Bringing ‘Souls to the Polls’

×

Expand

Composite Photo Credit: Tom Jenz

Sixty-two year old Reverend Greg Lewis has been a a Milwaukee community activist for two generations. For 10 years, he has headed Souls to the Polls Milwaukee, an organization that unites ministers and their congregations in Milwaukee’s central city to strengthen the voting power of the Black community. The goal has been to build an army of 100,000 voters. In recent elections, Black voter turnout has significantly increased. Last fall, Lewis contracted COVID-19, was hospitalized and nearly died. But he made a comeback and is working harder than ever. His latest effort is a coalition called Pastors United to help increase Black home ownership in the central city. 

Tell me about your background.  Did you grow up in the central city?

I grew up on 15th Street between Center and Hadley. I went to Hopkins Street School, then to Samuel Morris and for high school North Division. Back then, there were lots of homeowners. Our neighborhood was mixed ethnic, but as time went by, there were more Blacks, and they owned homes. I remember lots of thriving stores and businesses, and the community was safe. The whole thing turned when Clifford McKissick got shot and killed by National Guardsmen on his own porch. They said he’d been rioting over the Civil Rights issues.  That was the summer of 1967. I was 11, and I witnessed the killing. Clifford was the first young Black from our neighborhood to go to college. He was attending Whitewater. 

[Lewis is talking about Milwaukee’s 1967 civil rights disturbance when 18-year-old African American college student Clifford McKissick was shot and killed by law enforcement. His death was one of the greatest tragedies of that summer of disturbance. Law enforcement officials claimed that McKissick and three other youths had tried to set fire to a building with Molotov cocktails and that he was shot while fleeing the scene. McKissick’s family and several neighbors including 11-year old Greg Lewis claimed that McKissick had actually been on his front porch. McKissick’s death enraged Milwaukee’s Black community—especially after his death was ruled as a justifiable homicide.]

As a boy, you witnessed McKissick’s death. That had to be hard on you.

Oh, yes. That is when I realized how unfair society was to Black folks in their communities. His death inspired me into community service later on.  

What about your parents? Are they Milwaukee natives?

My mother came from Louisiana, and my father was from Georgia. But they weren’t married. I grew up in a household with one parent, my mother. My freshman year, I went to Winona State in Minnesota to play basketball, but I came back home my sophomore year and attended Marquette University.  

What direction did you take after college?

Since my sophomore year in high school, I’ve worked in community service. Lloyd Barbee, the civil rights activist, started The Coalition for Peaceful Schools, to help the desegregation process in Milwaukee. When I was 21, I worked for that organization as the communications coordinator. Then, for 20 years, I worked in the corporate world in financial planning. Along the way, I’ve been married twice, have a daughter, a stepson and a grandson.  

How did Souls to the Polls come about?

I started Souls to the Polls in 2010. I knew we needed to organize to get out the vote. In one on one meetings, I talked with 64 Black pastors and preachers. My last question was always, “Are you tired of being frustrated?” That led to my starting Pastors United, which is part of Souls to the Polls. Now in 2021, we work with 540 faith leaders to get out the vote. We are non-partisan. We just encourage folks to vote.   

You yourself are a pastor, right?

I am the assistant pastor at St Gabriel Church of God and Christ on North 37th Street.   

Bring me up to 2021. Your current passion is as a housing advocate.  

Fair housing is how I describe it. The basic theory is for all the money you spend on renting a home, you can own it.  n the church community, we are building a voting bloc for fair housing. As volunteers, we help people with their credit, and this can lead them to home ownership if they have a means of income. Since 2015, we have rehabbed over 35 houses and helped set up 35 homeowners. But we need contributions to help get houses rehabbed. The idea is that Blacks will own their own community. 

Here is a controversial idea I’ve heard from Black street leaders. What disturbs them is the number of abandoned buildings and houses in the central city. This leads to infrastructure problems, cracked streets, garbage-strewn alleys, crime and worse, it leads to hopelessness for many residents. The city owns so many of these useless dwellings. One idea is that some of these houses and buildings can be given to qualified residents to occupy, rehab and eventually own, then pay taxes and mortgage payments back to the city. Is that possible?

You can probably buy one of those big old inner city-owned homes for not too much, maybe $25,000 or $50,000, but if you don’t have the money to rehab the home, the house still ends up in bad condition. Our idea is you can take an old home and have non-profits rehab that home, restore the infrastructure, and make it a beautiful home. Then, you put a qualified resident in that home and you will have the new owner pay taxes and loan payments for years to come.

Unfortunately, many of our leaders don’t look to the future, don’t listen to the Black community residents. We don’t get invited to many of the government meetings. If you’re not at the table, you aren’t on the menu. With our fair housing campaign, we want to talk about these issues, have our political leaders listen to our proposals. We are putting together a campaign for fair and affordable housing. The idea is that if Black folks own their homes, they can take pride in owning their own community. Owning your community, taking pride in your neighborhoods, that really helps reduce criminal activities. And restores hope.  

Over the years, there have been many efforts to get more Blacks into their own homes, but too many fail due to bureaucratic snarl.  And many of the Black political and committee leaders can’t seem to move forward with the ideas you are presenting.  

I think some are afraid to break from the status quo. My own alderman is Russell Stamper. He has been willing to work with us on this fair housing initiative. And there is city council president Cavalier Johnson who also wants to work with us. He is a champion for fair housing. We are putting together a bloc of voters to present our ideas to the city council. We call it a voting bloc for fair housing.