"Just when you think that your work is done or that you have a reason to give up, you have a reason to keep going because my ancestors sacrificed so much for me to do the work that I'm doing."
That's an excerpt from an interview with Ricardo Wynn , who is referring to the work he's done to support Milwaukee's Black LGBTQ community; the ancestors he's referring to are his chosen family members who have been activists, advocates and community-builders.
Wynn's words are an excellent encapsulation of the project for which he gave his interview: House of History , a recently launched website featuring video interviews of two dozen Black LGBTQ Milwaukeeans. In their videos, the interviewees, who range in age from 30 to 70, tell their stories of celebration, struggle and community.
The project started when historian Brice Smith met Janice Toy .
Smith has worked on UWM's Transgender Oral History Project , written a book about trans activist Lou Sullivan and created a walking tour of historical sites related to Milwaukee's LGBTQ history. Toy has been a performer and pageant winner in Milwaukee for decades, and she is a founding member of SHEBA , a Milwaukee support group for Black trans women.
Smith met with Toy and two other SHEBA members, Elle Halo and Marie Kelly, to learn more about the group as he worked on research for the walking tour app.
"I thought we were meeting just so I could learn the story of SHEBA," Smith said. "But I heard so many stories of people who had died and whose stories had died with them, and the women were so concerned about that."
Toy and Smith decided to work together to interview some of the elders in the Black LGBTQ community to document the history of several Black Milwaukee bars that many considered the bedrock of their community.
But as they started their interviews, the two discovered there were much richer stories to be told of people's activism, accomplishments and relationships — stories that tell of the evolution of Milwaukee's Black LGBTQ community.
Initially, Toy used her knowledge of the elders of the Black LGBTQ community to reach out for interviews. As word of the project spread, more people were added. Smith said the first round of interviews was largely a volunteer effort, but after receiving a grant from the Greater Milwaukee Foundation, work on the project picked up steam. House of History is now part of Diverse & Resilient, which received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to fund the project.
"When I was younger, I couldn't tell people that I was trans, because I would lose my job. So I had to do a lot of things behind the scenes," Toy said. "But now that we can be more vocal, it's so very important that we share these stories, because they allow people to know that a lot of things they're experiencing, there are other people who have been in the same shoes.
"This project can be like a textbook to guide them and show them that they can do this, too, and here are the steps to go about doing it."
The power of history
"What do we need to continue on living this life? To be strong for one another. To be strong for one another."
From Tyra Neal's House of History interview
When Smith started researching Lou Sullivan, who he says many consider "the godfather of the trans movement," he was frustrated that he couldn't find a biography of the activist who grew up in Milwaukee.
"So I enrolled in the PhD history program at UWM in order to learn to write his biography," Smith said. "In the course of writing that, I was able to find myself in his story, which gave me the courage to transition.
"I've experienced the power of history firsthand."
Many similarly powerful stories are shared by interviewees on the House of History website. There are Toy's memories of the community she found during her performances at Milwaukee's Black bars. There's Chris Allen's story of finding a place in Diverse & Resilient where his "experiences as a Black gay young person were valued and appreciated" years before he would become the organization's executive director. More than one interviewee talks about the Black Nite Brawl , an LGBTQ uprising that happened at a Milwaukee bar in 1961, several years before the famous Stonewall uprising . There's also Marie Kelly's story of becoming a plaintiff in a lawsuit that would result in Medicaid covering gender-affirming surgeries in Wisconsin. Several interviewees talk about the impact of the murders of multiple Black trans women in Milwaukee over the past few years.
In her House of History interview, Elle Halo said, "I feel like stepping into activism gave me control in my life, it gave me stability, it gave me things to move forward to, to look forward to, to keep striving forward."
And learning about the history of Milwaukee's Black LGBTQ community through her work with House of History has inspired her activism as she's realized that things like the Black Nite Brawl made Milwaukee "the centerpiece of a movement."
"That's something I never would have known about, that it wasn't just Marsha P. Johnson and Stonewall," Halo said in an interview with the Journal Sentinel.
In 2021, Halo attended an event that commemorated the spot where the Black Nite Brawl happened, at 400 N. Plankinton Ave. Then-mayor Tom Barrett was in attendance, and later that day, he saw Halo at a ceremony where she was accepting an award from the Shepherd Express for her LGBTQ advocacy.
"While there is a celebration now with the launch of House of History, there are also people who would like to see us fail. There are people who think it would be convenient if people like Janice, myself, the other ladies in the project weren't here to tell their stories," Halo said. "But we are. We've sacrificed and done dynamic things to get that foothold to be part of the conversation and part of the leadership so we can do things like be on the mayor's schedule twice in one day."
