April 20, 1895 – Wisconsin Passes Its first Civil Rights Act

In 1889, prominent members of the Milwaukee Black community issued a call for a state convention to organize a state Civil Rights League. Prominent among the organizers was William T. Green, the man who was to emerge as the leading figure in Wisconsin’s civil rights struggle.

William Green was born in Canada in May of 1860. He immigrated to the United States in 1884. After moving to Wisconsin in 1887 and working as a janitor in the state capitol, he became one of the first Black graduates of the University of Wisconsin Law School in 1892.

He established a practice in Milwaukee in 1893. He became a prominent attorney for Black Milwaukee residents arguing on behalf of civil rights.

He also became one of the first Black lawyers to argue a case before the Wisconsin Supreme Court, Howell v. Litt, which ruled that discrimination by race was illegal in Wisconsin.

William T. Green

The Litt case arose in 1889 after Owen Howell, a local Black railroad porter, reserved tickets at the Bijou Opera House for the night of September 12th. As a Milwaukee history blog reports:

It was not until he was just about to take his seat when the theater’s head usher informed him that he was not permitted in the lower section. African-Americans were to be confined to the balcony only. Howell, refusing to sit in the balcony, left the theater.”

Shortly thereafter, Green, not yet a graduate of the law school, helped Howell file a civil suit against Jacob Litt, the proprietor of the theater.

The attorney who agreed to represent Howell’s case was Gerry Whiting Hazelton, one-time U.S. attorney and a former member of Congress. Howell v. Litt was heard in May of 1890 before Judge Daniel H. Johnson of the Circuit Court in Milwaukee County. Judge Johnson directed the all-white jury to rule in Howell’s favor; he was awarded $100 in damages and $51.85 in costs. In his argument Johnson stated:

In my judgment the law of the land, as it now stands, requires the proprietor of every public place of resort to which the whole public are invited and as to which the patronage of the whole public is solicited, to admit the public to a place of amusement without discrimination of race or color. I do not believe that, as the law now stands, any such proprietor has a right to exclude any man from any part of his theater who is willing to pay his price, who comes decently dressed and who behaves himself with propriety. I think he has as little right to exclude a colored man under such circumstances as a German or a Polander or an Italian or any man of any other race.”

Jacob Litt’s Bijou Opera House

The decision prompted Republicans in the Wisconsin State Legislature to push for laws protecting racial minorities. Green drafted a measure which called for the outlawing of discrimination in saloons, restaurants, inns, barbershops, and most other public locations. Democrats, who controlled both houses of the Wisconsin legislature, resisted the measure when it was introduced in the 1891 session, and the bill failed to reach the Governor’s office for his signature.

It was only after Republicans had regained control of the Assembly and the Senate, some five years after the bill was first introduced, that the Civil Rights Act of 1895 was able to pass. Governor William H. Upham officially signed it into law on April 20th. Wisconsin was one of the few states to ban discrimination by law before 1900.

At the time of William Green’s death in 1911 at the age of 49, he was still the only practicing Black lawyer in Wisconsin.