Milwaukee's King Center: More than a center, more than neighborhood trauma

Symphony Swan-Zawadi has lots of fond summer memories in Milwaukee. Thinking back on her childhood, most of them happened at the King Center on Milwaukee’s near north side. While she had fun all over the center, from the gym, to the outdoor theater, it was room 214 that was her favorite, Ms. Ramona’s art room.

“That was where I learned how to draw portraits and still life,” Swan-Zawadi says. “And to this day, I still model how I draw portraits off of what I learned in Ms. Ramona’s art room.”

That practice paid off. Today, Swan-Zawadi is a practicing artist who works for a national arts foundation. She’s also been an art teacher and a community artist and was named Shepherd Express’s “Milwaukeean of the Year” in 2023.

“It is in my blood and I had opportunities here at the King Center to express that and explore that,” she says.

The King Center opened up almost 50 years ago in 1976 and since then has been a place of gathering and programming for the city. The center isn’t just a building but an undeniable part of Black Milwaukee’s history. But the narrative for what this place is changed locally, and nationally, a few months ago when five Columbus police in town for the Republican National Convention, shot and killed Milwaukee resident, Samuel Sharpe Jr.

Since then, the neighborhood has been portrayed as a place of homelessness, despair and trauma. And while there are issues that folks in the neighborhood and center are working hard to counter this — this isn’t the story they’re familiar with.

Change is coming

The King Center is currently in the middle of a multi-million dollar renovation, which includes a new roof, knocking down a few interior walls to add space and lots of high-gloss white paint. Dee McCollum is the director of the center and she says the goal is to make the center bright, exactly how she wants people to feel when they walk inside.

“This was a long time coming and I can’t wait for folks to see us when we reopen,” McCollum says.

McCollum, or Ms. Dee, as everyone calls her, says parts of the center are still open, but many of the community partners aren’t here while construction is ongoing. Some partners include Fathers Making Progress and Summit, which works with youth programming, incoming partners that will help people transition out of foster care, and a basketball and literacy program, which will be led by Milwaukee hoops legend Mike Taylor.

Ms. Dee says the center’s busiest days are still their fourth of July, Thanksgiving and Christmas celebrations. A time when she shares all the services and programming offered by the center to community members. The center also provides a number of community spaces, which includes meeting rooms for rent and other recreational spaces, like the full workout gym.

“I waited until the ripe age of 60 to start bodybuilding and I’m focusing on creating the image I have within [and] making it real,” Enrique says, who’s been coming to the center since it opened. “I must have been about 11 or 12, I played pool, I used to practice piano … Mr Pitts was the director and I would come and I would do arts and crafts … This was the place to be.”

If you’re from Milwaukee, you might not have known about this gym, but you probably heard of the other one here – Al Moreland’s legendary boxing gym.

On a Tuesday night in the middle of summer the gym has a few elementary-aged kids swinging wildly in the ring. Moms are on the benches a few feet away watching and shouting instructions, “keep your guard up!” There are a couple of heavy bags and lockers lining the outside of the room. And in the back of gym is a smaller space with some free weights and treadmills. It may look modest, but this is where some of Milwaukee’s baddest champs have come from.

“This is giving me an outlet and giving me … a family with the same goals [because] everybody is coming from not the best situations,” David Powell says, who started boxing about a year ago. “We help each other, we motivate each other. Every day you’re not motivated but when you got like-minded people around you they help you get back up even when it’s hard for you to get yourself back up.”

Coach Moreland passed in 2009, that’s when his brother Tom took over. But for the past few years, Ernie Haines has run this space.

Haines is trim with quick hands and mirrored lens glasses, he looks like he would be trouble for anyone inside the ropes. He’s trained professional boxers, loves training pros he says. But his calling was to train kids, specifically kids being bullied. He’s talked about this with his own son’s experience. After exploring all options, it was time to teach him how to defend himself. Now he offers this to all kids who enter the center’s boxing gym.

“This is where my wealth lies,” Haines says. “Wealth has nothing to do with the money, it has everything to do with what you leave behind, your legacy. So that’s where I’m at right now.”

While Al Moreland’s gym has shaped and molded pro fighters, there’s another gym that pros have historically come to here: the basketball gym.

“There were great players coming through here like Marquette players, they had some of the Bucks [here too],” says Charles Dupree. “A lot of great pickup games.”

Dupree has been a member of the center since it opened and says he just shoots around now, no more pickup games for him. He also says the trash talking here was legendary, it’s what made the games so competitive. He says he was more of a silent killer than a talker.

“I just kinda let the game speak for itself,” Dupree says.

The other community by the center

The center is close to multiple outreach programs and organizations for the unhoused, including Repairers of the Breach. Therefore, a number of the city’s houseless population lives close, including in a pocket park just down the block, which is filled with tents. The center, and it’s park, by proximity end up as a place for many of the city’s unsheltered population.

