Author Muriel Simms says she felt compelled to collect the oral histories of Madison’s early black residents so their stories would not be lost.
Muriel Simms’ father wanted to go to college. But it was the 1920s, and he lived in Missouri. The state banned black students from its public universities but would pick up the cost for college out of state. That’s how David Simms ended up in Madison in 1927.
“My dad came here to go to school in pharmacy,” says Simms. His tuition funds ran out after two years, though, so he had to drop out of college and return to Missouri. There he taught reading, writing and math in a one-room schoolhouse in Blackwater, Missouri.
He returned to Madison in 1934, now with wife and children in tow. He found work as a caretaker at a fraternity house at UW-Madison.
“He had skills, he had ambitions, but he could not get the jobs he wanted,” says Simms, who was born in Madison. “And that was the case for many of the folks who came here.”
Simms is the editor of Settlin’: Stories of Madison’s Early African American Families, a collection of oral histories published late last year by the Wisconsin Historical Society Press. Simms, 74, grew up in Madison, attending the city’s public schools and later UW-Madison, where she received three degrees, most recently a doctorate in educational administration. She is 15 years younger than her sister, Delores Simms Greene, whose oral history is included in the collection. The age gap proved pivotal to how their respective lives unfolded.
After excelling at sports and academics in high school, Greene attended UW-Madison, graduating in 1952 with a major in speech and certificate in teaching. She tried to get a job with the Madison school district but, as she shares in her oral history, she was effectively — if not institutionally — banned. “At my interview [Phil] Falk told me he would hire no Negroes as long as he was superintendent.”
Simms graduated from UW-Madison in 1968, and interviewed for teaching positions at Sherman and Mendota elementary schools. Both principals turned her down. In 1971 she was hired at Lincoln, which was then a middle school. (Falk had retired in 1963.) But it was a cool reception. “They did not want me there,” she says. “They were not very kind. I felt I knew what they were thinking.” She would go on to teach for many years, serve as the principal of Lincoln Elementary School from 1988 to 1994, and work in administration before retiring from the school district in 2000. Today she is an adjunct faculty member in Edgewood College’s educational leadership doctoral program.
During the busy years when she was working and raising a family, Simms had a nagging hope that someone would gather the stories of Madison’s early black residents before it was too late.
“People I knew were passing on and I thought way back then that they had stories to tell — I know that good and bad things happened — and wouldn’t it be wonderful for someone to capture these stories.”
But no one stepped up to the plate.
In 2003, Simms took on the project herself.
“Only a fraction of what is known about Madison’s earliest African American settlers and the vibrant and cohesive communities they formed is preserved in archives and libraries,” Simms writes in the introduction to Settlin’, which contains 25 oral histories. “The rest is contained in the hearts and minds of successive generations. As the carriers of these families’ stories age and pass on, something of great value was at risk of being lost. I saw a pressing need to gather their stories into a volume, one that would give substance to the lives of the pioneer families who settled in Madison.”
WHI Image ID 80543
Delores Simms Greene, seated right, with members of Alpha Phi Eta. In back, from left: Rose Lee Matthews, Doris Barlow, Gwen Shellie, and Mary Alice Elvord; Anna Banks is seated in front. Not shown are Loretta Wallace and Addrena Matthews.
Simms prepared 10 to 12 questions for her sources and then let them talk; most interviews lasted one to two hours. Common themes emerged from the stories, including that Madison was a relative safe haven for the city’s black newcomers, many of whom moved from the South in the 1800s and, later, during the Great Migration of the 1930s and ’40s.
“I never got the sense that anybody was harassed or bothered here in Madison,” says Simms. “No houses were burned down, they were not lynched….That helped them decide to stay here and work through whatever they needed to, with housing and education and jobs. I didn’t hear any word like ‘fear’ in their interviews.”
But Madison was not welcoming. Black residents faced work and housing discrimination. Talent was ignored, met with resentment by white educators and employers.
In her oral history, Greene talks about how faculty at Central High School (the downtown school no longer exists) labored to try to keep her from receiving well-earned financial scholarships for college. The school district also went so far as to cancel an annual track parade and awards dinner when Greene was chosen as the school’s track queen in 1947.
