(gentle instrumental music) (upbeat intense music) - Good evening everyone, and welcome to the November edition of Black Nouveau.

I'm Earl Arms.

Critical Race theory has been the topic of many discussions, most recently in Milwaukee because of this ad, we'll point out its inaccuracies and explain what critical race theory is.

In her book, "The Lily Hill story," Irma Stowers recounts a true story that opponents of critical race theory would rather you not know about.

And we'll take you to the 18th Annual Fatherhood Summit.

But first, as we move into this Veteran's Day weekend, it's important to remember that African Americans have participated in every war that this nation has been in, often receiving no credit for our service.

We wanna celebrate Veterans Day with the story of the only African American Civil War Unit credited to Wisconsin, and the men and women of today battling to preserve their legacy.

(upbeat intense music) - Actually, I'm getting kind of nostalgic.

(emotional instrumental music) I grew up in the late fifties and sixties, the John Wayne era, you know, and all the war movies and whatnot on TV.

So yeah, I really did want to be a soldier.

- [Narrator] Rickey Townsell always dreamed of serving his country.

- I was in Wisconsin Army National Guard for 19 years.

- [Narrator] But when health issues got in the way, he got creative in his approach.

- This is the frock coat.

There are two different types of coats that you'll see on union troops.

When I found out about the reenactment unit, it was like, what's the term?

It was like a surrogate, you know.

It took the place of my active military stuff.

This is the standard weapon of a soldier in the army during the Civil War.

- [Narrator] Townsell is a first sergeant of Company F of the 29th Infantry US Colored Troops, a reenactment group dedicated to sharing the stories of the only African-American Civil War Unit credited to Wisconsin.

- And it wasn't unusual for soldiers mustering out to have their photos taken, especially if they had their spouse with them as a memento of their service.

And one interesting thing is we're not smiling.

Rarely will you find a picture from the 19th century where the person is smiling.

(intense instrumental music) - [Narrator] Nationwide, United States colored troops made up nearly 10% of the Union Army, although they were banned from joining until 15 months into the war.

Company F 29th United States Color Troops was composed primarily of Black soldiers who volunteered to serve in place of white residents.

- [Rickey] After the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, it became legal for Black people to join the military.

In every state in the union, most of them wanted to have their own colored regiment.

There wasn't enough Blacks in Wisconsin and Illinois and surrounding states to form a regiment.

So what they did was they federalized the 29th Illinois, which was a state unit, and they made it the 29th United States Color Troops, which meant they were able to recruit from Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, and other surrounding states.

So the regimen had been formed, with the exception of Company F. And 75 Black men from Milwaukee answered the call to go to Quincy, Illinois, and we formed the nucleus of Company F. Forward march!

What we do is a part of not only history, you know, American history, but Milwaukee's history.

Company halt.

The more and more I found out about this unit, the more I felt it was our responsibility to let other, not just Black people, but let everybody know about the role that the 29th, that Company F, folks from Wisconsin, Black people from Wisconsin played in the Civil War.

Left shoulder shift.

- [Narrator] The group gives a new meaning to living history, or should I say reliving.

- Forward march.

We have to be period correct.

We call them the period police, okay.

It is their job.

When we take part in an encampment, they go around to make sure that every encampment is period correct.

There's no plastic bottles showing, no soda cans.

- When we went to the battles, that was interesting because the first couple times we went, the white troops really wasn't, didn't take too well to us being a Black unit, but we carried on, we overcame that.

- [Narrator] And the group isn't just for men.

- I portray one of the ladies that when the war broke out and the men left the plantation, well, the women followed the men, they packed up their homes, put them in wagons, and they followed behind the men about a mile behind.

- Right face shift.

- [Narrator] And although the group has shrunk in size.

- [Jack] We just don't have enough participation.

We don't have enough men to do this, and we need younger men.

- Order arms.

- [Narrator] The history of the 29th Infantry is as important now as it was all those centuries ago.

- I made a vow to myself that I'm gonna continue to do this as long as I can, as long as I continue to move about.

And with bringing young people in as fast as we can, you know, but if we were no longer then I fear nobody would know about those 75 Black men that went to Quincy, Illinois to fight for Freedom.

(upbeat intense music) - [Speaker 1] Last month, the Milwaukee Fatherhood Initiative held its 18th annual summit at Destiny Youth Plaza.

Hundreds of dads attended.

There were speakers, vendors and workshops to assist fathers with resources and to make sure that dads are aware of the assistance available to them.

- Today's event means that there's hope.

Being a first time dad, I didn't think there were a lot of resources.

And then I saw this program on my phone, I was at work and I was like, "Oh, you know what?

That's not too far from my house.

I need to check it out."

