MADISON — The Office of the Vice Provost and Chief Diversity Officer in partnership with the UW-Madison Afro-American Studies Department will host a daylong seminar focusing on the past, present, and future of civil rights for its premiere spring event this semester. “A Nation Still Under Construction: Observing the 50th Anniversary of the Civil Rights Act” will be on Wednesday, March 26, from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. in Union South’s Varsity Hall.
The featured keynote speaker will be Wisconsin civil rights pioneer Vel Phillips, a native of Milwaukee and the first African American woman to graduate from the Wisconsin Law School, (L.L.B ‘51) and serve as Wisconsin Secretary of State. The Wisconsin Alumni Association will honor Phillips with the prestigious Distinguished Alumni Award at this event.
Phillips attended North Division High School in Milwaukee and won a national oratory scholarship sponsored by the Black Elks before attending Howard University in Washington, D.C. She moved to Milwaukee with her husband and fellow attorney W. Dale Phillips in 1951 and together they became the first husband-wife team of any race admitted to the federal bar in Milwaukee.
Phillips recently celebrated her 90th birthday.
In 1956, she was elected the first woman ever to sit on Milwaukee’s Common Council. During her tenure on the Common Council, she introduced the city’s first open-housing ordinance 1962.
In 1967, Vel joined Father James Groppi and the NAACP Youth Council in leading marches for fair housing, enduring the city’s race riots, hostility and violence. She finally saw Milwaukee’s open housing bill passed two weeks after Martin Luther King’s assassination in 1968. Phillips also distinguished herself on a national level in the civil rights era, becoming the first African American in the United States elected to the National Committee of either of the two major political parties, and knew three presidents on a first-name basis: John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Jimmy Carter. In the 1970s she became the first woman judge in Milwaukee County and the first African American to serve in Wisconsin’s judiciary. And in 1978 she was the first woman and African American elected to a statewide constitutional office as Secretary of
Also keynote speaking on March 26 will be UW-Madison alumnus Roberto Rivera, a Chicago-based contemporary youth development, social justice and hip-hop culture specialist.
Rivera is an award-winning artist, educator, and change agent who specializes in applying best practices in engaging youth using practical and relevant methods. He is also the President and Lead Change Agent of The Good Life Organization. Rivera earned his undergraduate degree at UW-Madison, where he created his own major entitled “Social Change, Youth Culture and the Arts”. He earned his master’s degree at the University of Illinois at Chicago in Youth
Development with a focus on Social Justice, Urban Education, and Hip-hop. He currently is the President and Lead Change Agent of the Good Life Org., an organization that publishes multi-media educational tools and trains educators, youth workers and parents in connecting positive youth development to community development.
This daylong observation will cover the local, regional and national history of civil rights from the events leading up to the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the social, political and institutional evolution that followed. Faculty experts will provide insightful historical overviews on the legislation and the University, city and state’s role in both the national and regional Civil Rights Movement with Merze Tate Professor of History Brenda Gayle Plummer’s presentation
“The Continuing Legacy of the Civil Rights Act of 1964” and Evjue-Bascom Professor Emerita of African and African American Art History and Visual Culture Freida High W. Tesfagiorgis’ presentation “Afro-American Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Historical Impulse of Civil Rights.”
The day also will offer interactive opportunities for participants of all ranks and ages to learn about the University of Wisconsin’s past and current role in civil rights history with a faculty- led expert discussion on the state of contemporary American civil rights moderated by Michael Thornton, Prof of Afro-American, Asian American Studies & Sociology.
