ALUMNI SNAPSHOTS

KEEPING THE LEGACY FOR THE NEGRO LEAGUES

Dennis Biddle can tell stories about Jackie Robinson, Buck O’Neil and other Negro Leagues greats as if they all shared a dugout together. Because even though he never played with them, Biddle was in those Negro Leagues dugouts, and he remembers well long-ago conversations with his own teammates.

Biddle is one of the last living alums of the Negro Leagues. He was 17 when he first played for the Chicago American Giants in the Negro American League in 1953, and he played one more season after that.

Now 86, Biddle is dedicated to keeping these Negro Leagues stories alive. He heads the Yesterday’s Negro League Baseball Players Foundation, which he established in 1996 with a fellow Negro Leagues alum, the late Sherwood Brewer. “There were 314 living players at that

time, and we had no representation. People didn’t know that,” says Biddle, who graduated from UWM in 1978 with a bachelor’s degree in community education. “The words ‘Negro Leagues’ were never copyrighted but were being used all over.”

Yesterday’s Negro League isn’t affiliated with the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum. But the roots of Biddle’s organization stem from a conversation he had with Brewer after a meeting of former Negro Leaguers in 1995 in Kansas City, where the museum is located.

“From that day, players decided we would represent ourselves and formed Yesterday’s Negro League,” says Biddle, one of about three dozen surviving Negro Leaguers today. The organization also advocates for the economic interests of former players.

Yesterday’s Negro League has a traveling exhibit that stops at colleges, universities and events across the country. There’s also a permanent exhibit on Mayfair Mall’s second floor in suburban Milwaukee. And the exhibit makes annual visits to American Family Field for every Milwaukee Brewers Negro Leagues Tribute Game, which is scheduled for July 22 in 2022.

Biddle authored “Secrets of the Negro Baseball League” and plans to write another book featuring more stories passed down from former teammates. “These were older men who had played in the league for many years,” Biddle says. “They knew the true history somehow would not be told. I never forgot about it. I didn’t understand it at the time, but the stories never left me.”

– Genaro C. Armas

VIRTUAL CHILDREN’S STORIES IN THEIR OWN LANGUAGES

Claudia Orjuela and her Lynden Sculpture Garden colleagues knew the COVID-19 pandemic left children stuck at home and short on ways to engage with the wider world. And they knew it could be particularly hard on children who’ve experienced displacement as refugees, asylum seekers or immigrants.

That was the impetus for Home: Multilingual Story Time. Designed for youngsters ages 4-8, it features virtual readings of children’s books in a variety of languages.

“The story time is an opportunity to start conversations with children about displacement, adaptation and belonging,” says Orjuela, an art educator at Lynden who earned a UWM master’s degree in art education. “Children were not going to school, and we had families who did not speak English as their first language.”

New episodes of Home: Multilingual Story Time go live on the third Wednesday of every month. They’re streamed on Facebook Live and posted on the Home-at-Lynden virtual platform. Stories are read by community members in English and many other languages, and art projects accompany the readings. The recordings are accessible anytime

thereafter, as are any related handouts and guides for teachers, parents and advanced learners.

“Children need to be given the opportunity to express themselves through multiple ways, not just verbally,” Orjuela says. Integrating art and literacy is a great way to reach a wide range of learners, she notes, and learners with different abilities and non- English speakers gain access through the visual language of art.

Themes often focus on refugees and immigrants and are designed to appeal to the Milwaukee area’s diverse communities. The program has featured books in Arabic, French, Vietnamese and Korean. Other languages include Spanish, Burmese, Dari/Farsi, Pashto, Hmong, Ojibwe, Japanese and Mandarin.

Orjuela, who was born in Colombia, coordinates the program with Lynden’s Kim Khaira, a community engagement specialist whose homeland is Malaysia. Community participation has been an important component. Among the many collaborators are the Milwaukee Public Library, the Islamic Resource Center, Hanan Refugee Relief Group, Alliance Française de Milwaukee and the Milwaukee African Women’s Association. – Kathy Quirk

MEMORIES OF MILWAUKEE’S BRONZEVILLE

It existed for less than 50 years, but in that time, Milwaukee’s Bronzeville neighborhood grew into a place where the city’s Black community survived and thrived during a highly segregated time

Sandra E. Jones in history.

Memories of a generation of Black Milwaukeeans highlight “Voices of Milwaukee Bronzeville,” a new book by Sandra E. Jones, who earned three English degrees at UWM. Jones is also a retired UWM faculty member and remains a lecturer in the Department of African and African Diaspora Studies.

The book includes extensive interviews with eight people whose parents were part of the Great Migration, a time when Black people left the South and moved to northern U.S. cities seeking jobs and relief from Jim Crow culture.

“They were all born in Milwaukee between the 1920s and the 1940s and grew up in Bronzeville,” Jones says. “These are the last people who can tell the stories of Bronzeville.”

Jones began the book after her neighbor, Bill Nolan, invited her to Friday-evening gatherings at his home, where he and other longtime residents would reminisce.

“Their stories were so interesting,” she says. “I just barged my way in there with a tape recorder and started recording.”

After 1915, restrictions blocked housing access for Black people everywhere in the city except a very small area known as Bronzeville, which was bounded by North Avenue on the north, State Street on the south, Third Street on the east, and 12th Street on the west. A vibrant economy emerged as Black people launched restaurants, barber shops, dry cleaners, entertainment venues and sports teams.

By the 1960s, expansion of the Marquette interchange and construction of Interstate 43 splintered the neighborhood and destroyed many of the businesses. – Laura L. Otto