Madison resident Leonard Biggs can’t forget an incident that happened more than 45 years ago in a movie theater in El Dorado. The racial prejudice shown that day stuck in his mind and helped guide his actions when he volunteered four years later to march in protest with Martin Luther King.
Biggs, who grew up in rural Butler County, was a student at Butler County Community College in 1963 when he and other students, including some black basketball players, went to the theater.
“One of them had a date with a white girl, and soon after we started watching the movie, the manager came out, looked at us, disappeared,” Biggs said. “About five minutes later, the lights came on, the movie went off, and we were told to go home.”
The action offended Biggs, who had grown up in a home that emphasized non-discrimination.
Biggs said that his mother, Dorothy Biggs, and her sister, Fern Giltner, were “very instrumental in talking to me about how prejudice was not a good thing and how we all needed to be treated equal.”
That was something Biggs talked about Sunday morning at St. James Baptist Church in Emporia, where he spoke about his experiences marching with King and about 5,000 other people in a protest against housing discrimination in Milwaukee.
Biggs was working as a psychiatric nursing technician at Evanston Hospital in Chicago in the mid-1960s, when the Rev. James Groppi, a priest at St. Boniface Church in Milwaukee, sent out a call for marchers.
The situation had developed when a black Vietnam veteran came home to Milwaukee and sought to rent an apartment south of a river that was in a tacitly all-white housing area.
A black woman on the city council several times proposed an ordinance to allow the vet to rent in the forbidden area, Biggs said, but the council voted down the proposal every time.
It was not long before violence erupted.
“Milwaukee was the Selma of the north,” Biggs said.
Four people died in riots on July 30, 1967, in Milwaukee, and more than 1,500 people were arrested.
“Then, when I showed up, some of the major rioting had stopped, but it was still a dangerous situation,” Biggs said. “There were people who threw things at us and cars tried to run over us and that sort of thing.”
The protest march Biggs joined was a peaceful one, in contrast to the riots.
Father Groppi and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People believed that King’s non-violent methods that were succeeding in the South could be appropriate in Milwaukee, too, Biggs said. Groppi invited King to join them in the protest.
The marches began in August 1967, and on Sept. 4, King sent a telegram saying that he would come to Milwaukee to march in support for fair housing.
On Sunday, Sept. 10, 1967, about 5,000 people, including 22-year-old Leonard Biggs, gathered at St. Boniface to march, with King leading, down the streets of Milwaukee.
“It was really a pretty exciting time,” Biggs said. “… You could feel his sense of urgency. His focus was just impressive. You felt his moral stamina as he talked to us every morning.”
Biggs said the area around the church was filled with spectators, watching King and his followers preparing to begin the march. Along the way, the group clashed with counterprotesters.
“We got a lot of hecklers, people who threw bottles, rocks at us, from second-story windows,” he said.
Women and children, aged down to toddlers and babies carried in arms, marched in the middle of the King group, with men on the outside and black commandos assigned to each police officer accompanying the marchers. Some of the police, Biggs said, “were looking the other way, so with a commando beside them, that kind of spurred law enforcement to do a better job.”
Marchers were struck by the flying objects and had to dodge cars that came flying down the alleys, Biggs said. Injuries, fortunately, were minor.
The marches usually lasted about six hours, with protesters walking through different areas of town as they went. Meanwhile, the counterprotesters remained active.
“Oftentimes we’d meet each other. A lot of times we’d turn around and walk back,” he said. “I remember on one occasion Dr. King led us right on through. The crowd separated.”
King stayed with the Milwaukee protesters for a week, and activist and comedian Dick Gregory joined them for a couple of days.
Volunteers from St. Boniface and others who sympathized with the cause provided a meal each day, and out-of-town marchers slept in private homes of supporters.
“We felt as a total group and knew why we were there,” Biggs said. “We were there to help. It was just a real cohesive feeling. ...
“Even though we were strangers in a way, we weren’t. We had a common cause.”
Biggs said that perhaps up to one-third of the marchers were white, as was Father Groppi, who eventually left the priesthood.
Biggs has remained committed to equality for all, and consistently has participated in Martin Luther King celebrations.
After the march in Milwaukee, he came to Emporia State University. He now teaches science at Topeka’s Capital City High School and continues to live outside Madison. He and his wife, Donette, have passed on their belief in equality to their five children and nine grandchildren.
And, while he hopes some day to see statewide celebrations and holiday closings in honor of King’s memory, the progress the movement brought has been satisfying.
“The protests of the 1960s exposed me, a middle-class white kid from the farm, about realities of racial segregation and hatred,” Biggs said. “Forty years later, we live in a world where unfair housing policies are unlawful and unthinkable.
“That, I believe, was worth marching for.”
madpoet (anonymous) says...
What a great story! Bravo to Mr. Biggs for standing up for what you believe in!
February 27, 2009 at 3:54 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )