By Amy Rabideau Silvers Before she was a name on streets and buildings, Vel Phillips was a young woman who became a lawyer and public official, all in the interest of equal rights and justice. She also became a long list of firsts. Phillips was the first Black woman to graduate from the University of Wisconsin law school. Only five years later, she was the first woman—and first Black person—elected to the Milwaukee Common Council. Later she would be the first woman judge in Milwaukee County and the first Black person to serve in Wisconsin’s judiciary. Then she became the first Black person elected to statewide office in Wisconsin. That is the stuff of resumes and history books, but it does not really tell the story of Vel Phillips and what she experienced along the way. She was born Velvalea Hartence Rodgers in Milwaukee, the first name in honor of an aunt. Her father, Russell Rodgers, was then a garage worker, and her mother, Thelma Payne Rodgers, a homemaker. They became the parents of three daughters. “Women of that era were still given few choices—teacher, nurse,” said Michael Phillips, Vel’s son, in an interview with Wisconsin Justice Initiative. “You do anything that you can do,” Thelma told their daughters. Young Vel graduated from North Division High School, struggling for the chance to take college prep classes and be on the forensics teams. She never forgot how teachers and counselors told her such things would be of no use to Black students. A national Elks Club oratorical contest proved to be her ticket to college. She won first place and that award helped her get to Howard University, a renowned historically Black college in Washington, D.C. She graduated and was back in Milwaukee when she met W. Dale Phillips at a party. He had served in World War II and used the G.I. Bill to attend the University of Wisconsin-Madison. They quickly eloped—on their third date—but kept the marriage secret until a church wedding about a year later. She encouraged him to consider becoming a lawyer. He agreed and headed back to Madison as a law student, while she studied at the Milwaukee Teachers College, now the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Then came her own epiphany. “I want to be a lawyer, too,” she decided, according to their son, attorney Michael Phillips. She followed her husband to Madison, graduating from law school in 1951, the year after he graduated. Even for university students—and even in Madison—race was a factor. They moved out of their privately-owned apartment in protest after white neighbors circulated a petition against allowing other African Americans to move in. “That was quite a shattering experience, and it spoiled it for me,” she said, speaking in “Dream Big Dreams,” a Wisconsin Public Television documentary that first aired in 2015. The politics of race and sex The couple opened a law firm in Milwaukee. She encouraged him to run for office, but he thought she should be the candidate. She first tried for a seat on the Milwaukee School Board, losing that bid in 1953. Three years later, she ran for the Milwaukee Common Council, in part with money her husband had saved to buy her a mink coat. “So I said to him, ‘Dale, I’d rather run than have a mink coat,’” she said in an interview with Milwaukee Magazine. At a time when few women successfully ran for office, she changed her legal name to the less-obviously-feminine Vel R. Phillips—and deliberately did not include a photo on campaign literature for that first council race. Phillips won but found she was no more welcome than at their first Madison apartment. It was 1956 and the white men of the Common Council did not think the person they called “Madame Alderman” belonged, including in the only restroom in the council chambers. “I always knock before I enter,” she said. “There will be more of us in the future.” For the record, Phillips was also the first pregnant council member. She gave birth to son Dale the summer after the spring election. Phillips proved to be the council representative for more than her aldermanic district. “I was alone in many ways,” Phillips said in one 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.” The battle for fair housing While campaigning door-to-door and then as an alderman, Phillips heard the horror stories about inadequate housing and discrimination, and saw how many Black residents struggled to find a decent place to live. “Not only were people segregated, but there were problems with sometimes electricity, sometimes not, sometimes water, sometimes not,” son Michael said. “Fair housing became her issue.” In 1962, Phillips introduced an open housing ordinance. She introduced it every 90 days for seven years. And when the open housing marches began, she joined them, helping to lead marchers with Father James Groppi, the NAACP and its Youth Council to Milwaukee’s segregated white neighborhoods. Mobs screamed abuse. “They dumped urine on us and rotten eggs,” she recalled. “I was afraid.” Phillips was among those arrested for curfew violations at a protest rally. Mayor Henry Maier was furious at her activism. “Henry gave me such a hard time,” Phillips said. “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 said. Others struggled, at least more politely, to understand. “I remember a nice white man who asked me during the open housing marches, ‘What is it you people want?” Phillips 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.’” In 1967, the council finally passed a far weaker version of an open housing ordinance. She vehemently opposed it. “Thanks for nothing,” Phillips then said. “You are very much too late and very much too little.” But the political tides, both national and local, were shifting. Congress passed the Fair Housing Act of 1968, just days after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. “Later that month, the Common Council, with several new members, including a second African-American, passed, by a 15-4 vote, a housing discrimination bill that had been strengthened by an amendment by Ms. Phillips,” according to an obituary for her in The New York Times. Party politics and influence Early on, Phillips also became involved in Democratic Party politics, elected as a national committeewoman in 1958. Two years later, she was re-elected and named to the platform committee. “She had conversations with John F. Kennedy and he admitted he didn’t really know any Black people,” Michael said of his mother, who supported Kennedy early in his campaign. “It was that