Father Groppi by Stotts Stuart;

Author:Stotts, Stuart;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wisconsin Historical Society
Published: 2013-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Freedom House, the Youth Council headquarters

Father Groppi complained that the police weren’t protecting Freedom House well enough. He said that 2 officers had been seen sleeping and a third had asked for comic books to read. “We don’t need this kind of protection,” he said. “I believe in self-defense.”

In October, as negotiations with the Eagles continued, Father Groppi and the Youth Council formed what they called a commando unit. It was made up of young black men who were trained to maintain order and protect demonstrators. These commandos wore uniforms of army pants, boots, and black berets. They seemed like a military unit.

The commandos started guarding Freedom House with a loaded gun. The thought of a house in Milwaukee’s slums being guarded by armed youths was frightening to many white people. They feared that black people were preparing for a violent attack by training an army.

Father Groppi said that the commando group was needed after the bombing of the NAACP office and the violence directed at Youth Council protesters. He also wanted to build discipline and pride among the commandos. But many white people were frightened by the idea of young black men acting like soldiers. They feared that the commandos would not merely protect demonstrators, but that they might also attack white people.

In response, the commandos said that their policy was “not violent.” According to one commando leader, “Not violence meant we didn’t carry weapons and we didn’t start nothing, but we also didn’t take nothing. If the police or the white crowds came after us, or the marchers, we weren’t afraid to mix it up, to fight back.”

The commandos protected people. One activist later said, “It was self-defense that kept most of those people from getting seriously hurt. If it wasn’t for the brute strength and the outgoing nature of the men in the commandos at that time, the bulk of the people in those lines would have got hurt; somebody might have got killed.”

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