The March on Milwaukee Oral History Project was designed to help document the open housing
movement in Milwaukee, Wisconsin of 1967-1969, led by Father James Groppi, Alderwoman Vel
Phillips, and the Milwaukee NAACP Youth Council. It was also intended to help commemorate
the 40th anniversary of the open housing marches in September 2007, which included a
day-long conference at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM), exhibits at the
Wisconsin Black Historical Society and America's Black Holocaust Museum (both located in
Milwaukee), and a commemorative march and program on the city's James E. Groppi Unity Bridge
(formerly the 16th Street Viaduct). The oral history interviews were conducted by Amanda
Wynne, a UWM history graduate student intern, undergraduate students in Professor Michael
Gordon's fall 2007 senior history seminar, and by Michael Gordon himself. Interviewees
include Margaret (Peggy) Rozga, Father Groppi's widow and the organizer of the 2007
commemoration; several priests who participated in the demonstrations and other civil rights
activities; Frank Aukofer, a journalist who covered the demonstrations for a local
newspaper; members of the NAACP Youth Council and the NAACP YC Commandos; and ordinary
citizens.