But, she says, there was a delicious irony. “Central High School took all the track awards in the city meet that year.…People did treat us badly and kicked at us, but they couldn’t keep us down.”
Despite such treatment, the school system was a draw for black families. “Education was a real motivator for families to come here and then stay here,” says Simms. Unfortunately, academic degrees did not mean suitable employment would follow. Despite significant obstacles, Madison’s black residents worked hard and also made time for church, social clubs and activism.
And while many settled in the Greenbush neighborhood along with Jewish, Irish and Italian immigrants, African Americans also bought homes downtown, and on the east and south sides. White neighbors often rebelled.
Simms’ parents filed a lawsuit under Madison’s fair housing laws when neighbors circulated a petition to try to prevent them from purchasing a house at 201 N. Lake St. Her parents won the case and bought the house. Black homeowners often opened their homes to black students who couldn’t find housing elsewhere and welcomed visiting entertainers, who were barred from most local hotels because of their race.
Throughout Settlin’ there are also stories of entrepreneurs and local businesses that have come and gone. Geraldine Hopkins, who passed away in 2012, talks about the tamale recipe that her father brought from Texas and eventually sold to another black resident for $25. “Mr. Mosley made quite a business with the tamales and became known as the Tamale Man,” she recalls.
Mosley’s granddaughter, Peaches Mosley Lacey, in her oral history, says that her grandfather and grandmother also operated a pool hall and barbershop in the Greenbush area. “They never talked about how difficult it was to go into business, not around me, anyway,” she says. “It seems like it was a better time. They talked to the people and they knew what they wanted. It wasn’t the struggles like African Americans have to do now to get a business because they did pretty well.”
The oral histories sometimes get bogged down in obscure references to people and events. It would have been helpful to have teased out some of the anecdotes and observations to provide better context for readers. Still, the stories are intimate and often lively, providing a social history of Madison’s black pioneers that is rich and needed.
The first identified black settlers in Madison show up in records in the mid-1880s. Simms says the city was home to a cohesive black community for the next 100 or so years. Rejection from the white community tended to foster strong bonds among black residents. “Even if they did feel unwelcomed, there were others in the black community that had the same feeling,” she says.
But starting in the late ’70s and ’80s, the cohesiveness began to unravel. Simms says the class divisions she sees today in the black community were not as rigid when she was growing up. “My sense growing up was that we were all working-class people and that we shared the same struggles; we faced some of the same obstacles. I never sensed that one class of black was pitting itself against another class, like I feel it today.”
Simms says one of her goals with Settlin’ was to make sure that the contributions of Madison’s early black pioneers are acknowledged by today’s residents, white and black. “They were the ones that fought and struggled, put up with city shenanigans, denied places to work, places to live… [things] that newcomers don’t have to live with now.”
Excerpts from Settlin’ / Wisconsin Historical Society Press
Geraldine Hopkins
Family: Parents William China Hopkins and Georgia Ankrim Hopkins moved to Madison in 1913 from Richmond, Texas, and Dayton, Texas, respectively, looking for employment. They settled in Greenbush. Geraldine Hopkins passed away in 2012.
My first job was at the Wisconsin Telephone Company. As no Blacks had worked at the telephone company prior to my hiring, I was quite a spectacle. I do believe work ceased on that day as there was so much talking back and forth around my desk. Nevertheless, I made it through the day successfully. I remember only one occasion where one lady didn’t want to associate with me. Of course, those who know me know I didn’t take that sitting down. I confronted her. There were words exchanged and I was called into the “Big Boss’s” office. After several hours of talking with him and after he talked with her, an agreement was reached. We decided to stay clear of each other and have as little contact as possible. Her excuse was that her husband was from Georgia and he did not want her to associate with Blacks. When we came out of Mr. Armfield’s office, two of the other girls in the office were busy getting my work together so it could go out in the mail. To this day, we are close friends and they also attended my wedding.
Courtesy of Michele Thurman
Geraldine Hopkins’ siblings, from left: Charles, Anthony, Jean, Claude and Hannah. Geraldine, inset, with her son, Miguel Marques.
