Milwaukee on CNN's UNITED SHADES

This Sunday night show on CNN is fascinating, funny, enlightening, revealing, educational and occasionally terrifying.  The award-winning host/creator of UNITED SHADES OF AMERICA is the tall and talented Black man, W. Kamau Bell.  His show is a documentary series.

Kamau takes us to different places to meet different people here in the U.S.A. Some of them are people we wouldn't usually talk to -- and he always makes us want to hear what they have to say. I've learned a lot from this show. Why did I write that it can be "occasionally terrifying"?  The episode in which he traveled to meet members of the KKK had me yelling "Run, Kamau! Run!"

Sunday night, June 9th at 10p ET/7p PT, UNITED SHADES goes to Milwaukee to find … Black folks. Milwaukee has regularly been named one of America's most segregated cities. I grew up in South Central L.A., a child of the 60s. I left Los Angeles to attend Marquette University in Milwaukee. How'd I choose Milwaukee? Well, I was a veteran of Catholic schools. I would've loved to go to USC Film School. However, my single working mother lived in fear of me wanting to pursue a career on-camera or on stage. She had my life charted pretty much from the day I was born. She intended for me to be a heterosexual novelist who married a Black woman and had no less than three children. But that's another story. Marquette University was a Catholic university. I read about it in our high school library. My ultimate career goal was to work in New York City. Milwaukee was a shorter hop to New York City than Los Angeles was and -- this above all -- I kept having a hunch that I should go to Milwaukee. I also had the hunch that the reason why would reveal itself in time.

I went to Marquette. I graduated. I started my professional broadcast career in radio and TV there. I got a TV job offer from New York City in 1985 and snatched it up like terrier snatching an unattended burger off a backyard picnic table.

To this very day, I have never been called the N-word and f**got as many times in my life by white people as I was during the post-college years I lived and worked in Milwaukee. And that was the mid 70s to 1985.

I had a serious drive to get to New York City ever since I was a young teen in L.A. In Milwaukee in the 1980s, I had endured so much racial crap that my drive went into the fast lane and stayed there. It started when I was on radio. I was half of an FM rock radio morning team. I read news and weather plus I provided the DJ with some snappy patter. I was the only Black person on the station's entire on-air team of DJs and news reporters. Publicity photos of our team went out to local press. Folks saw me in the photos. On a regular basis, I would get hate mail. Letters that had two things -- the N-word and drawings of swastikas.

When it was discovered that I'm gay, that was like a bonus round on a game show for bigots. I was called the N-word and/or f**got in letters, by white guys whizzing by me in cars while I was a pedestrian, in a bar, in a restaurant, on the radio and even at an outdoor Bruce Springsteen concert.

This went from radio to TV when I started with the ABC affiliate in 1980.  I was the first Black person to do weekly film reviews and celebrity interviews. Sometimes when I was out in Milwaukee, I felt like the new sheriff riding into town in the Mel Brooks movie, BLAZING SADDLES.

Just because a person's a racist doesn't mean that he's stupid. As a rule. During my local TV years, bigots realized they could save money on postage. Instead of sending me racial hate snail mail like they did when I worked on WQFM radio, they'd call the TV station after work hours and have the on-duty switchboard operator just put them through directly to my voicemail. That way, when I got to work bright and early in the morning and played my messages, I could start the day by hearing some racial or homophobic slurs. Meanwhile, millions of ABC viewers associated Milwaukee with the wholesome images of HAPPY DAYS and LAVERNE AND SHIRLEY.

I benefited from the Marquette University education. Milwaukee gave me my first breaks in radio and TV. I had dear friends there who kept my spirits up and refreshed. However, I did see that Milwaukee was segregated. I usually keep my hair short. In college, I had an Afro like W. Kamau Bell's. My hair got so high because there was no place on campus where I could get it cut.  Milwaukee wasn't like L.A  I went into one campus barber shop and the barber's looked at me like I was a Martian. One barber motioned me over and said in a soft voice, "We don't know how to cut colored hair."

There was a viaduct. The 27th Street viaduct. Folks could cross from the North side -- where the Black folks lived -- to the South Side -- where the white folks lived. Milwaukeeans nicknamed it "The Bridge That Connects Africa to Poland."

Don't get me started on how Milwaukee police dealt with Black citizens.

I never had a boyfriend when I lived in Milwaukee. I was turned down a lot. The Black men who got my romantic interest were already taken. A few gay white guys I was interested in told me truthfully that they liked me but it would be too much drama trying to explain a Black boyfriend to their parents and other relatives.

The New York City offer came along at the perfect time for me. Honestly, I loved the TV work in Milwaukee but the frequent racial and homophobic insults frayed my spirit. I was ready to relocate.

Oh! About the hunch I had to go to Milwaukee.  During my radio years, I got contacted by the ABC TV affiliate to come in for a meeting and an audition. Both went well. I was called to come back for another meeting. Around that same time, the program director for a competing radio station called to see if we could meet and have dinner. We met and had a good dinner. He wanted me to leave my station and come work for him. I told him confidentially that I'd be leaving the radio station and going to local TV. He understood. He asked if he could keep in touch. He asked what my ultimate goal was. I said, "To work in New York City." He replied, "Same here."

I got to New York City and worked at WPIX TV, local Channel 11, from 1985 to 1987. In 1987, I got an offer to go national as a daily veejay and weeknight prime time talk show host on VH1. Those were three of the happiest years of my entire career, those years at VH1. I loved going to work and being with my crew just about every single day. The FM radio program director in Milwaukee who took me to dinner had also made it to New York City. He became the VP of Programming at VH1 and he saw me on local Channel 11. Because of him, I got my own celebrity talk show on national TV.

If I hadn't lived and worked in Milwaukee, I never would've gotten my show on VH1.

I'm eager to see UNITED SHADES Sunday night on CNN to see how much Milwaukee has changed.