admission that helped fuel some of my mom’s trust, that a white man would say that.” Kennedy became the party’s nominee for president. The civil rights plank became a matter of debate, with Florida Sen. Spessard L. Holland arguing that southern delegations opposed “government-enforced social equality.” Phillips spoke directly to that. “How, Senator, can you expect the nations of the world to respect us if we take a weak position on enforcing equality for all our citizens?” she declared, according to an Associated Press report. “Winning isn’t nearly so important as doing the right thing,” Phillips said. Her arguments helped win the day and a strong civil rights platform for the party she loved. “It was my mom’s influence on John Kennedy that helped cement his resolve to adopt a civil rights platform,” Michael said. “And it changed our country.” For her part, Phillips proudly called herself a “yellow-dog Democrat,” playing on the old saying that she would vote for a yellow dog before voting for a Republican. Along the way, Phillips had conversations with two more presidents—Lyndon B. Johnson and Jimmy Carter. She heard King give his “I Have a Dream” speech and spoke frequently with him as he led protests across the country. “I can’t tell you how many times I picked up the phone and heard it was Martin Luther King,” said Michael. “He’d say, ‘Is Vel there?’ and ‘Get your mom.’ Martin called the house once a week maybe. In the late ’70s, Jimmy Carter called the house a lot, too.” Those were moments and relationships she cherished even more with the passage of time. And yet more roles In 1971, Alderwoman Phillips got a new job. Gov. Patrick Lucey appointed her to children’s court for Milwaukee County. She served until the election, when she lost her bid for a full term. The next few years were filled with law practice, teaching and her own gentle brand of agitating for change. In 1978, she ran for secretary of state, becoming the first Black person to win statewide office. By 1981, there were other headlines. Phillips was reprimanded by the state ethics board and ordered to repay $8,000 related to work expenses and fees for speeches. She lost a primary challenge when she ran for re-election. “I never felt I did anything wrong,” she said many years later in the Milwaukee Magazine interview. In ways large and small, she remained a trusted friend to many in the Milwaukee community and beyond. “I miss her,” said Maxine White, now chief judge of the state Court of Appeals. “I miss her a lot.” White recalled first meeting Phillips in the 1970s. “I was a supervisor with the Social Security administration,” White told WJI. “She was a guest speaker at the office for Women’s History Month. We were not lawyers—we were processing Social Security claims—and she made us feel what we did was important.” Later Phillips became a mentor and a friend. White saw first-hand how people in all kinds of situations came to Phillips for advice. She remembers how her friend would listen and what she would say. “Well, let me give some thought to that. I’ll call you back.” “Do you really care what they think? It’s what you think.” “You can do this. Just take your time, just break it down and figure out what you need to do.” “If you don’t try, you’ll never know.” “They were life lessons, Vel lessons,” White said. “She was the go-to person if someone wanted to pursue anything, not just law. She would encourage young men, businesswomen, white and Black.” Margo Kirchner, now WJI executive director, remembers the day a defendant in federal court delayed accepting a plea deal. “He talked it over with his attorney but also needed to talk to Vel Phillips before accepting the plea,” she said. “She was a force in the community for so many years.” A legacy of caring In her later years, even as she grew increasingly frail, Phillips still spoke out for what she believed. She died April 17, 2018. She was 95. “She was always moving beyond boundaries and moving to bring people together,” James Hall Jr., long a civil rights attorney in Milwaukee, told the State Bar of Wisconsin’s WisBar News after Phillips' death. (Hall died early in 2024.) “She had a fundamental sense of fairness, justice, and equality,” he said. “And she felt strongly enough to make that her life’s work. “All of our lives would be very different” without Vel Phillips, Hall said. “If there was an issue related housing, jobs, women’s rights, or education, she would be there,” said Hall. “She would be up front and prepared to speak to it, to move the agenda forward. She would let her voice be heard.” It was what she said anyone—and everyone—could do. “This was a movement,” she once said at a commemorative event, “and a movement requires you and you and you. You can’t have a movement without the people.” Phillips is remembered in ways both poignant and powerful. The young woman whose neighbors did not want her in their Madison housing lived to see a university residence hall named in her honor. The judge who did not get elected to her own term now has her name on the Vel R. Phillips Juvenile Justice Center. The girl who was told she didn’t need advanced placement classes grew up to start the Vel Phillips Foundation, providing minority scholarships and awards for social justice work. Other scholarships include the VelanDale scholarships through the Wisconsin Association of African-American Lawyers. Schools, too, are named in her honor, including the newly renamed Vel R. Phillips Memorial High School in Madison. And now there is a statue. The advocate and activist who stood for equal rights has a permanent spot on the state Capitol grounds, the first statue of any person of color there. Dedicated this summer, the statue shows Vel Phillips sitting, accessible to all, and asking a question. “What have you done, today, that’s good?” says the inscription, quoting her words. The statue is really more than a monument to one woman, said Michael Phillips. “It is a beacon of hope and a call to action,” he said. “It serves as a potent reminder that we all can shatter barriers and champion the values she lived by.” His grandmother told Vel and her sisters “they could do anything or be anything they wanted.” “I would encourage young people to listen to elder voices in the community,” Michael said. “And look at my mom as a person who listened to those voices and as an example of what a young person can do when she has support.” This project is supported by grants from
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