Groppi's Army

Milwaukee's Negroes constitute only one-tenth of the city's population and--partly for that reason--have yet to mount a major rebellion on the scale of Watts or Detroit. Yet, like other ghetto dwellers, they have their grievances. In the Inner Core, as Milwaukee's Negro slum is called, unemployment is more than twice as high as in the historically German and Polish districts that surround it. Housing is decrepit in the Core, educational levels as low as in Harlem or Cleveland's Hough.

Nonetheless, Milwaukee is a traditionally well-disciplined city, and the Negroes' legitimate complaints might well have been adjusted in the wake of the Inner Core's abortive riots last August. They were not, in large part, because a white Catholic priest insisted on militancy rather than mediation.

Prayer v. Pugnacity. The Rev. James Groppi, 36, a Milwaukee-born Italian-American, is remembered by his fellow seminarians as a devout, self-effacing youth. Assigned to St. Boniface Church in 1963 as assistant pastor, Groppi (rhymes with puppy) found himself in the heart of one of the North's most strangely segregated cities--and soon became "chaplain" to the N.A.A.C.P.'s local Youth Council. A summer's march in Selma, Ala., two years ago confirmed him in his militant's role.

Known to the Negroes as "Ajax, the White Knight," Groppi found a valid local cause in the quest for an open-housing ordinance. Mrs. Vel Phillips, 43, a pretty Negro who is Milwaukee's only black alderman, has five times proposed that such a measure be debated by the 19-member common council; each time she was put down by a vote of 18 to 1. Groppi leaped into the issue like an avenging angel. As a result, says U.S. Representative Clem Zablocki, who speaks in Congress for most of Milwaukee's South Side, much of the city has become "not so much anti-Negro as anti-Groppi."

Outburst of Pique. Groppi and his Youth Council "commandos," most of them husky, high-spirited Negro lads, failed during the August riots to march on the Graustarkian downtown city hall where Democratic Mayor Henry Maier holds sway. They were checked by Maier's ironfisted curfew. Earlier this month, the Groppians paraded through the Polish-dominated South Side and were met by abuse, firecrackers, beer cans and rage. Last week, while Groppi lay ill with summer flu and exhaustion, 80 of his stalwarts descended on the mayor's office, chanting "Sock it to me, Black Power" and "Mayor Maier, you punk!" For four hours, while cops stood by passively under orders from Maier to keep their cool, the commandos waited for a mayoral appearance. Then, in an outburst of pique, they ripped up leather chairs, dumped drawers on the floor, and defaced a mural with obscenities.

At week's end "Ajax" Groppi's commandos--reinforced by some 1,200 civil rights enthusiasts--once more marched through the South Side in an effort to obtain an open-housing ordinance. It is not likely to come until either Groppi cools down or the city's white majority shows more sympathy to the complaints of its Negro neighbors.

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