Middle-Class Respectability, Police Abuse, and Working-Class Resistance in 1950s Milwaukee

By the 1950s, Milwaukee’s Black working- class community had made strides in the industrial sector, landing decent-paying jobs, gaining union entry, and achieving some upward mobility. However, as the Black population increased, white oppression intensified. A sort of racial hysteria erupted in which police attacks against the community became more frequent. Racial tensions also worsened as city leaders, the police department, and the media depicted African American men, especially those that had migrated from the south, as nuisances to the postwar city. Confronted with violence and harassment by a hostile police force, African Americans began practicing an unorganized form of collective community resistance.