The power of family
"Love is what love does. What comes from the heart reaches the heart, and if someone falls down and you're not there to pick them up, they're gonna stay down."
From Vincent Morrow's House of History interview
In the House of History interviews, there are several mentions of Milwaukee's ballroom scene (also known as the ball scene, ball culture, ballroom or ball). Ballroom was started by the Black queer community as a space where people "walk" (or compete) in different categories during pageants. It's a place where pageant participants can feel free to experiment with clothing, makeup and different gender expressions. When they walk, participants represent houses, which, more than just being a team they represent, often become their chosen families — creating a sense of belonging that is especially important in queer communities where people often lack the acceptance they need from their families of origin.
In his House of History interview , Vincent Morrow remembers getting involved in the ball scene in the 1990s after he and some friends met a group of people from Detroit who wanted to start a house in Milwaukee.
"But my friend, his take was, he don't want to be part of the ball scene, he wanted to shift gears. We would be advocates for the African American gay community, HIV and AIDS advocates," Morrow said in his interview.
Morrow and his friends started a House of Infiniti chapter in Milwaukee with an emphasis on being accepting and celebratory, but also a health and education resource for people in the Black LGBTQ community. And Morrow was asked to be the group's house mother.
"The house mother is the head of the house. You've got problems, you gotta go to your mama. Struggles, you gotta go to your mama," Morrow told House of History. "It's somebody you look up to that, no matter what, they'll be there for you, good, bad or indifferent."
The house imagery is embraced by House of History, from its name to its logo (a depiction of Toy's dining room chair). Smith said the family parallel also is important in order to evoke the same sense of lineage for queer communities that exists within biological families, "a similar experience to sitting down with your grandparents to ask them to tell stories of the people who came before us."
And in the House of History, the house mother is Toy herself, or "Mama J" as many call her.
Toy said she always felt supported by her own mother, who taught her that "no matter what you do in life, always be the best at it, always put your best foot forward."
"I know that a lot of younger generations don't have family support, but my mom came to the gay bars, watched me do shows, traveled to out-of-town pageants; she was always right there with me," Toy said.
In 2021, Toy was diagnosed with cancer, and her mom continued to be right there with her, sitting with her through her chemotherapy and radiation treatments until one day at the hospital when Toy's mother wasn't feeling well. Toy told her mom she would be OK alone during her session and encouraged her to go downstairs to be checked out. Toy's mother tested positive for COVID and died five days later.
"My mother is the reason I'm here now and that I have this fight in me; she always gave me the strength to keep on pushing and keep on going," Toy said. "My mother taught me to keep on living and if you have a testimony, you have to share that."
Toy considers herself a mother to younger members of the LGBTQ community, sharing the love she got from her mother with others.
"I've always opened up my house to people who didn't have places to go because their families put them out," Toy said. "I gave them places to stay at, so when they said we want you to be the house mother, it was just natural because it's something I was already doing prior to their title."
The power of Black LGBTQ Milwaukeeans
"When people say Black lives matter but are homophobic, you can't say Black lives matter. Not if you're not supporting all Black lives, including Black trans women."
From Angela Lang's House of History interview
Smith, who is white, noted that while LGBTQ history projects aren't new, there aren't many that highlight the experiences and center the voices of Black LGBTQ people.
And when people don't hear those stories, they often don't realize that the marginalization experienced by Black LGBTQ people isn't the same as that experienced by Black straight or cisgender people or by white LGBTQ people. Because queer Black people have to deal with multiple forms of bigotry, they face more obstacles to living the lives they want.
"Most queer spaces are predominantly white, predominantly gay, in whatever binary," Black trans activist Yanté Turner said in his House of History interview . "Our realities are not the same, our experiences are not the same."
Halo said that race often feels "ignored, unseen and unheard," and House of History's intentionality in just interviewing Black leaders in Milwaukee's LGBTQ community helps other Milwaukee leaders see the tenacity of Black queer activists, advocates and leaders.
"We know the areas that are lacking and we bring that to conversations about leadership, and we're also aware of and conscious of how far we've come," Halo said. "There's a tenacity and unwavering spirit in our community, where it's not just about all the negative things that we're pushing back against.
"It's also about those wins and taking your power back, and this project is a beautiful way to highlight that."
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: House of History website shares the joys, challenges and love of Milwaukee's Black LGBTQ community
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