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Several reasons emerge as to why people in metro Milwaukee live in either segregated or integrated neighborhoods in what is the most racially segregated metro area in the country. Sometimes people have a choice, other times they do not. And one statistic sets this area apart from all others, according to UWM researcher Marc Levine - the rate of affluent African-Americans opting to live in neighborhoods saturated with poverty. “You’ve have black households with incomes of $100,000 a year and up

“Segregation is not an accident,” according to Reggie Jackson, the head griot for American’s Black Holocaust Museum . “There’s this idea that people self-segregate, but the reality is that there’s never really been self-segregation in Milwaukee,” Jackson says. “The segregation that we have, in terms of people of color, was created by a variety of different in institutions and individuals.” Jackson says the barriers erected and tools used to support segregation in metro Milwaukee have ranged from

During the early to mid-1900s, the Great Migration brought millions of African-Americans from rural, southern towns to cities like Chicago, Detroit, and of course, Milwaukee. To this day, many older, black Milwaukeeans have roots in the South. Many moved here as teens and young adults, looking for work in an industrial city that overflowed with jobs at the time. During the '60s and '70s, "Milwaukee was a relatively booming industrial economy, with jobs that were accessibly to modestly skilled

Milwaukee is one of the most segregated metro areas in America, according to the latest census figures. 90 percent of African-American households in the region live in Milwaukee. The numbers also point to huge economic disparities smothering African-Americans who live in the central city. WUWM's Marti Mikkelson opens our series Project Milwaukee: Segregation Matters by examining how the dividing lines became so entrenched. Nate Holton has been working to make life better in Milwaukee’s central

The Milwaukee metro area has a reputation as one of the most segregated in the United States. A number of studies support that reputation. Yet what's talked about less are the reasons the community is so divided, and the consequences. WUWM is tackling the subject in the series, Project Milwaukee: Segregation Matters . News reports and Lake Effect interviews will address numerous aspects of segregation here, including why it persists and whether there are ways to blur the barriers that separate