Photo credit: Tom Jenz
William Coffer at his home on Milwaukee's North Side
During the unrest in 1960s Milwaukee when Father James Groppi, was at the forefront of the civil rights movement, William Coffer delivered truckloads of food to Groppi’s St. Boniface Church. Coffer was working in an administrative job at Patrick Cudahy. But long before that historic time, he had been a United States Marine and saw action in the Korean War.
A widower at 90, Coffer now lives on the North Side off Silver Spring in his Cape Cod-style house. He still looks slim and fit. All his life, he’d been a long-distance runner, having run three marathons, and was running three miles a day until at 89 he suffered a stroke. He told me, “Strokes run in my family. My mother had a stroke, my grandmother had a stroke and also my two sisters.”
Now he gets around with a cane. His domestic world is partially confined to a wheelchair, a tray table for his food and books, family photographs in the background. His granddaughter and daughter provide the care taking. Coffer’s other child, a son, lives in Houston. He is a devout man, his place of worship the Greater Galilee Baptist Church on 12th Street and Teutonia. In other words, he can be seen as an example of the ideal American citizen. But he is also Black, and his life’s journey tested his perseverance.
Joining the Corps
Coffer was born in Ripley, Ohio, to parents who had migrated from Kentucky. In 1948, at age 18, he joined the military as part of the first regiment of Black Marines. He said, “Montford Point is where they trained the Black Marines. It was part of Camp LeJeune, the Marine Corps base in North Carolina. This was after President Truman signed an order to integrate the services. Black men were not even allowed into the service [the Marine Corps] until 1942. At Camp LeJeune, the Black soldiers were required to do our training segregated from the white soldiers. But at least the military was way ahead of the rest of society in terms of integration.”
After more training on Paris Island, his unit boarded a train to San Diego before being sent to the Korean War. He said, “There was a head-on collision and we lost half of our Marine battalion. We had to wait in San Diego for reinforcements before being shipped off to the Korean War. I was assigned to the anti-aircraft unit. The artillery. Big guns. Let’s just say I saw my share of action in my year and a half in combat.”
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I asked how he ended up in Milwaukee. “I saw an ad in Popular Mechanics Magazine about the Milwaukee School of Engineering,” he replied. “The GI bill paid my tuition. I moved to Milwaukee and started out in the heating and air conditioning program, but then I changed majors. Got a two-year associate degree in accounting. But I was determined to get my four-year degree. In the early ‘50s, they were trying to develop Black leadership in the cities, and I got a scholarship to Marquette, took my degree in Business Administration. It took lots of patience. Six credits each semester while I worked a full-time job.”
After Graduation
“I got a job as an aide in the Veterans Administration in West Allis,” he continued. “$1.20 an hour. I lived out there in a building for the employees. On my way to work, I was stopped several times getting off the Wells Street streetcar. I mean, stopped by the police. One cop told me, ‘If you were a white guy in a Black area, we’d stop you, too.’ I was lucky. Some cops weren’t that nice.”
Coffer insisted I look at a black and white photo of him and his wife on their wedding day. The quality of the print was murky, but I could sense the happiness of the good-looking young couple starting out on their journey. “I met my wife at MATC,” he said. “One day, I was doing my accounting homework in study hall, and this beautiful lady walked through the door, and I said, ‘Behold! Wow. Who could this be?’ She was only 20. Her name was Mingon but she went by Yvonne.”
He went on, “For about 20 years, we lived in the Northlawn Development Project houses on Villard and 24th Street. The city put up those houses for veterans. We moved in there in 1958. It was a mixed neighborhood, Italians, Jews, Poles, Blacks. Not segregated like now.” After World War II, the City of Milwaukee focused on the working class, building affordable housing for veterans. Opening in 1950 and 1951, the two-story row houses of Northlawn, Southlawn, and Berryland were built on vacant land in predominantly white neighborhoods with access to parks and public transportation.
“I transferred from the VA to the Post Office and then got a job as an account clerk for the county welfare department, and then in the county treasury department. In the mid-‘60s, I took a job at Patrick Cudahy in administration. Worked there for five years. My family was still living in Northlawn. The Patrick Cudahy Company was helping Father Groppi’s Civil Rights movement, but they didn’t want anyone to know it. They feared reprisal from whites, I guess. I’m a Black man, so they had me delivering truckloads of food to Father Groppi’s church, St. Boniface Parish on 11th and Clarke. The church had mostly Black members. It was demolished in 1975, I think.”
Groppi left the church around 1970. “The protests died down,” Coffer said. “In 1971, I got a job with the City Housing Authority as a manager of housing projects. My salary was $1,000 per month. When I retired in 1996, my salary was $1,000 a week. I kept active, but my wife died in 2013, and I lived alone.”
Current Controversy
I brought up the controversy dominating the news, asking his views on the current problems of racism and segregation. “I’ve always been a runner,” he said. “Before I had my stroke, I used to run with this white guy who was known as the Dog Man ‘cause he runs with two dogs. I was talking to him a few days ago. I said, ‘Andy,’ that’s his real name, 'I’m trying to understand something. If whites call me Nigger, how do you feel I’m supposed to feel?’ Andy never called me Nigger, but I was trying to understand the hatred out there. He didn’t know what to say. I used to get called Nigger quite a bit growing up in Ohio, whites yelling at me from across the street. What are whites trying to accomplish by calling us that name?”
I thought about that and said, “Right now in our country, our society, hatred seems to be prominent. I find it very sad what’s happening. In America, we can’t seem to get past the prejudice against skin color or the different cultures and tribes. One day not long ago, I was photographing a farm auction in a rural area near Oconomowoc, farmers in seed caps and overalls talking of tractors, pickups, and this year’s corn crop. Later that same day, I was in Milwaukee’s central city talking to Black people listening to rap music and talking trash in an urban language the rural folks wouldn’t understand. Only 30 miles away from each other and two widely different cultures.”
Coffer said, “We’ve been going through this since 1969, this anger, this war. Yet, our Constitution says, ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.’ The Bible says, ‘Do unto others as you would want done to you.’ As the Indians say, ‘Walk in my moccasins for a few days. You will understand me.’”
When I got up to leave, he asked me this question. “What’s the secret to a long life?”
I paused, thinking. “I’m not sure. Staying positive?”
He said, “Keep breathing,” and he laughed.
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