My next place of employment was at St. Mary’s Hospital in the medical records department. This was an enjoyable workplace. There were five girls in the office plus me. Again, I was the only Black. After having worked for St. Mary’s and knowing most of the doctors, I decided to apply for work at the Dean Clinic. During my interview, the interviewer asked me if I was Indian, and I said no. He proceeded to question me about race until he finally said, “You’re Indian. That’s what I’m going to put on your application.” He further stated, “If they knew you were Black, you would not be hired.” So I said, “Thanks, but no thanks.” That ended my interview with the Dean Clinic. I was truly amazed because I worked with the doctors at St. Mary’s and my children were patients of two of the doctors at the clinic.
I then went to University Hospitals, where I worked several years before transferring to the [state of Wisconsin] Probation and Parole Department. The supervisor went around to each secretary and asked if they had any objections to working with me. From what I gathered later in my stay there was that as long as I worked and did my share, they did not mind working with me. It seemed they had an impression Blacks did not work, but just slid by — doing nothing or very little.
As usual, I was the only Black, until Lorraine Davis came on board as a social worker. I now understand why my father refused to let me apply for different jobs at different companies as the NAACP had requested. They wanted to send me to different companies applying for work, and if they didn’t pan out, the NAACP would step in and take it from there. My father said no. Ah, to be Black in early “lily white” Madison.
Ralph Lee Jr.
Family: Great-grandfather Charles Denning, after being discharged from the Army in 1865 at Camp Randall, settled in Lake Mills. Grandmother Myra Denning grew up on Fair Oaks Avenue. Mother Margaret married Ralph Lee Sr., who attended UW-Madison and graduated with a master’s degree in English. Ralph Lee Jr. passed away in 2013.
My grandfather, Harry Allison Sr., worked as a janitor all his life. All he did was janitorial work. He did plenty of that and he never missed a day’s work in his life. However, after World War II, a few jobs opened up in Madison. Blacks worked at Badger Ordnance, Oscar Mayer, and Truax Field. Granddad got hired out there at Truax Field. He was a maintenance man, making a dollar an hour, and boy, he thought that was gettin’ rich at eight dollars a day. My grandmother, Myra, cooked at fraternity houses and washed dishes in the tearoom.
Courtesy of Ralph Lee III
Ralph Lee’s grandparents, Harry and Myra Allison, at his wedding in 1953. They hosted Duke Ellington in their home.
My grandmother also integrated a Kresge’s dime store and diner on the Square. She went up there and they called the police to put her out, but the police couldn’t do anything about it and that was the end of that. They said there was no beef. After that, Blacks could eat there.
Duke Ellington used to stay at our house because he wouldn’t stay at those second- and third-rate hotels — him and Billy Strayhorn. We would set him up a room in one of the bedrooms upstairs — the rest of us were all crowded up — but he stayed there several times like that.
James Lincoln Greene
Family: Father was George Greene, who was from Birmingham, Alabama, and a graduate of Tuskegee University. He moved to Chicago and then to Madison where he was a haberdasher. He found a job at the Hotel Loraine, working his way up from shining shoes to making and cleaning clothes. He saved money and eventually bought two cleaning businesses. James Lincoln Greene died in 2010.
We lived out on the south side. At that time they called it Hell’s Half Acre. I think white upper-class people from the west side dreamed up that name because it was made up of mostly poor Blacks and poor Whites, some Norwegians, German Jews, Italians, Irish. It didn’t have water or electricity; streets weren’t paved, no curbs or gutters; it flooded. When we had a storm or some environmental crisis, we were the last to get serviced.
Courtesy of Delores Simms Greene
James Greene, who served in the Navy, was a veteran of the Korean War.
We would picnic with each other whenever we could. We would go to Black people’s homes. Our folks had house parties and played cards. Trotter’s was a bar and lounge Black adults frequented. There was a big restaurant called the Pines on top of the hill on South Park Street that Blacks went to and a club called Autumn Leaf where folks also ate and drank. Some of the clubs helped their members with etiquette and manners, how to sit and dress, and write poetry. They discussed whatever they could bring in from Chicago or Philadelphia. Old Man Stewart peddled the Philadelphia Courier all over town, and that was the only news anybody got from what Blacks were doing elsewhere in the country.
Author talks
Feb. 9 Wisconsin Book Festival, Central Library, 3 p.m.
Feb. 26 Sun Prairie Public Library, 6 p.m.
