The United States Senate passed legislation on Nov. 16 designating the U.S. Post Office located at 2650 North Dr. Martin Luther King Junior Drive in Milwaukee as the “Vel R. Phillips Post Office Building.”
“Vel contributed so much at every level and paved the way for other Wisconsinites to help make a difference in people’s lives,” said Senator Tammy Baldwin in a statement. Baldwin introduced the legislation in September along with U.S. Senator Ron Johnson. “She was a leader in engaging the Milwaukee grassroots in dialogue with the Community Brainstorming conference and she encouraged everyone to join her on the march for social justice. Vel had a lifelong passion of doing right by others, and I’m proud to honor her memory and do right by her and her family by designating this Milwaukee building in her name.”
In 1956, Phillips became the first African-American, and first woman, ever elected to the Milwaukee Common Council. During her tenure on the Common Council, she introduced the city’s first open-housing ordinance 1962. In 1967, Vel joined Father James Groppi and the NAACP Youth Council in leading marches for fair housing, enduring the city’s race riots, hostility and violence. She finally saw Milwaukee’s open housing bill passed two weeks after Martin Luther King’s assassination in 1968.
Phillips was also the first African-American woman to serve as judge in Wisconsin and the first female judge in Milwaukee. In the 1970s she became the first woman judge in Milwaukee County and the first African American to serve in Wisconsin’s judiciary. Phillips again made history in 1978 when she was the first woman and African American elected to a statewide constitutional office as Secretary of State.
Phillips passed away earlier this year in April at the age of 94.
