularly from the working class — are seeking opportunities to be seen and heard by the candidates for president, who are crisscrossing Wisconsin courting voters. 

Black residents make up 38% of the city, representing a powerful voting bloc that can determine the fate of presidential elections and other critical races. But unlike in some other swing states and their major cities — like Philadelphia, Detroit, Atlanta and Charlotte — Wisconsin’s Black population doesn’t seem to register much in people’s minds. Milwaukeeans know it.  

Politicians and mainstream media widely failed to recognize that they existed in 2016 and 2020, but in this campaign they have been courted more by both parties. 

The historic campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris, who is vying to become the first Black female president of the United States, has led to increased engagement with Milwaukee’s Black voters. On Thursday, the campaign held a meet-and-greet with the vice president at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, which preceded other stops in the state.

Black residents here have raised a variety of local concerns, from crumbling streets to addressing rampant speeding in residential neighborhoods, adequate public safety, affordable housing, and the rising cost of living.

A little over two weeks before the presidential election, Blaylock was one of almost 60 people attending a political forum held by Capital B in downtown Milwaukee. She said that she and her brothers capitalized on their parents’ solid jobs to create financial security for themselves at a young age. Her brothers were able to go to college, which she skipped to begin working while she was in high school.  

“We were really booming. There was nothing we couldn’t do here in the city in the early ’70s,” she shared. 

Financial stability for Black migrants wasn’t exclusive to Blaylock’s family. Seated by Blaylock’s side was her friend Janette Herrera. Like oral historians, the pair summarized the peak of manufacturing in the city — and its decline — in about a minute. 

“Things were better because of factories,” Herrera notes. “Factories created jobs for Black folks.” 

Friends Diane Blaylock and Janette Mitchell-Herrera say manufacturing in Milwaukee once gave Black Americans an avenue to prosperity in the city. “We were really booming. There was nothing we couldn’t do here in the city in the early ’70s,” she said. (Mahdi Atif)

The duo rattled off the many companies that once thrived in the city. Three auto manufacturing companies. Briggs & Stratton. Allis-Chalmers. Breweries like Pabst and Miller.  

“Most of those Black workers didn’t go to college because they were making all this money in factories and stuff. They were able to buy homes,” Herrera recalls. “But once the factories left, then a lot of folks didn’t have no job and had to try and take out loans and go to school, and they’re still paying them off. So you’re back in the hole. You don’t have what you used to have.”

Herrera worked at Sears, Roebuck, and Co. after migrating to Milwaukee from Mississippi. Blaylock retired from JCPenney, another Midwestern company, after working with the retailer for about 19 years as a warehouse attendant. Until COVID hit, Blaylock could live more comfortably off her retirement. She is fortunate to live in a home owned by her aunt, so her rent has remained stable. But she has cut back on other expenses and doesn’t leave her home much to save on gas. 

The native Milwaukeean is not clear about exactly when or how the quality of life for Black people went downhill, but she proposes that it happened in the 1990s. When asked if either party has adequately addressed their needs as Black, working-class Milwaukeeans, Blaylock shakes her head and offers a solemn no.

Latoya Harris, 36, was raised in Chicago but has lived in Milwaukee — a roughly two-hour drive away — for 19 years. The political organizer thinks about the music artists who have tour stops in Milwaukee and express surprise at their Black crowds. It seems to take civil unrest, like the Sherman Park uprisings in 2016 and the massive Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, for the Black population to be more than a blip in the news. 

“If it’s nothing like that, they not gonna get noticed. It’s a lot of good that happens, but you won’t get noticed,” Harris said.  

This erasure has shifted some in the past few years. Political groups and candidates have appeared to engage more of Milwaukee’s Black community, even if the public and the broadcast media are largely late in recognizing them. 

“If you look at the trend in the last few elections, I think there is a mutual respect” for Black Wisconsin voters, shared Jordan Roman, an attendee of Capital B’s forum. “I think they understand that if the Black population doesn’t turn out, then we won’t win.”

President Joe Biden barely eked out a win in 2020, securing Wisconsin despite Black voter turnout being at a historic low in the state at 43%, according to the earliest data recorded by the U.S. Census Bureau. Hillary Clinton wasn’t so lucky. With Black voter turnout at 47% in 2016, and white voter turnout dropping as well, Donald Trump won Wisconsin by merely 22,748 votes.  It was the first time Wisconsin was delivered to a Republican candidate in 28 years. His victory in the critical swing state eased his path to the White House. 

Roman’s Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity brother, Kweku TeAngelo Cargile Jr., 32, jumped in: “This is the most visible I’ve seen of political engagement since [former President Barack] Obama.” 

