Bronzeville

Patricia Diggs is a publisher and communications specialist. She teamed up with Ivory Abena Black and others to produce a book on Milwaukee's African-American community of Bronzeville.

Long-time Milwaukee resident Sylvester Sims remembers an energetic African-American community in Milwaukee during and after World War Two.

Baptist minister Joe Jackson, Jr.,recalls Bronzeville as a place of social and economic vitality.

When Pastor Jackson was a kid, there was money -- and a network of relationships that made his neighborhood a good place to live.

Norma Jean Sims has saved a "Negro Business Directory" that shows the variety of black-owned commercial activity in the old Bronzeville district.

Jobs and the Workplace

Sylvester Sims, who's now in his eighties, remembers his dad's job at International Harvester back before World War Two.

Many decades later, Fred Schnook was a production worker at Tower Automotive, formerly A. O. Smith. He was laid off when the Milwaukee plant started to shut down in the late 1980s.

Rich Wendling worked at A. O. Smith and its successor, Tower Automotive, for 32 years. Here's his story.

After 1970, Milwaukee's top-ten manufacturing employers cut employment drastically, or simply disappeared. Crime and drugs began to seriously erode the social fabric of Milwaukee's black community.

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Prof. Marc Levine says that the true level of unemployment for African-Americans in Milwaukee is now well above 50%.

Dave Celata of the Social Development Commission works on job development. He knows that the transition from a job-rich manufacturing environment to a post-industrial economy won't be easy.

True Stories

Ora Lee Evans has lived in Milwaukee's Black community since 1955. She's seen dramatic -- and unfortunate -- changes over the years.

Erika Britton is a generation younger than Ora Lee, but she's seen changes, too.

Wacheyne Evans is younger still. He was a kid when the social fabric of Milwaukee's African-American community was torn apart by unemployment and drugs.

Shaun and Edward are also from Wacheyne's generation, and they have a similar story to tell.

Eddie Campbell is Edward's father. Eddie and his wife Veronica are refugees from inner-city Milwaukee, now living in Appleton.

Last summer, on the steps of a house on Milwaukee's north side, several young men talked with website lead producer Khalil Coleman. Here's what they had to say about their lives:

Taiwan Anderson

Wacheyne Evans

Matthew Britton

Dre

Hope

Odell Chalmers is program co-ordinator at the Neu Life Community Resource Center, an after-school program for at-risk kids.

One of the programs at Neu Life is a poetry workshop, led by a well-known spoken word artist, Kwabena Antoine Nixon.

In this 27 minute clip, Khalil talks to Dame and Tony, two local entrepreneurs, about getting ahead in Milwaukee.

Here, Khalil and his friend Isaiah discuss their hopes for themselves and their kids.