Ms. Dee says they used to open the center for some of the guys to shower and eat, but there were real safety concerns due to untreated mental health issues. She says she finds quiet times, times when kids aren’t in the building, to let folks in and clean up. But she says she wasn’t always this way. Certain events changed her, softened her, like one winter morning when she was coming into work and saw a man behind the building.

“He had his little blanket and he was laying on a vent,” McCollum says. “So I went over to him, I was like, ‘You really can’t lay there.’ He knew my name and he was like, ‘Well, Ms. Dee, this is the safest place for me to be because it’s the warmest place.’”

Ms. Dee and the man talked more and she was surprised to learn he had a college degree. She called him ‘extremely intelligent.” She also says his mental health issues were evident. And since no one was in the building yet, she let him in to freshen up. After that interaction, she was a mess the rest of the day.

“I was so emotional, and I’m trying not to get the way again, but I was so emotional taken back because we all have prejudgments of people,” McCollum says. “We assume that because somebody is homeless they’re uneducated or they don’t wanna do better or they chose to be in that position that they’re in. And if you have a conversation with someone you’ll find out that’s not the case.”

A lot of people jumped to prejudgments a few months ago when five Columbus police shot and killed Samuel Sharpe Jr. Ms. Dee knew Sharpe, and his loyal dog, Ices. She says he was nothing like he’s been portrayed.

“He was like a gentle warrior,” McCollum says. “He was always talking about the ‘better man.’ He would not talk about what he was experiencing that day, or that he lived in a tent. He never talked about any [of those] things. He always talked about the betterment of men … he always talked about what we could do to [be] better men.”

“The King Center is the heartbeat of the community,” boxing director Ernie Haines says. “Anything that’s needed, even if families come in here indigent, there is a program here that will help them or refer them to someone that can help them immediately.”

While the King Center still provides so many services and a sense of community like it once did, many people talked about how the center changed. How kids don’t show up like they used to. How the park isn’t activated like it once was. Back then there were more sports teams, more staff and more kids playing outside.

Symphony Swan-Zawadi says it’s not that the neighborhood changed, although it has, but the center.

An all-around systems failure

“When you know this area, oh the kids are here, they just don’t feel the same agency and ownership of this place that maybe like my generation did,” Swan-Zawadi says. “It is an all around systems failure that we are experiencing across the city.”

Swan-Zawadi says that parents are working harder than ever before, more people are just trying to survive, and most importantly, local and state funding to places like the King Center has slowed. Do more with less is what they’ve heard.

“We know that the communities that have the least crime are the ones that have the most resources,” says Swan-Zawadi. “When we begin to consider the dignity of Black folks in this city, then we won’t have to fight for, to eliminate food deserts.”

Or struggle to provide safe and affordable housing, or properly fund our schools and community centers, she says.

“There are always these conversations about Kia boys and violence and … it’s like we’re not making any investments,” Swan-Zawadi says. “There’s an African proverb that says, ‘Young people will burn the village down in order to feel it’s warmth’ [and] because we are not being intentional about creating spaces and opportunities and just wrapping our arms around the young people, the oppressed people, you get what you get.”

“I’m 67, I’m ready to not do anything,” says McCollum. “But I can’t because I always think about Sam Sharpe, I always think about that young man on my vent, I always think about the least man that we’re supposed to be thinking of. And if I can’t be assured that somebody’s gonna pick up that ball [keeping the center open], then I’m gonna keep doing it.”

The King Center isn’t what it once was, but that doesn’t mean it’s not critical to the city and Black Milwaukee. And it sure doesn’t mean that connections still don’t happen here organically every day.

As Swan-Zawadi was leaving the center she ran into an old friend, one she went to summer camp with back in the day. He’s here to get some shots up in the basketball gym.

“Shane! How are you?” she yells. “Oh, I ain’t seen you in forever. You don’t never post on Facebook.”

Charles Dupree, who came in to meet with Ms. Dee walks over. He knows Shane from the court, he says they’re both shooters. Pretty soon all three are talking about how the center used to be and why that version of the center might be more important than ever before.

“We have to teach people how to be in spaces with each other and I think the pandemic only exacerbated what was already brewing,” says Swan-Zawadi to the others. “Once we can get kids in here and say, ‘No, no, that’s not how you engage. That’s not how you have a conflict, go run these laps or go make some art,’ but that requires money and people who care and policy to support it.”

Dupree holds out his hand and introduces himself. With a smile he tells her he agrees and hopes to see the center back to what he grew up with, too. He asks her name.

“I’m Symphony, symphony like the orchestra,” Swan-Zawadi says.

“It’s nice to meet you,” he tells her before going down to the court.