Photo by Tom Jenz
Kenneth Ginlack Sr.
At 51 and a licensed psychotherapist, Kenneth Ginlack Sr. is the Director of Outpatient Programs for Milwaukee County. He oversees all the community health centers, access clinics, crisis stabilization houses, and even million-dollar contracts. He also leads community panels on mental health education. His role is huge. Clinic managers and psychotherapists report to him, and he is the first Black man to hold the director position.
Ginlack’s personal history has been wounded with drug and alcohol addiction, drug dealing, petty theft, and a trail of emotional wreckage. He has lived inside trauma. I met him at his office on Fond du Lac Avenue. He’s dressed classy in a suit and tie with a matching handkerchief tucked into the jacket pocket. He shows a subtle demeanor that flows with sincerity.
Let’s start out with your background, your family, home life, where you grew up, and take me into your world as a troubled teenager.
I’m 51, and I’ve lived in Milwaukee for 30 plus years. But I grew up in Orlando, Florida where my dad is from. I have three older sisters. I was nine when my parents separated. My mom moved us to Milwaukee. We lived next to a bar on 19th and Capital. When I was in sixth grade, we moved to Fourth and Vine, which was an eye-opening experience, a lot of drug activity and prostitution. I saw way more things than a child should ever see. I’d walk by a car and witness a sexual act. I knew the prostitutes by their first names. In that neighborhood is when I started to get into trouble.
What kind of trouble?
Small gang banging, break-ins, stealing bikes. When I was in the 7th grade, we moved back to Orlando, and I went to junior high. Starting with high school when I was 14, things got heavy. I began using drugs. I was livin’ with my dad, and I found his cocaine stash. I took a cocaine package and sold it to some friends, and we snorted lines. Suddenly, I was “the man.” I had respect. Every day I brought a coke pack to school. My dad was using drugs and selling drugs, but he did work every day for the city of Orlando. Finally, my mom moved us out of there. When I was 15, I started getting into real trouble. I carried a pistol. I was dealing drugs off and on.
You were still living in Orlando, right?
Yeah, I was in a small gang, and we’d drink, and we started harassing some white folks in a boarding house, yelling, throwing rocks at the house. I wasn’t there that day, but one of our guys ended up hitting a white guy in the head with a bat and killed him. My dad and my cousin thought I had killed the guy. Detectives interviewed me, but eventually the killer turned himself in and he got 25 years.
You’d been accused of murder, and you were scared. Did that experience help you reform?
Absolutely not. One day, I was hangin’ with some guys playing basketball. I had a gun in my pocket. My sister’s boyfriend was there. He went outside, ran into a guy, and they argued. My sister’s boyfriend stabbed and killed the guy. Cops arrested him, and he went to prison.
Did that traumatic experience change you, make you reform?
Nope, but my mom got us out of there. We moved back to Milwaukee. We lived on 15th and North. I went to North High School for one semester but got kicked out, and I went to Shalom High School because I was an at-risk student. I was still doing drugs, but I did graduate from Shalom. When I was 16, my girlfriend got pregnant and she had the baby when I was 17. We lived in a small apartment, got welfare. About then, I went to Queens, New York with my wife’s brother to visit a friend, and the friend lived in a drug house in the public housing projects. We sold a lot of drugs. I didn’t come back to Milwaukee for a year. I finally got married to my girlfriend, mother of my child, when I was 24. We’ve been married 27 years. We have three kids.
So now you are 18. You have a young child, responsibilities. What did you do next? What was your work?
I was workin’ regular jobs and sellin’ drugs. For a number of years, I worked in the mailroom at the downtown U.S. Bank. I sold a lot of drugs there, including to bank customers, mainly cocaine. I also started smoking crack cocaine. Then, I lost my job. My life turned for the worse. I was about 30 then, had a wife and three kids. I started losing everything, my house, my car, my job. We had to move in with my mom on 40th and Burleigh. Bad neighborhood. But my wife stuck with me. She never did drugs. I’d do some rehab, stay clean for a few weeks, but eventually get back on drugs.
In 2007, as I understand, you experienced a traumatic incident that almost changed your life to make it even worse.
Yeah, we was livin’ in my mom’s basement, me, my wife and three kids. I was tryin’ to work temp jobs, and I was smokin’ crack daily, burnin’ every bridge I could. A lot of people wrote me off. My wife’s family told her she should leave me. I was in the full grips of addiction, and I was embarrassed. I might leave the basement and not come home for a day or two. One day, I was smokin’ crack with a group of addicts. I looked around at the crackheads, and finally realized I was a crackhead, too.
You were then in your late 30s. What happened that changed your life?
