Update from the Community Education Committee
By Kevin Walters
Throughout 2021, the Madison Trust’s Community Education Committee has continued our work to respond to two pressing questions: How can the Trust broaden our engagement with communities long underrepresented in historic preservation efforts? And, how can we ensure diversity and inclusion are embedded within the Madison Trust’s mission, rather than limited to special occasions?
This map, showing the Madison neighborhoods that were “redlined” as part of discriminatory housing policies, has become the masthead image for the Community Education Committee. It serves as a constant reminder that racism was embedded into the geography of Madison history. The Home Owners’ Loan Corporation color coded the map in 1927.
Provided courtesy of the Mapping Inequality website. To view the full, interactive map see dsl.richmond.edu.
These two questions grew out of two committee projects, both of which we wrote about in our last blog post in February 2021. First, we conducted an online survey to get a sense of the demographics and interests of the Madison historic preservation community. Second, we compiled a list of resources related to Equity and Inclusion in Historic Preservation. As we reported in our post, the survey results showed that the people most engaged with the Madison Trust are still overwhelmingly white. At the same time, a majority expressed an interest in learning more about the history of communities of color.
On the flip side, when we contacted Black-led organizations in the process of compiling our resource list, they sent us one message loud and clear. Effective diversity and anti-racism initiatives take years to build, and they must be pursued year-round.
We encourage everyone to check out our Equity and Inclusion in Historic Preservation Resource List and let us know if anything is missing of if you know of a resource we should add.
Taking these lessons to heart, the committee compiled a list of local leaders who are well positioned to teach us more about the history of Madison’s communities of color, and whose work has begun to address the need for more diversity and inclusion in the way we tell our histories. The committee then began a series of conversations with these leaders to find out what is already being done and to figure out how we can be part of doing more.
Our first conversation was with Kacie Lucchini Butcher, director of UW-Madison’s Public History Project. Kacie was hired by the university in 2019 to lead “a multi-year effort to uncover and give voice to those who experienced, challenged and overcame prejudice on campus.” Her work will lead to a major exhibit scheduled for the fall of 2022.
The Public History Project grew out of a study group report, prepared at the request of UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank. The report was instigated to investigate the history of two campus groups, one named after the Ku Klux Klan and the other affiliated with the Klan. But both the authors of the report, and Kacie’s subsequent work, made a crucial pivot. More than uncovering the history of specific racist groups, they chose to recenter the voices of underrepresented communities and reckon with the larger systemic forces of inequality.
An excerpt from a 1921 Badger Yearbook showing the members of the “Ku Klux Klan” interfraternity council at UW-Madison.
Photo courtesy UW Digital Collections.
In the words of the study group, “the history the UW needs to confront was not the aberrant work of a few individuals, but a pervasive culture of racial and religious bigotry,” that was “sanctioned in [the university’s] daily life and unchallenged by its leaders.” The Public History Project has already done considerable work in answering the call to confront this broader historic culture. We encourage everyone to check out the resources and blog that Kacie and her team have compiled and to consider how you can participate as the Public History Project moves forward.
For our second conversation, the committee reached out to Scott Seyforth, the assistant director of residence life at UW-Madison’s Division of University Housing. More importantly for our purposes, Scott has done considerable research on the history of Carson Gulley, a prominent chef and TV personality in Wisconsin during the 20th century and a major figure in Madison’s Black history.
Carson Gulley and his wife Beatrice on the set of their TV show, “What’s Cooking” in the 1950s.
Photo courtesy UW Digital Collections.
As Scott explained to our committee, Gulley and his wife Beatrice faced persistent racism throughout their lives in Madison. Despite Carson being head chef in UW-Madison dining halls for 27 years, and the couple being well known for their cooking show broadcast on local television, the Gulleys were unable to buy a house due to racial covenants and forced to live in an apartment in a campus dorm. Carson Gulley’s testimony before a City of Madison committee led to a major reform of housing ordinances, and the family was eventually able to purchase a home in the Crestwood neighborhood.
Carson Gulley with three of his graduate students demonstrating a meal they cooked as a final exam in 1950.
Photo courtesy UW Digital Collections.
Unfortunately, the discrimination did not end there. The Gulley family donated their papers to the Wisconsin Historical Society sometime after Carson died in 1962, but archivists discarded them, under the mistaken belief that they were not notable enough to preserve.
Scott has spent years working to correct this historic wrong and bring needed attention to the enduring significance of the Gulley family. His research culminated with the renovation of the Carson Gulley Center and a more complete documentation and retelling of Caron Gulley’s contributions to campus.
Scott is available to give talks to community groups through UW-Madison’s Badger Talks program. In addition to his work on Carson Gulley, he was also a founder of the Madison LGBTQ Oral History and Archives, housed at the UW-Madison University Archives.
The renovated Carson Gulley Center on the UW-Madison campus, 2013.
Photo courtesy Joel Ninmann and University Housing.
Our conversations with Kacie Lucchini Butcher and Scott Seyforth represent just one part of what the Community Education has been up to over the past eight months, and our work on behalf of the Madison Trust is just beginning. We also reviewed the Madison Trust's catalog of historic architecture walking tours and suggested additions that would recognize Madison's underrepresented communities, and we are now in the process of developing events and programs that will get the Madison Trust more directly involved in pursuing a more equitable and inclusive approach to historic preservation.
As always, we welcome your contributions. To get involved with the Community Education Committee, please fill out our short volunteer form and we’ll be in touch.