When Bronzeville was ‘A City Within a City’

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Photo courtesy Encyclopedia of Milwaukee

Daniel Bell

Daniel Bell

In February 1958, a car with broken tail lights drove past two motorcycle policemen who gave chase. A young man jumped out the of car, shouting, “You’ll never take me!” Officer Thomas Grady fired several warning shots over the suspect’s head when he slashed at them with a knife. Grady was about 15 feet away when he shot the suspect in the back, killing him instantly. When his partner, officer Louis Krause, expressed concern over what had just happened, Grady replied, “Don’t worry about it. He’s just a n__ kid.” Investigators on the scene found a jackknife in the dead man’s right hand. In his wallet were documents that found him to be a 22-year-old black man named Daniel Bell. 

The county coroner informed District Attorney William J. McCauley that there were discrepancies in the officers’ testimony. Bell was left-handed, yet the knife was found in his right hand. Even more disturbing, burn marks from gunpowder residue was found on the collar of Bell’s jacket, a sign that Grady’s revolver was an inch or two away from Bell when he fired. DA McCauley concurred that Grady and Krause believed they were in pursuit of a felon. A coroner’s jury found that Grady had acted “justifiably.” Black residents were suspicious of the verdict, and Reverend R. L. Lathan organized a protest. The protest was dropped when Lathan received threatening phone calls and experienced tacit police intimidation.

Iron-Fisted Harold Brier

Police chief Harold Brier already had a reputation as an iron-fisted leader who disliked Blacks, and his tactics and public remarks fueled a growing racial divide in Milwaukee. With one bullet from patrolman Thomas Grady’s gun, decades of black civil rights efforts hit a wall.

In the mid-19th century, Wisconsin residents helped many former slaves to safety. Sixteen-year-old Caroline Quarlls was being pursued by bounty hunters in 1842 when she found temporary refuge in Milwaukee. Quarlls was hidden at Samuel Brown’s farm at the current 17th Street and Fond du Lac Avenue intersection. Despite the danger of being caught and prosecuted, Brown’s farm was a clandestine stop on the Underground Railroad. He took Quarlls to the next railroad stop 20 miles away where she continued her journey to Canada. 

The abolitionist, activist, and writer Frederick Douglass delivered a fiery speech in Milwaukee in October 1856 followed by reformer Susan B. Anthony in 1869, and Tuskegee Institute scientist Booker T. Washington in 1896. These leaders appeared at local churches and spoke to the importance of education so blacks could get jobs in white-owned businesses, purchase houses, and raise families. 

Jazz Bands, Floor Shows

At the beginning of the 20th century, residents of a dangerous Downtown neighborhood called the “Bad Lands” moved away from the pimps, opium addicts, and extortionist that plagued their existence. In the Jewish neighborhoods of the Seventh Ward, Blacks lived and worked near Schlitz Park, a popular beer garden and entertainment destination. Blacks began opening modest beauty salons, barbershops, grocery stores, clothing and tailor shops, and eventually, a drugstore. Nightclubs and dance halls featured jazz bands and floor shows with dancers, solo musicians, and comedians. Local entertainers like exotic dancer Satin Doll, guitarist Scat Johnson, and pianist Loretta Whyte drew big crowds. Surrounded by eye-catching neon signs, the Regal movie theater offered afternoon and evening shows. By 1940, the business district that would be called Bronzeville had developed into a replica of Harlem in New York City. Even with the gangsters, gambling, and girls, Bronzeville became known as “city within a city.”  

Malcolm Little’s family lived on W. Galena Street until 1929. In the 1950s the former Little home and hundreds of other buildings were demolished for construction of the I-43 freeway. By that time Malcom Little was known as Malcom X, an activist who fought for black civil rights. Robert Beck, aka Iceberg Slim, was a notorious pimp who moved to Los Angeles and became a writer. Several of his novels were made into movies. And boxer Jack Johnson, the one-time heavyweight champion of the world, lived in Bronzeville while performing at a Downtown vaudeville theater. In 1948, renowned blues vocalist Billie Holiday autographed records for fans at the Harlem record store on Ninth and Walnut. 

Policy of Gambling

The gambling flourished with a numbers game known as “policy.” Players bought slips from runners and hoped to hit the lucky combination of numbers printed on their slip. The grand prize parlayed a $1 bet into the $1000 jackpot. Black clergymen expressed concern that policy often led to inability to buy groceries or make prompt mortgage and utility payments. Gambling kingpins Smoky Gooden and Alex White ran rival policy businesses that erupted in violence from time to time. White eventually left the gambling business and invested in nightclubs on Fond du Lac Avenue.  

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Photo courtesy Milwaukee Journal

Smoky Gooden's Cigar Store, 1948

Smoky Gooden's Cigar Store, 1948

The law looked the other way when it came to policy or the houses of prostitution. Detectives spent most of their shifts at Smoky Gooden’s cigar store on Sixth Street. Graft was alleged but never proven as the thin blue line always closed ranks when one of their own was attacked. Every so often the cops conducted a phony raid to satisfy newspaper reporters. Police chief Jacob Laubenheimer, who loved to see his name in the paper, said, “The vice squad arrested the owners of 17 saloons, five brothels, and a wire service that provided horse racing results from every track in the country.” Laubenheimer avoided mentioning that those operations would be back in business within a week.

Good housing became possible with a mortgage from Addie Halyard’s Columbia Savings and Loan. Music promoter Isaac “Ike” Coggs brought nationally famous musicians to the Riverview ballroom at Humboldt and North and to the Masonic hall on 12th street. Muddy Waters, B. B. King, Chuck Berry and Ray Charles were just a few of the musicians who performed at his shows. When Coggs entered politics, new businessmen booked Etta James, Bo Diddley, and Little Richard into the nearby Colonial Theater.  

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Ad for Billie Holiday at the Riverview Ballroom

Ad for Billie Holiday at the Riverview Ballroom, October 18, 1952

With traveling black performers unable to patronize white restaurants and hotels, jazz musicians played the big downtown theaters and stayed at the Black-owned Casablanca, Spruce and Hillcrest hotels. Entertainers such as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Count Basie found lodging when in town as did Jelly Roll Morton, Fats Waller and Dizzy Gillespie. Bronzeville became a Milwaukee nightlife scene that transcended racial divides and welcomed white and black patrons alike at the “black and tan” clubs, with the white dollars significantly helping the starved Bronzeville economy. While local bands would play on weekdays, world-famous musicians came to Bronzeville to perform (Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, etc.) on weekends, drawing in crowds from the Bayside, Whitefish Bay, and Shorewood suburbs. 

By the mid-1950s, the Milwaukee Urban League and the Negro Businessman’s Association had become instrumental in lifting Bronzeville to unprecedented retail and residential heights. Then came the Daniel Bell shooting and the 1967 protests. In a few years, the infrastructure of social and economic progress began to struggle. Speakers responding to the needs of the times appeared with increasing frequency. In 1967, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Gwendolyn Brooks read her poem to Malcolm X, saying the late black Muslim leader has been washed by history and death and is generally acceptable to the public. The Rev. Jesse Jackson, Tony Morrison, activist Angela Davis, and author of The Color Purple Alice Walker all brought messages with variations of the need for Black civil rights.