There were a lot of things for fathers, whether it be first time fathers or fathers in general, to come and see, and see where you can get help or where you can volunteer.

So I think it's pretty awesome.

- It's to see that there's something in place for fathers, because there's a lot of things in place for mothers.

And then you have a lot of good fathers out here that's just trying to get by and we have a lot on our plate, and it's like we're overlooked.

So to see a program that's designed for fathers, you know, it gives fathers who were feeling down a little hope.

- [Speaker 1] Many of the dads were single fathers, others were first time dads.

54 year old Robert Cooper was both - 54.

- [Speaker 1] 54.

- Yeah.

- [Speaker 1] How has that been for you?

- At first it was a little scary, but look at this face.

After that, it was like, thank you, God.

Being a first time father, I was reaching out.

I was like, "Well, what do you do?"

I'm new to all of this.

So I was looking for programs like, I need some help, you know?

And I'm not ashamed to ask for help, you know?

And I think in order to be successful, you ask for help.

You know, because that's how you learn and how you grow.

And it would be crazy not to ask for help or resources to help produce and raise a young man like this, right boo?

- [Speaker 1] Today is interesting.

It influenced the fathers because it's available to them when often they don't know that they need the services that are available.

So they'll find out that there may be a deficit in their lives.

And after that, they have people coaching them on how to overcome those challenges.

They get the tools, they get the resources, and immediately after getting the resources, they have another individual who can contact them afterwards.

We have people from the Milwaukee Fatherhood Summit who are going to make a regular conversation and discussion with them.

We plan on having meaningful mini summits or smaller versions of this, where we'll have a central focus.

We invite different sectors.

So this is the beginning of that.

So I believe right now what makes a difference is that the father is gonna be more engaged with himself just as he's going to be more engaged with his family.

- [Speaker 1] The message behind the summit was you're not alone.

A group of fathers who often feel alone are formerly incarcerated dads.

That's why the summit had father, local entrepreneur, and ex-convict Ed Hennings talk to fathers who have also been incarcerated.

- I was absent 20 years.

No matter what I've accomplished through these last seven years, I'm just old dads now.

Very humbling experience.

I was introduced today as somebody that was a living legend in my community.

Not to my kids, not to my kids.

I'm that man that was missing for 20 years, and I gotta live with that for the rest of my life.

In the urban community, there's quite a few of us that have been to prison, me, myself, being one of them.

So being able to share some insight on how my journey has been since I was released from prison, and how it's been for me reconnecting and introducing myself to my children, and maybe I can be helpful in that area for other people.

- Right, sometimes we say things like, you know, walking it off or man up, what does that mean?

Right?

And what does emotional health look like with regards to managing things like anger or even love?

Today we offered a workshop for about two hours called Intend Dad.

Intend Dad is all about the intentionality with regards to fathers and our impact on increasing healthy birth outcomes.

And of course, in reverse decreasing infant mortality.

So fathers got together and we asked essentially one key question.

That one key question is, do you plan or would like to become a father within the next year?

So based upon the answer to that question, fathers were able to discuss things like prevention, intervention, healthy relationships, if the answer was yes and things of that nature.

So the focus was for, to have a safe discussion, right?

In a productive space around intentionality with regards to the value of fatherhood as it impacts our community.

- [Speaker 1] Mayor Cavalier Johnson also spoke at the summit.

- There's a myriad of tools, a myriad of services that are here.

And I want for the fathers who are present at today's event, to take a look deep within themselves to know where they are in their fatherhood journey, and to go to the resources that they need to improve the position that they're in, right now.

- Even in my household, I have to partner with my wife on how to raise my children.

- Absolutely, yeah.

- Right?

So even if the individual, your wife or the child or your mother is not in the home with you, why don't we still partner with that woman to raise our child?

- [Cavalier] I want them also to take away the fact that they're not in this alone.

They're not, the city is here as a partner, and we're being a convener to bring all these resources under one roof so that they're easily accessible to the fathers here in our community.

(gentle instrumental music) - [Speaker 1] In addition to assisting with resources, the day was also about an appreciation of fatherhood.

- These are me, the pieces of me, droplets of me.

If your arm get amputated, you gonna go retrieve your arm and hope you can get it to the hospital and get them to put it back together.

That's part of you.

So my kids are part of me.

If I end up, if I had 10 of them, I would have to do the same thing.

It's no disowning or this child has an attitude with me, so I'm gonna give up.

No, I gotta keep pushing.

(upbeat bright music) - Daddy teaches you can be anything in this world that you wanna be.

Right, don't daddy teach you that?

- Yeah.

And it doesn't matter if you're Black or White or any color.

- See?

This is how children think right here.

Critical race theory wants to end that.

