Rocky Coe, a retired attorney who has lived in the Sherman Park neighborhood for 35 years, said that his experiences growing up in public housing in Chicago then attending the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign inspired him to become an activist and a leader.

When Coe moved to Milwaukee in the 1970s to practice employment law, he also worked with the group Community Called to Vote to register more than 14,000 voters. In the past few years, he successfully reached out to the City of Milwaukee to request that the streets in his neighborhood be repaired and kept in better condition.

Coe said his favorite part of his neighborhood is the people, which is why he has been coming to the Sherman Perk coffee shop regularly since it opened, to read the paper, write poetry and work on cases in the company of neighbors.