Jordan Roman and Kweku TeAngelo Cargile Jr. said they’ve seen increased voter engagement in Milwaukee this campaign season. “I think they understand that if the Black population doesn’t turn out, then we won’t win,” Roman said.

As far as Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, Cargile felt the candidates assumed Black votes were guaranteed. In this election? 

“It feels like no one is acting like anything is guaranteed,” he stated.

But Cargile also points out some class differences. “There’s a community of us that is not as engaged.” He and Roman echoed each other: “disenfranchised Black folks.” 

“The Harris campaign is trying to appease people who are already going to vote for her.” Roman added. “You need to go out to those barber shops and to the north side and talk to those people who are not necessarily going to get out. Everybody in this room is already going to be at the polls.” 

Attendees at the Capital B forum ranged from elected officials to community activists and concerned residents. 

Just west of the downtown venue and visible through its floor-to-ceiling windows is Interstate 43, which was built during the country’s infamous “urban renewal” era of the 1960s that destroyed Black neighborhoods. It leads to the north side, a nebulous catchall term for the many neighborhoods north of downtown. But it has historically been home to many of Milwaukee’s Black residents, and it still is today.

With big factories leaving the inner city — and thus leaving many Black families without secure, robust employment — the government has failed to meaningfully step up. In many cases, they have undermined their own constituents. 

Republicans in the state gutted the public sector unions that Black workers have disproportionately occupied. Police receive outsized funding in the city, with Mayor Cavalier Johnson directing nearly 40% of general city funds to the Milwaukee Police Department in his proposed 2025 budget. Federal legislation and presidential administrations, across both parties, have gutted public housing for decades. In 2024, Wisconsin’s state-mandated minimum wage is still $7.25 an hour. 

Now, the Black working class of Blaylock’s day seems to have all but disappeared. 

Asked if the needs of the working class are being met by either party, Latoya Harris responded quizzically: “You mean, like poor people?” Like landline phones and the 8-track, even the idea of a “working class” seems obsolete for younger generations.

“In our neighborhoods, we need a lot of help, and everybody probably just doesn’t know who to get the help from,” she said during her shift on a late afternoon near North Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and West Burleigh Street. “Older people, they’re really worried about their health care. That’s their number one thing. Yesterday, I found a lot of people were worried about housing because the houses got bought up in this neighborhood. So now they gotta move, and they’ve been living there for 40, 50 years. So now they’re worried about housing because rent surged over the last two years.

“And then we end up with poor people, drunk people with mental health issues because you got too much on you,” Harris noted. 

Indeed, Milwaukee had one of the largest rent increases in the country in the past year, ranking 10th among U.S. metro areas. Wisconsin’s median rent had the sixth-highest increase. While the median annual income for Black households has averaged around $35,000 from 2018 to 2022, the median rent in Milwaukee is now $1,835. This would be 63% of the median Black household’s monthly income, before taxes.

Harris canvasses door-to-door to get out the vote on the north side. She started working for Power to the Polls, a political organization that has focused on activating nonvoters and infrequent voters of color in the city’s north and far northwest neighborhoods. She has faith that these residents can in fact be energized. 

A man observes unofficial Harris/Walz campaign merchandise on display on Dr. Martin Luther King Drive in Milwaukee. (Mahdi Atif)

“People need to know that they matter. I honestly think that this generation needs a lot more love,” she said. 

Knowing that the presidency can only go so far, Harris anticipates that going door-to-door will inform voters about other elections.

“With our community being the way it is, it could be way better if we get out to a lot of elections. We go hard for the president, but I think if we could get out to more elections and knock, and knock …” she trailed off.

She provided the example of the “vote no and no” campaign in 2023, which advised voters about conservative ballot referenda related to criminal justice and welfare programs. The measures were ultimately approved by voters statewide, but Harris recounts that she would have been unaware of the referenda without canvassers: “I didn’t know about it until somebody knocked on my door, and that was important to me.” 

One man zipped out of a home and passed Harris and her trainee, who said this would be her first year voting. 

“Are you gonna vote?” Latoya asked him. 

“I already did!” he shouted back to the pair as he approached a car across the street, even though early voting hadn’t yet started. “We putting Trump back in office! Just kidding,” he said, laughing it off.  

“Oh, OK,” Harris replied flatly, and she returned to business. “I tell them, even if y’all voting for the president, get out to the other elections too, because she can’t change everything. We have to still get out and vote [against] people locking y’all up, the people deciding on the schools. You’re mad because your kids don’t got school books, but you didn’t go vote. We’ve got to get out and vote for everything, not just this election.”

The post Ignored for Years, Black Milwaukee Voters Hold Power in 2024 appeared first on Capital B News.

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