Pioneering civil rights leader Vel Phillips remembered as unwavering voice for justice

Lifelong trailblazer and civil rights advocate Vel R. Phillips died Tuesday, leaving a legacy of fighting for equality that has inspired generations.

Phillips, 95, was widely respected as an unwavering voice for justice who broke racial and gender barriers — and deeply changed Milwaukee.

"She was a lonely warrior for a long time," Mayor Tom Barrett said.

Barrett said he first learned of her in 1967, when he would read articles about Phillips and her fight for fair housing legislation at City Hall.

"As a young paper carrier reading about her, you could just sense her importance to the community and that never wavered," Barrett said. "It grew decade by decade to the point where she was revered by everyone who cared about justice in our community."

While on the Common Council, Phillips began introducing an open housing ordinance in 1962. She kept introducing it every 90 days for seven years.

Ald. Milele Coggs, whose proposal to create a Vel R. Phillips trailblazer award was approved Tuesday morning, called on others to continue her work.

"I will forever reflect on the stories of challenge and triumph that she shared, and, in fact, there is no better time than now to stand with the same fearlessness and zeal like she did through the years to change society," Coggs said. "Her tireless and groundbreaking efforts in fair housing will continue to be a beacon of light as we navigate through the (too often dark) political landscape of today."

Phillips was a woman of many firsts. In 1951, she became the first black woman to graduate from the University of Wisconsin law school. Five years later, she was the first woman — and first African-American — to be elected to the Milwaukee Common Council.

Other firsts followed, including her appointment as the first woman judge in Milwaukee County in 1971. Even now, she remains the only black person ever elected to statewide office in Wisconsin. She won the race for secretary of state in 1978.

"She was a legend in Milwaukee and in Wisconsin — not only for her many firsts but for her passion," Gov. Scott Walker said in a statement.

Phillips always fought for civil rights, believing they were human rights.

On the streets, she helped lead marchers with Father James Groppi. The marchers found joy and purpose in solidarity. They felt fear as they faced screaming mobs and abuse.

"They dumped urine on us and rotten eggs," she once said about a march that ended with her arrest. "I was afraid."

She recalled others in the community who were kinder but essentially clueless.

"I remember a nice white man who asked me during the open housing marches, 'What is it you people want?' " she said.

"I said, 'My dear man, the same things you want. A place to live, green grass, a white picket fence, a place to go to work and good schools for our children.' "

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Little by little, Phillips gained support on the council. Mayor Henry Maier, though, believed that open housing would only cause white flight and erode his white support on the south side.

"Henry gave me such a hard time," Phillips said in 2002. "He'd call me into his office and ream me out and swear and say, 'Don't you know what you're doing is making me pay on the south side?'

"He'd tell me, 'What you need is a good whipping,'" she once told a reporter.

The council finally adopted an open housing ordinance in 1968, less than a month after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.

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In 2014, Phillips told columnist Jim Stingl she wished she had recognized the significance of her brushes with great leaders.

"If I had it to do over again, I think I would have appreciated having a close relationship with three presidents: LBJ, JFK and Jimmy Carter," she said.

She first saw King while attending the 1963 march on Washington, D.C. She was there as he gave his famous "I Have a Dream" speech. The two later met when King visited Milwaukee.

"I really didn't appreciate the value of the conversations we had until after his death," Phillips said. "He was a warm, easy-to-know person, and I wish I had thought more then about the great fortune I had to know him."

Vel Phillips was born Velvalea Hortense Rodgers in Milwaukee to Thelma (Payne) Rodgers and Russell Rodgers. Her father was a garage worker and Thelma was a housewife at the time of Vel's birth.

She attended North Division High School. Decades after graduating, Phillips remembered how hard it was to get into college preparatory courses and on the forensics team because teachers and counselors thought such activities would be of no use to blacks.

She won first place in a national Elks-sponsored oratorical contest, which helped finance her education at Howard University.

She met W. Dale Phillips at a party when she was 21 and he was 22 and already in law school.

They eloped on their third date. They remained secretly married until a church wedding 10 months later.

Like her husband, the new Mrs. Phillips wanted to go to law school. She graduated the year after he did.

In 1955, Phillips tried to get her husband to run for office, but then took his advice that she should run instead.

"I was always alone in many ways," Phillips said in a 2000 interview. "I had the burden of representing every African-American in the city. No matter where they lived, I was their alderman and they called me — if they had their electricity turned off, if they needed a job, if they wanted a streetlight repaired, whatever.

"They felt close to me. What could I say to them? I'm not your alderman? I couldn't say that."

"Whenever I was the first black, I was also usually the first woman," she said in a 2002 interview. "And there were certain things you just couldn't do. You certainly had to bite your lip. And you couldn't show a tear because that, of course, would be too female."

Phillips once described herself as a "yellow-dog Democrat," because, as the old saying goes, she would vote for a yellow dog before she would vote for a Republican.

In 2002, she was named a distinguished professor at Marquette University's School of Law, with the goal of producing a memoir about the civil rights struggle in Milwaukee.

The Milwaukee County Children's Court Center was renamed the Vel R. Phillips Juvenile Justice Center.

The Vel Phillips Foundation, which was created in 2006, funds minority scholarships and awards grants for social justice work.

As she got older, Phillips appeared frail, but she didn't give up what was important to her. She marched against the war in Iraq. She joined a protest against the acquittal of three former Milwaukee police officers in the beating of Frank Jude Jr.

"This was a movement," Phillips later said at a commemorative event, "and a movement requires you and you and you. You can't have a movement without the people."

Her husband died in 1988. Their son, Dale Franklin Phillips, preceded her in death. Son Michael Damon Phillips survives.

Joan Prince, UW-Milwaukee's vice chancellor of global inclusion and engagement, said she first met Phillips after writing her a letter as a schoolgirl. Phillips wrote back, and visited her school to talk to her and other young women there.

Phillips was later her teacher at UW-Milwaukee and encouraged Prince to join Delta Sigma Theta Sorority.

"We used to laugh and we would always say to her, 'We are all your daughters,' because she didn't have a daughter. And she looked at us as all of her daughters, all of her children," Prince said.

"I think her spirit lives on in all of the 'daughters' that she influenced. Her spirit lives on in all of the organizations she was a part of. But most importantly her spirit lives on because of all of the legislative and social action changes that were made directly because of the impact of Vel Phillips."