Everyday Eviction

Eviction has become a special burden for low-income African American women, many of whom live in run-down rental housing and are raising children in single-parent homes. University of Wisconsin sociologist Michael Desmond, quoted in an article in the New York Times, argues, “Just as incarceration has become typical in the lives of poor black men, eviction has become typical in the lives of poor black women.”

In Milwaukee, one tenant in every 25 renter-occupied units is evicted annually. Poor African American women constitute 13 percent of the City’s population but 40 percent of those evicted. The impact of evictions on social connections, school enrollments, and credit ratings should not be underestimated.

To the extent it pays attention to housing issues, the media has of late focused almost exclusively on mortgage foreclosures, and, to be sure, the damage subprime lenders have done to the hopes and dreams of the working class has been huge. However, there is a socioeconomic class trying to carry on without even the assets and income of the working class. We might reflect on its plight when we drive through the center-city and see the humble furniture and other possessions of low-income African American women stacked alongside the curb by landlords who have just finished evicting. But, then, how many of us even drive through the center-city?

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Part of the Way Along the Path of Racial Equity

US Supreme Court facadeLindsey Draper recalls that when he was a student at Marquette Law School, he would sometimes pause to look at photos of previous graduating classes. He would have a hard time spotting anyone who was African American like him.

As Draper (L ’75) looked out at about 50 people, many of them African Americans who are current law students, in Eisenberg Hall Wednesday evening, he agreed that the situation, not only in the Law School but across the American scene, has improved for black people in recent decades.

But Draper, who went on to be an assistant district attorney and a court commissioner in Milwaukee County, and three other community leaders emphasized how far things still have to go before it can be rightly said that America has become a “post-racial” society. The four took part in a panel discussion on the state of black America sponsored by the Black Law Students Association.

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The Legacy of the Little Rock Crucible

little rock 9“That crucible moment” – that’s a phrase Ernest Green used to describe the period when he and eight other African American students enrolled in and attended Little Rock Center High School in 1957. It took the president of the United States and 10,000 soldiers to help them get in the door in deeply segregationist Arkansas. But more than anything, their success took the determination and self-control that the nine showed against almost overwhelming opposition and hate. The events of that fall became a huge landmark in the fight to end official segregation. 

I didn’t expect to be as moved as I was when six of the nine took the stage at the Varsity Theater this week to receive Marquette’s highest honor, the Pere Marquette Discovery Award, from Father Robert Wild, S.J., the university’s president. 

Maybe it was because I was just barely old enough at the time – I was seven – to have the television images from Little Rock permanently planted in my mind. And here they were, in person. 

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