One cold winter night, I needed money badly. I slipped a metal pipe in my sleeve, decided I was gonna rob somebody. I was walkin’ down Burleigh near Sherman Park, and I see these two clean-cut white guys in nice coats who were lookin’ to buy crack. I got in the backseat of their car, tellin’ them I could score some crack. I had them pull into an alley, and I pulled out my metal pipe, thinkin’ I’d rob them, maybe even kill them. Suddenly, I said, “Stop the car!” I jumped out and started cryin.’
Hit me hard I was a crackhead and an alcoholic. I was thinking I’ll either die or change my life. I went home and told my mom I needed to go to rehab. That night, I checked into a recovery center, got detoxed, and eventually spent three months in residential treatment and then three more months in a transitional living house.
What put you over the hump, never to do drugs again?
I started going to church, looking for a job. My wife gave me support. I was determined to make a change. I was praying for my purpose in life, facing into my childhood trauma, my dad abandoning me, the bad stuff I’d seen and done, all those things. One day, the counselor let me lead a relapse prevention group. That went so well that I found my purpose as a counselor, and I’ve been in the field ever since.
Take me though the long process you went through to get to the position you hold now.
Took me nine months to get my in-training license. Then, I went back to school at MATC while also working at detox facilities. In 2012, I got my degree in human services. While still working, I got my bachelor’s degree from Upper Iowa and then got my masters degree in social work from Loyola, Chicago. All the while, I was still working in my field, and I passed various national exams and became a licensed psychotherapist. There aren’t many Black male psychotherapists. I opened a private practice, but I also worked for an agency. I’m now the Director of Outpatient Programs for Milwaukee County. I oversee all the community health centers, access clinics, large contracts, crisis stabilization houses. I manage the managers. I’m the first Black man to hold this position.
I suspect much of your therapy work deals with the central city Black family and individual mental health issues. I’ve found that mental illness is a problem in the Black communities.
I get so many phone calls, it’s unbelievable—can you talk to my son or my nephew or my husband, can you provide therapy? It’s heartbreaking because I can’t answer them all. Meanwhile, I oversee three county mental health clinics, walk-in services, anyone off the street uninsured or underinsured. But I think it’s my duty to give back to the community because I did a lot to hurt the community, and so I do see a few clients in my private practice.
I’ve been spending time in the central city on the streets and at Black events. I am seeing a lack of hope, a dark cloud of anger, and I see this is brought on by dysfunctional families, the lack of fathers and strong male figures. I think this affects young Black men the most, hence the gang activity, car stealing, violence. What are your thoughts on this issue?
Not that long ago, I was one of those men. It’s like our system is designed to take the Black man out of the home. Historically, when mothers are the ones receiving welfare, they could not have a Black man provider in the home or they would lose their benefits. In the 1990s, there was a crack epidemic and drug abuse. A lot of Black men became addicts and left the family or were put in jail. Is there a lot of anger? Absolutely. A lot of Black people feel trapped. A lot of our youth don’t even see their life expectancy lasting past 25 because they see so much violence and deaths. It’s like a dream that’s been killed over and over again. Years ago, your only two options were working in a factory or selling drugs, and you’d make more money selling drugs. And now there are no factory jobs. Where is the hope?
Then, we have the problem of education—or lack of education.
In the Milwaukee public schools, you don’t get the same education as the suburban schools. You got 35 kids in a class and one teacher and not much discipline. A teacher might even be scared of the kids. For me, I had to turn to faith and hope to get me out of my addiction and destructive lifestyle.
What do you tell people who are struggling with these issues and looking for help? What do you say to give them hope?
Sometimes, I use myself as an example—“I came from where you came from.” Or I say to them, “What can you do right now? Make you feel better right now?” We call it “one day clean.” Get through one day clean and you have hope to get better. For young people, I might ask “Who killed your dream?” If you have a dad in prison or a mom on drugs, you might no longer have a dream.
The irony of this present-day crisis in Milwaukee’s Black central city is if you go back to the social welfare system in the 1960s and beyond, the good factory jobs went away to be replaced by welfare and public housing. And we now have a whole community of people dependent on government programs without much hope of rising out of that system.
You’re right. Did the welfare system help or hinder? This government system now has control of your life. I can cut your benefits off anytime. This has been going on for generations, and it is tough for you to find a way out. Once again, loss of hope. You got Black communities that are locked up. A prison in your own neighborhood. But the worst prison of all is the prison in your own mind. In a group of guys I’m helping, I ask what success means to them. Their answers? Feed my family, be a provider, own a house, a car, all material things. I try to teach that success is a feeling inside. If you can stay clean for one day, that is success.
Do you think city and county governments are doing enough to help with these issues we’ve talked about?
They are starting to. We’re getting more educated Black leaders who understand the system. They are speaking out. And there are more Black doctors and lawyers and professionals. In my field, we are moving the clinics into the city where our clients live. We are also getting more counselors of color, Black and Latino who speak the “native language” of the clients. The county needs to get more money and support to the grassroots mental health providers.