- I pledge allegiance to the flag of the Afro-American people.

- Not with my children, it's not gonna happen.

- You can make friends.

- Yeah, you can make friends no matter what color they are.

So we need to stop CRT, period point blank.

Children do not see skin color, man.

They love everybody.

They're good people.

They love them.

- [Speaker 2] The truth wins if we're all brave enough to tell it.

- That is the ad that sparked the controversy over critical race theory.

It has been shortened since its original posting in September.

Joining us now to discuss what's wrong with it are the Milwaukee Journal Sentinels James E Causey and Dr. Robert S. Smith, the Harry G John Professor of History at Marquette University.

Thank you both for joining us.

James, you wrote about the piece, about the video.

What made you write about it?

What was your major concern with it?

- Well, I first wrote about it because when I first saw the ad, I thought it was a spoof.

I didn't think it was real.

It came on during a Packer game.

And the first time I saw it, I DVR'd it and reversed it because I was like, is this real or not?

And I posted it on my Facebook page.

And I saw that I got a lot of reactions from it.

So I knew I had to write about it because it was just so many, it was so filled with lies that I had to get the public straight on it.

- Dr. Smith, you're an educator.

What is critical race theory and what do people need to know about it?

- Well, the first thing is the public conversation about it is just marred with lies, and misinterpretations and misdirection.

Critical race theory is this brilliant intellectual approach to studying the nation's past, it's present, and all the various ways that we've seen and experienced injustice, various disparities and their roots.

And it says, if we look at the legal functions in our society, if we look at our policies, we can learn about those injustices.

We can learn and understand how over the last several hundred years our system has been shaped to not only enforce those injustices, but to perpetuate them as well.

But it also teaches us how to use the law to effectuate social change.

And it does something very brilliant, which is, it takes voices that are oftentimes left outta that history, oftentimes the folks who experience some of the worst parts of that history and says, let's center those voices, and then let's think about this in even more complicated ways by considering that we might have multiple identities, thar the intersections that we bring to the table, and adding that into the historical conversation and the contemporary conversation.

Now, the key thing is, in order to do this, you have to spend a lot of time with a lot of case law.

And you have to spend a lot of time with a lot of policy, and you have to spend a lot of time with a lot of legislation.

So this is really graduate level, law school level education and training.

All this nonsense that kids are being teaching, are being taught, critical race theory is impossible because it's that heavy of a discourse to really consume.

- So why is there such a misunderstanding about that and why is there's so much ignorance around critical race theory?

I'll open it up to either one of you.

- Well, I'll start with that.

Well, there's ignorance on race.

I mean, we haven't been able to really understand and talk about race even as adults.

And so my whole thing with this is like, why would we not want to understand more about race and race relations?

Why aren't we having these conversations?

We don't have a conversation mainly as adults with across racial lines.

When we do, it usually turn into arguments or we looking for that quick turnaround.

So why don't we want our young people to not make the same mistakes we made?

That's my biggest issue with this.

And so don't perpetuate it with lies and fear mongering.

Try to perpetuate it with truth.

And that's what we need to do.

- Dr. Smith, we were talking about the dangers of some of the ignorance that's out there.

So talk about those dangers with teachers, both rural and urban.

- Well, you know, just this entire moment, it's not only that critical race theory is the emblem that's being propped up as the problem.

This entire conversation that we need to have about race and need to have in our schools about race is under attack as well.

We see teachers being threatened and intimidated in which the ad does, that puts that teacher at risk because folks might respond to that ad as they, as we've seen crazy people do over the last several years.

We've seen hostility at school boards over these kinds of issues as well.

And this is particularly pronounced in our rural and exurban areas.

You know, this is where we've heard from teachers specifically saying, "We have to teach this stuff here.

We have to be able to have these conversations because our kids are not experiencing the kind of diversity that they ought to."

- So James, talk about the bigger picture with critical race theory, and exactly where it sits among a bigger conversation when it comes to race.

- Well, I think if you just look at the Pugh Research Center, they did this study and they talked to adults like, "Do you think we have a race problem in this country?"

Most African Americans say, "Yes, we do."

A lot of whites about half say, yes, we do.

So just based on that, it shows you that we need to have more conversations and really talk about it.

What we are, we have a long ways to go when it comes to educating the public and educating ourselves when it comes to race.

We talk about it all the time.

Me and my wife, my family, we talk about it in our little circles, but we need to talk about it more collectively.

We need to bring more people in so we can have these conversations so they can understand where we coming from and where they're coming from.

If that doesn't take place, we're never gonna get any place.

- So Dr. Smith, I'll ask you, where does the responsibility sit with when it comes to talking about race?

Is it the schools, is it the family?

