Video Above: 'My sister died, then Black Trans Lives Matter was born'
Frank “Nitty” Sensabaugh was working a dead end job– “one of those jobs you have when you’re trying to get a job”– when Jay Anderson was shot and killed in his car by a Wauwatosa, WI, police officer on June 23, 2016. In Milwaukee, the most racially segregated city in the United States, protesters organised and called for justice, and riots ensued. Sensabaugh wanted to go to the protests, but his work schedule wouldn’t allow it. As a black man wanting to protest for racial justice, he felt bad.
“I felt like I was doing an injustice to not have any time to protest,” he told SBS Dateline. So he quit.
He organised a black boycott of a local BP petrol station in the Sherman Park neighbourhood a month later, after a petrol station employee fired his gun near dozens of local teens. He stayed in front of the petrol station for seven days, encouraging potential customers to boycott the business. He slept there, supported by community members who brought him supplies. It was the first time he had taken the lead as an activist and seen tangible results, and it was empowering and surprising to him: “Wow, people are actually not going to this petrol station!”
Later that summer, on August 13, 2016, Sylville K Smith was killed by a Milwaukee police officer. The shooting spurred two nights of rioting, then things calmed down for a while. Since the unrest was concentrated in one neighbourhood, it was easy for the rest of the city and region to downplay it, says Gina Barton, an investigative reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, who has been covering criminal justice issues for the paper since 2002.
Frank “Nitty” Sensabaugh walked 1,200 kilometres from Milwaukee to Washington for BLM. Source: Supplied
But 2020 has been different. Protesting has been nationwide, continuous, and racially diverse. “White people in power … are more willing to stand together with people of colour,” Barton says.
What does this mean for race relations in Wisconsin, a political battleground state with a blend of progressive and conservative politics? Sensabaugh, 39, says the power has shifted.
“When I walk through white neighbourhoods now, I stick my fist up, and if you don’t stick your fist up, you’re the bad guy,” he said. “Black people can call people out.”
Sensabaugh, who has become a recognisable face for the Movement for Black Lives locally, decided to walk 750 miles (over 1,200 kilometres) from Milwaukee to Washington, DC, for the August 28 March on Washington to honour Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and George Floyd.
“I put it on Facebook, and then it was real,” Sensabaugh said.
When he left Milwaukee in early August with more than 65 people, he didn’t think anyone would care who he was. The racism “kicked in” in Indiana, he said, but strangers would bring the group members water and warn them to avoid areas where violent white supremacists, including Ku Klux Klan members, were waiting.
“When I go somewhere, I’m marching with … every race of people, every sex of people,” Sensabaugh said. “The people I run into and encounter who don’t like us are white people. It’s never, like, Mexicans yelling at us or Indians yelling at us. Chinese people aren’t yelling at us. It’s always white people.”
The shooting of Jacob Blake on August 23 in nearby Kenosha, renewed Milwaukee protests and violence flared in the city. As The Guardian and other publications have reported, armed white militia from outside Wisconsin patrolled local streets after organising through Facebook groups. Five days later, Sensabaugh spoke in front of thousands at the March on Washington, demanding change. “They think this is a negotiation. This is not a negotiation.”
FOX6 News Milwaukee posted a video of Sensabaugh’s speech on Facebook, where it garnered more than 200 comments. Though many were positive, insults and slurs abound, along with attacks on the Democratic party generally. Barton says that online ideological division has had local consequences.
“The fact that there were so-called militia out in Kenosha in the first place was a bad sign for hope for tolerance,” Barton said. “Even the day after the shooting [of Jacob Blake], there were white guys with big guns guarding the entries of subdivisions.”
As a senior columnist for the Milwaukee Independent and the head griot for America’s Black Holocaust Museum, Reggie Jackson has given a lot of educational presentations. But it’s the presentation about the history and hidden impact of segregation in Milwaukee that gets the most requests.
Decades of divestment from predominantly black communities and racial housing discrimination, along with excessive use of force by police, made Milwaukee what it has become.
“You have these white communities, and you don’t know why,” Jackson says. “Maybe if you hadn’t done what you’ve done for 100 years, you wouldn’t have protesters right now.”
Jackson says that social media has diluted the message of protest leaders, and that these leaders haven’t been afforded ample space in newspapers and on television. “They get sound bytes, and that’s it,” Jackson says. “I think that lets people misunderstand what their goals are.”
Backlash to Black Lives Matter protests in Milwaukee’s white suburban communities has included confrontational bouts on the street to hampering protests by requiring insurance to peaceably assemble.
Supporters of President Donald Trump and a Black Lives Matter supporter face off. Source: Chicago Tribune/TNS/Sipa USA
“They’re challenging places to do racial equity work,” Jackson says. “They’re okay with it as long as it isn’t at their doorstep.”
But Sensabaugh says things are changing, even in predominantly white suburbs.
As he and his fellow marchers made their way to Washington, DC, they noticed that white residents had been watching the group’s livestream on social media. They’d come out in time to catch them on the road. They’d even made their own signs.
“To be able to dance with a white woman in her 80s to Tupac in a community you thought would reject you… is amazing,” Sensabaugh said. “They used to call their aldermen about us.”
