MILWAUKEE SENTINEL LOCAL NEWS PAGE 5, PARTI MONDAY, JAN. 24, 1977 His Hate Mail Makes History By RICK JANKA They read like a journal of American bigotry and hatred. They are the hate mail let ters that have been sent by the hundreds to Lloyd Bar bee, the lawyer who filed the desegregation suit against the Milwaukee School Board a decade ago. Barbee, still one of the at- torneys for the plaintiffs in the case, has donated much of that hate mail and all his data on the case to the Wisconsin Historical Society. 叉 spite urgings from friends seriously, said tog, that he begin taking them. He sald friends plead with him. never to go anywhere. alone. "Most of the 'threats are harmless with people just trying to get something off their chests and hoping that something bad will happen to me," he said. Barbee received his first hate letter in 1949 when he was involved in the attempt to recall Sen. Joseph Mc- The society has 135 car. Carthy (R-Wis.), tons of Barbee's information, weighing more than two tons, in storage in Madison. The cartons also contain files of his terms as a Wiscon- sin state representative. Barbee believes the hate mail might be of some histor- ical value. When he started to receive it more than 27 years ago, he threw it away. In the last. few years he has been saving it. I said the volume of hate mail depends upon how often his name is in the newspa- pers. In the last year he has re- ceived many letters about the latest desegregation efforts. These newer hate letters are generally better written than the ones a decade ago, he said. Barbee was asked by the historical society to include the hate mail in his docu- ments for historical refer- ence. "I believe it might be worthwhile for someone to understand how Wisconsin An official of the society people respond to people like sald the society maintains me who are trying to im- files on many items, both pro prove the private and public and con, on an Issue. sectors," Barbee said. The letters, often hastily written, contain unprintable words, accusations and threats. "We are not just in the business of documenting dis- tilled history," the official said. Some were written on tol- "We want to make avail- let paper or came with a box, able many different types of of dirt. documents, things that show Most are anonymous. They the back and forth of a con- include racial slurs found on troversy." bathroom walls and demands that Barbee "go back to Afri- ca." "I call these people hat- ers," Barbee said. "I consider them sick and cowardly minded... "I've been called all sorts of names, had threats to my house or my family, but over. the years these letters are no longer shocking, and the only way to stop them is to give up everything I do that is: controversial." Barbee said he personally downplays the throats ---