Dr. Richard Harris wrote “Growing Up Black in South Madison: Economic Disenfranchisement of Black Madison” back in 2012 with the aim of preserving and sharing local African American history that he and his family have been a part of for almost a century.
Over a decade later, Harris is excited that his inspiring book is now part of the social studies curriculum of numerous Madison-area high schools. “Growing Up Black in South Madison” serves as a supplemental text in Modern U.S. African American History courses for 11th and 12th graders at Madison West, Madison East, Madison La Follette, and Madison Memorial high schools, and its integration at Capital and Shabazz High Schools is also being explored.
Harris says that in 2019, Nathan Hutchins, a sociology teacher at Madison Memorial High School, was the first to start using the book in social studies and history classes.
“They’ve been using it for 11th and 12th grade students. About two years ago, the curriculum coordinator for the Madison Public Schools called and he said that he would like to know if I could just talk to them about having the program at the other three [main high] schools,” Harris remembers. “We talked and I met with the curriculum people downtown, and last year we sent out 25 copies of the book to the teachers in the six high schools.
“So we asked them to read and see if they wanted to include it in their classes, and all six of them said ‘yes.'”
The Urban League of Greater Madison hosted a short program on Dec. 11 at the Black Business Hub highlighting Dr. Harris and discussing how “Growing Up Black in South Madison” will be used in classrooms and its anticipated impact on students. The gathering was not only a celebration of the book’s inclusion in MMSD’s curriculum but also a chance to honor the educators, leaders, and community members who made this possible.
Speakers included Dr. Ruben Anthony Jr., president and CEO of the Urban League of Greater Madison; MMSD Superintendent Dr. Joseph Gothard; Nathan Hutchins, a sociology teacher at Memorial High School; Dr. Martin Moe, MMSD social studies lead; and Dr. Erica Bullock, an associate professor at UW–Madison who will oversee graduate students conducting research on how the book enhances teaching and student learning.
“I love that we’re going to be a part of a research study by the University of Wisconsin’s School of Education curriculum and instruction department, and we’re working with Professor Erica Bullock,” Harris says. “She’s got two students, as part of their dissertation, who are going to conduct follow-up studies on how the [high school] students are reacting to the teachers’ presentation of the class, how the teachers are reacting to the students’ understanding of the book, and also how the parents are understanding what the kids are learning from that book.
“Being a part of the dissertation proposal, I really liked that idea,” he adds.
Harris, who earned a bachelor’s degree in social work from UW-Madison in 1961, describes to Madison365 how his book first came about.
“I had a pretty large family of Harrises in Madison, and every now and then we get together at large gatherings,” Harris remembers. “Invariably, I’ll have a person ask me, ‘Say, Uncle Rich, what was it like living in Madison when you were growing up?’ So I finally said, ‘I’m going to write a book on that so now they can read about what it was like.'”
The book is “easy to read,” says Harris. It is 152 pages long and recounts Harris’ experiences, dating back to 1937, as a Black man in Madison and speaks candidly about Madison’s racist history.
“That picture on the cover was taken by you,” Harris laughs of the image taken of Harris at the Genesis Enterprise Center on Madison’s South Side. “I always give you credit and Joseph Roy who helped me put this book together.”
“Growing Up Black in South Madison” is broken up into four sections. The first section has to do with the Black men and women who were the trailblazers in Madison.
“There were so many trailblazers going back as far as I can remember and I remember talking to people like Betty Banks and other Black Madisonians and we got the names of the first Black people who were police officers, firefighters, school teachers, and the first Black high school graduate of Central High School; things like that,” Harris says.
The second section of the book deals with Black mothers and women of Madison who led the fight against discrimination in Madison in the 1940s and 1950s. They were called “Mother Watch.”
“I remember these women and when they took on several department stores in downtown Madison who would not let Black women try on clothes,” Harris says. “They had to buy them sight unseen because they said white women didn’t want to buy clothes or shoes that Black women had tried on.
“So these women, they went down and they had about 47 people in their group, and about half of them went down to these two stores with Rev. Washington,” Harris continues. “They not only got the stores to change their policy in one day, they also got the stores to hire Black women as regular employees.”
The third part of the book discusses the Madison Urban Renewal Program in the multiethnic, working-class Triangle Neighborhood.
“There were Black, Italian, Jewish families in that area of town that were summarily kicked out of their apartments and homes by the City of Madison under a program called Urban Renewal,” Harris remembers. “These people lost all their homes and businesses and never got reimbursed.”
The final section of the book has to do with Harris/Solberg vs. Madison Metropolitan School District.
“A woman named Sandy Solberg and I initiated a race discrimination suit against the Madison public schools because they were going to close Franklin School and Lincoln School (on the South Side) and bus all the kids to the West Side to make room for economic development here in South Madison,” Harris says. “We initiated that complaint in 1979. And in 1983, the Office of Civil Rights Justice Department agreed with us, and made them stop that action. So as a result, Franklin and Lincoln are up and running still. So we’re happy about that.”
Harris, who attended Franklin Elementary School and the now-closed Central High School, was surprised about how “very few people had heard of what happened to the Black people in The Bush,” he says, referring to the Greenbush Neighborhood. “And very few people understood or had even heard about what Sandy and I did with our race discrimination [lawsuit] against the public schools. No one had ever heard of the Mother’s Watch. The only person who heard about it, because her mother was involved, was Betty Banks, because her mother, Mae Mitchell, was one of the leaders, so she could verify and vouch for everything that I said.
“So that’s why I wrote the book, and I’m really glad now that I did it,” Harris adds. “I run into so many people in Madison, especially Black people, who don’t know our history here in this city …. so I am so happy to be able to capture some of that Black history in this book for everybody.”
