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In a garden steeped in Milwaukee’s racist past, Black residents find a salve for weary spirits

Venice Williams shows off the healing herbs in Alice’s Garden, one of the few places in Milwaukee’s predominantly Black northwest side where people can retreat to reflect, mourn and comfort themselves. (Tyrone Beason / Los Angeles Times)

Growing on the 120 parcels are rows of beans and kale, collards and corn, orange calendula, fragrant lavender and different varieties of mint.

By Tyrone Beason
LA Times
Oct 29, 2020

Excerpt:

The garden itself is a rare oasis in Milwaukee’s historically Black northwest side, which has few public places for people to reflect. Alice’s Garden feels like a salve for a weary spirit.

In a society with a history of treating Black people and other people of color as if they don’t belong, Williams wants them to know that in this garden, they don’t have to doubt it.

“We grow community, we grow friendships, we grow families,” Williams said. “It’s got to be more than food sometimes.”

Despite the looming election, talk of politics here takes a back seat to yoga sessions on the grassy lawn, lessons in urban farming and classes on coping with grief.

Growing on the 120 parcels are rows of beans and kale, collards and corn, orange calendula, fragrant lavender and different varieties of mint. A meditation labyrinth paved with stones spirals inward along a path overgrown with shrubs, offering a space to get lost in one’s own thoughts or lay down burdens.

Here, fresh air fills the lungs. The only sound is of crickets chirping.

Some people come just for the tranquillity.

“A garden gives you a picture of what the world could be,” said Anthony Courtney, a retired Black schoolteacher who sat at a picnic table and read from a book on mental health one evening.

Read the complete article here.