Social issues are a major focus of poet Phyllis Wax. Although she was born in Washington, D.C., she has spent most of her adult life in Milwaukee. She served on the board of the Metropolitan Milwaukee Fair Housing Council in its early days, and her late husband grew up in Sherman Park.
If you play by the rules
you won’t attract attention
If you obey the Man
the Man won’t bother you
All men are created equal
Liberty and justice for all
America, land of opportunity
But the Man did
bother them and
justice turned out to be
not for all
Tension in the air
despair
a lazy afternoon
another black man
shot
People were tired
of waiting
for change
If some hadn’t thrown rocks
or burned a police car
it might have been only a small item
in the local paper
If people hadn’t gathered
—angry— about 200
if shots hadn’t been fired
bricks thrown
If that gas station hadn’t been set ablaze
and a major bank
other businesses it might have been
just another police shooting
of a black man
But
even though pastors tried
to calm people and
neighbors formed clean-up crews
in the week that followed
the possibility of riots
seemed to focus the minds
of city and state leaders
who finally started talking about
jobs
for an area where for decades
half the people couldn’t find any
A few angry people
A few businesses burned
The threat of violence
What are your memories?
It’s been three years since Sherman Park was thrust in the national spotlight after a weekend of unrest.
We’ve asked for you to share your memories and will feature your voices all week.
What do you remember about the weekend? How has Sherman Park changed? What do you feel the media missed when reporting about the neighborhood? What is the legacy of the unrest?
Do you have photographs from the unrest you want to share? Would you like to talk with an NNS reporter for a story?
Feel free to email us or leave a comment on Facebook.
Your neighborhood. Your news. Our community.
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Not long after the Sherman Park uprising, middle-class white guy that I am, I would cross Holton St. from Riverwest to Harambee to teach baseball to kids in a schoolyard. On one occasion, in the outfield, one of the boys showed me something in his belt. It had orange on it, so I was pretty sure it wasn’t real a real gun. But it was real enough for someone to mistake for one. I said to myself, “I’m IN this thing.” A few weeks later, as I played baseball with another boy in that schoolyard, a car stopped and pumped three bullets across the street. We hit the pavement fast. I said to myself, “Now I’m REALLY in this thing.”