10 years ago this month, a Milwaukee police officer shot and killed Sylville Smith in the Sherman Park neighborhood. Protestors filled the nearby streets for days after the shooting. The officer was later acquitted on murder charges.
The Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service's "The uprising in Sherman Park: 10 years later" project examines how Sherman Park has changed in the decade since. In a series of over a dozen stories, the project chronicles how a decade of investments, police-community relations, and new businesses have changed Sherman Park, and what aspects of 2016 remain.
Lake Effect's Sam Woods spoke with two of the reporters working on the project - criminal justice reporter Devin Blake, who's story examines what the economic and public safety data say about how the neighborhood has changed since 2016, and housing and basic needs reporter PrincessSafiya Byers who wrote about the legacy of the Sherman Phoenix.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Lake Effect's Sam Woods: In your analysis of three census tracts in Sherman Park, you found that unemployment declined about 5% since 2016. But did that also mean that incomes and homeownership rates improved as unemployment improved?
Devin Blake: No, and that was the most compelling part of it, where as certain indicators went up like educational attainment, the share of adults age 25 and older holding at least a bachelor's degree increased from a little over 7% to almost 9%, and the employment rate declined from about 20% to about 16%. So you have these things that people tell you to do, and people say, 'this is how you become economically mobile.’ They have done these things, but it hasn't paid out in terms of stability. At that same time, poverty rose across every age group. And just for seniors that were 65 and older, the poverty rate doubled from about 16% to 33%.
How would you characterize the story here? Because it seems like there's kind of a mix of positive and negative news here for a neighborhood. On the one hand, employment is up, educational attainment is up, but incomes are down, home ownership rates are down, poverty rates are up. So what do we make of this?
It's a good question. I think that could be like several books by itself, you know, but I think it's just the disconnect between people's decisions for their lives and outcomes. It happened in this very specific way in Sherman Park. But again, even at the census data that I looked at, there were other things that were positive. This is also separate from the question of what does this mean for public safety? Because as economic life is fluctuating and telling this mixed story, what at the same time is happening in terms of homicides and non-fatal shootings, just gun violence in general and other violent crimes.
So homicides and non-fatal shootings didn't really steadily improve after 2016 but they didn't steadily get worse. Homicides and shootings, went up during the pandemic and have declined since then. And then we also looked at a sliver of like shot spotter data and how the proportion of shot spotter alerts, how much of that is happening in Sherman Park. But there are things that the data also can't really show which is, the importance of these stories as a series, which is like, how does it feel to live in Sherman Park now versus 2016?
Turning to you PrincessSafiya, you wrote about the founding and impact of the Sherman Phoenix – which is a business incubator and market housed in a former bank that was burned during the Sherman Park Uprising. For part of the story you interviewed Adija Greer-Smith, founder of Confectionately Yours, which got its start at the Sherman Phoenix. Can you tell me more about that?
PrincessSafiya Byers: It was really good for her as a beginner business to be able to be in community with so many other business owners and learn from them, have the space to start out and people to frequent her business. She said she learned about some of the hard parts of being a business owner because COVID-19 hit while she was inside of the Sherman Phoenix. But she said it was great learning from other business owners and just getting to be a part of community in that way. She does still support the Shaman Phoenix and all that it does, even though she's left.
I feel like she was most excited, very giddy when she was talking about how Miss JoAnne Sabir offered her a space inside of the Sherman Phoenix and how she didn't really know what she was doing as far as being a business owner. And Joanne told her ‘oh, we'll help you.’ So she really speaks highly to how they were willing to help small business owners just get started and be okay. She talked a little bit about some of those hardships, which wasn't so exciting. But for the most part, she was just excited to talk about the opportunity she was giving and how it led her to be where she is now.
Given Devin’s data analysis and your reporting on how the Sherman Phoenix has evolved, what does the Sherman Phoenix represent?
From looking at all the reporting the Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service has done on the Sherman Park neighborhood this year, I would say that there are very obviously still some challenges, but in a very Milwaukee way community is doing the best that it can.