Is it both?

What do you think?

- Well, it is everybody.

And we're not gonna ever get around or get outside of a moment where we can't talk about race.

It's central to so much of what we experience on a regular basis.

And this is also the nerve that critical race theory touches, quite honestly.

When we look at law, when we look at policy, when we look at our constitution, when we see the ways that these core institutions prop up the various injustices, it's critical race theory and other approaches like it informed by similar kinds of ideas, that help to expose so much of the history and so much of the realities that we need exposing.

So then we can have our conversation about it.

If we don't, as James mentions, if we don't talk about this stuff, it's not like it disappears.

It gets worse, it festers, it creates all kinds of other long-term longstanding issues.

- James Causey, Dr. Robert Smith, thank you so much for joining us on this conversation.

And finally tonight from the Black Nouveau Archives comes Irma Stowers with the Lily Hill story.

Two brief warnings.

This is a very powerful story of abuse and there are some audio glitches in the video, but it is a story that people need to hear and understand.

(gentle instrumental music) - [Speaker 2] Irma Griffin Stowers lived in fear the first 15 years of her life.

- I was scared to go to sleep at night, might be screaming at night, "Don't let him get me, don't let him get me."

- [Speaker 2] Growing up in the forties for a Black person in Mississippi was sometimes a dangerous thing.

Irma Griffin Stower grew up in Carthage, Mississippi, and shared her story of growing up in a time of crisis and hatred.

- It was hard living in Mississippi.

As a child, it was very hard for me because the way my parents was treated and the way I were treated and my sisters and brothers, we had a hard life.

But my father, him and the peoples that he worked for, they were nice and they got along good.

So it was good people and it was bad people.

- [Speaker 2] Stowers captured this time and place of our history in the book she wrote "The Lily Hill Story."

- [Irma] Lily Hill is a wooded area where they take black peoples and whip them or hang them.

- [Speaker 2] And her family experienced Lily Hill firsthand after her father had a confrontation with a white man.

- He was crying to my mom.

He said, "I just hit a white man."

About an hour later, they came with dogs, trucks, on horseback.

And my mama was, had hid him in the loft.

So he kept quiet for a while, but then they went up in the loft and they got him.

They pushed my mother down and she was screaming, "Please don't kill my husband, please."

And so they took my dad out, took him to The Lily hill and they beat him.

So another white gentleman that was friend of my father's, my mom and my brother and them were screaming.

So he took, he said, "Well, I'll go down there.

And I'll stop them."

He went down there and he stopped him.

They didn't kill him, but they had the rope around his neck.

He shot up in the air and told him, "Let him down."

So they let him down, but they'd beat him unconscious.

So that was one terrifying thing, seeing my father get beaten.

- [Speaker 2] Stowers has put on paper how Black people were once treated in America's segregated south.

- We couldn't, like we go to the movie theater, we couldn't sit with white people.

We had to sit upstairs and they sit downstairs.

We couldn't drink from the fountain, we couldn't get served at a table.

We have to stand at the back door and they bring our stuff outside.

And we were always called names, but we could never fight back.

We had to take whatever we were called, we have to take it.

And we were spit on.

We still had to take that.

And that was hard life for me.

- [Speaker 2] When she was 13, she was accosted by six white guys.

- I pleaded and I pleaded with them, "Let me go."

I said, "Let me go."

And one said, "I'm going first."

And I asked him, "Let me go."

I said, "I'll meet you on Friday."

And they said, "Can we believe you?"

I said, "Yeah."

So when I got in the house, they let me go.

And when I got in the house, my mother and father was up.

They said, "Didn't we hear you screaming out there?"

I lied, I said, "No," because I was afraid if I tell my daddy that he was gonna do something and my brother, he would've did something, - [Speaker 2] Afraid they would be taken to Lilly Hill.

(emotional instrumental music) - We got in the car and they took us to a wooded area.

And what they did, they had me in their car first.

And I blamed myself for my friend all this time because I got her into trouble.

So I had explained to the dude that I was sick, 'cause I had been raped already.

He let me out.

So then my friend had to get in there and be raped by six students, and I blame myself for it.

- [Speaker 2] The pain of this incident has stayed with her, but there was no one who could have helped.

And if they did, they may have been taken to Lily Hill.

- I wrote the book, I wanted people to know about the Lily Hill.

They kept that hush hush.

And today it's still hush hush unless people sit out and talk about it that's been through that.

A lot of people just scared to talk about Lily Hill and I don't know why, but I thought it should be.

People should know about it.

- And that's our program for this month.

(upbeat bright music) We invite you to follow us online at milwaukeepbs.org.

For Black Nouveau, I'm Earl Arms.

Have a great evening.