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At first, all McGee got for his efforts were calls for his resignation and threats to have him arrested. A group on the predominantly white South Side announced that it would form its own militia to protect the city from McGee's group. Other whites distributed racist literature in local factories. McGee's proposal to extend a street named for King into white areas seems doomed. He has also lost a fight in the council to transfer control of a jobs program from the county to the city. "We've got two worlds here," he said dejectedly after that defeat. "One black. One white. And there's an invisible Berlin Wall that separates the two."
But at week's end an organization of top religious leaders announced that it supported McGee's demands for a greater infusion of resources into the black community. While they condemned violence, the church leaders said, "There is also a danger that in our efforts to respond to each other's rhetoric, we will ignore the violence that already exists in our community." If the clergymen's intervention can produce a compromise, all of Milwaukee can say amen.