The modest frame house was home to African-American attorney Lloyd A. Barbee from 1966 to 1980. Barbee was Wisconsin’s most prominent twentieth-century civil rights activist. He led a campaign to integrate Milwaukee’s public schools, served 12 years in the Wisconsin State Assembly, taught at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and defended many victims of police harassment and those arrested during protest demonstrations.

Lloyd Barbee’s successful efforts to integrate the schools combined direct-action protests and a long legal battle. In 1964, he formed the Milwaukee United School Integration Committee (MUSIC). MUSIC organized school boycotts and blocked school buses both to protest segregation and bring the public’s attention to the issue. Later, some MUSIC members helped Barbee prepare an integration lawsuit filed in federal court. After 14 years of tireless work, Barbee secured a consent decree that integrated most of the Milwaukee school system.

Barbee’s former residence is located 1.8 miles north of downtown Milwaukee in a neighborhood known historically as the Near North Side. The area was built up between 1870 and 1910. Middle-class African Americans began buying in this area in the 1930s and it was majority black when Barbee bought the house in 1966. Lloyd Barbee worked on the integration lawsuit in his home office and held MUSIC meetings in the living room. Activists from out of town, including comedian and activist Dick Gregory, slept in his guest bedroom. Little changed from its 1966-1980 appearance, the house is an important link to the fight for equal rights in Wisconsin and the most notable leader of that fight.

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