Writers@Work: Persistence Pays Off

An Interview with Jerrianne Hayslett

by Rochelle Melander

Congratulations on your new book, Valiant Vel: Vel Phillips and the Fight for Fairness and Equality. Can you tell us about it?

Thank you for this wonderful opportunity to talk about Vel Phillips and our book Valiant Vel. Vel Phillips was a tiny middle-class Black woman who took to the streets of Milwaukee and in Washington, D.C., to fight for the voiceless. She accomplished gigantic feats with unwavering persistence, including a six-year battle with city hall over fair housing that captured national headlines, thanks to the help of dozens of young people and an iconic Catholic priest, Father James Groppi, who marched for 200 days. Vel Phillips had a string of trailblazing achievements, such as being the first Black woman graduate of the University of Wisconsin Law School, the first Black person and the first woman elected to the Milwaukee Common Council, the first Black judge in Wisconsin, the first Black person and first woman judge in Milwaukee County, and the nation’s first Black woman elected to a statewide office. Valiant Vel: Vel Phillips and the Fight for Fairness and Equality joins the ranks of firsts for Vel. It’s the first book ever published about her.

Vel believed fiercely that people should be able to live wherever they could afford to. That wasn’t the case in Milwaukee in the 1950s and 1960s, as well as other cities in the United States. Vel set out to change that. As a Milwaukee alderman, she waged a six-year war with her 18 fellow aldermen and Milwaukee’s mayor for a fair-housing ordinance.

The book’s compelling narrative channels Vel Phillips’ journey, mostly in Vel’s own words, thanks to my access to her unfinished autobiography and other writings that are preserved in the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, library archives. This enabled me to put readers in her shoes so they feel what she feels, want what she wants, and can celebrate her bravery and victories.

Although Vel’s fight for fair housing occurred during the height of the civil rights era when the focus was racial discrimination, Vel found that sexism was more pervasive.

Generally, white people can eventually accept someone who is Black, she said. “But the men never forget that you are a woman. Never, ever, ever.”

I know that writing this book was a real journey—from starting as a picture book and then finding its final format as a middle grade nonfiction book, published by the Wisconsin Historical Society Press. Can you talk about the journey, maybe highlighting what you learned from it?

Vel’s story was the picture book that shouldn’t be written, at least not by me. My critique partners and the editors I contacted about the idea all said so. The limited space of a picture book, even with the most excellent illustrations that spoke volumes, couldn’t do her justice.

But that was the format and the writing community most familiar to me. I had read dozens of compelling and commercially successful picture book biographies about people with more wide-ranging and complicated life stories than Vel Phillips. So, why wouldn’t a picture book biography about her work? The only person on board with me with the idea was Vel’s son, Michael Phillips.

Although I knew Vel, I had never met Michael, so contacting him was my first order of business. Telling him that I planned to write a book about Vel, who had passed just a few months before I decided to do it, was not only ethically correct, his cooperation and input would affect my research and the outcome of the book. After overcoming his initial skepticism—“Who are you to write about my mother?” he said when I called him—and offering him the opportunity to read the manuscript before sending to a publisher, I got to work.

I spent months researching, interviewing, writing, revising and whittling drafts of 1,500 and 2,000 words, not counting sidebars, down to a little less than 1,000 words. During that time, Michael provided the greatest gift I could have wanted—the prologue to an unfinished autobiography Vel had been working on. That’s all he could find of the project, although he believed—and I understood—that she had written more. He also corrected errors in the drafts I sent him, provided clarification and context where needed.

But I wasn’t satisfied. Neither were my critique buddies. My story described Vel Phillips’s many accomplishments, but it didn’t capture her as a person. What informed her passion, principles and determination? How could I get to know her? Although I didn’t realize it then, until I understood her humanity, until I could get inside her head and feel her heart, readers wouldn’t either.

The onset of the Covid pandemic and my husband being hospitalized and in rehab with injuries from a freak accident sidelined Vel.

A couple of years later, as the publishing industry began its economic recovery from the pandemic and my husband’s health improved, Vel Phillips nudged me to check with the Wisconsin Historical Society Press again.

Before Covid, the Press director had nixed the Vel Phillips picture-book idea but had expressed some interest in a book for older children. Unfortunately, while the pandemic was crashing many aspects of the overall economy it had thrown the future of the Press’s funding into uncertainty. They planned to publish what they already had in the pipeline, Covid willing, but weren’t taking on any new projects.

When I emailed the WHSP director in January 2022, she said the Press was accepting new proposals and was particularly interested in a book about Vel for young readers. She had been in touch with Michael Phillips who had the same goal. Both agreed that such a book belonged at WHSP. The director suggested that she and I meet online with him and the K-12 editor she had recently hired.

As a result of that meeting, I submitted a proposal. A few months later WHSP and I signed a contract with a manuscript submission deadline of April 1, 2023.

At that point, Vel Phillips became my life. I took the project with me on a family vacation and worked on it in hospital rooms as my husband experienced multiple setbacks related to his accident-related injuries and from a chronic medical condition. Without a doubt, the prologue to Vel’s unfinished autobiography Michael had sent me, plus the outline and first three chapters of her manuscript I found in the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, Library Archives gave me her voice.

I submitted my manuscript a few days before the deadline. Contact between the Press’s K-12 editor, Maria Parrot-Ryan, and me increased significantly during the editorial development phase, which included several revision deadlines, including one with changes and clarifications recommended by a cultural-sensitivity reader.

After that, although I was asked for input from time to time, I waited awhile copyediting, art selection, book design and other steps in the publication process were completed.

Some of the lessons I learned in the creation of this book include:

1. The importance of following where my research and reporting takes me. For instance, I found fact confirmation, context for events or other people in Vel’s story, interesting anecdotes, contact information that had eluded me. 

As an example, during interview with U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore, I mentioned that I hoped to talk to Youth Council Commando Prentice McKinney. I had read that he had described Vel as “an iron fist in a velvet glove.”

“Prentice?” Moore said. “He’s my cousin.” And she put me in touch with him.

2. The need to overcome unpleasant tasks. Dealing with bureaucracies such as city government was an absolute chore in my experience as a newspaper reporter. Nothing was straight forward, especially if I didn’t know who, specifically, to talk to or how, exactly, to frame my question. In researching Valiant Vel, I needed to find official records to verify events and assertions I read in Vel’s notes that are archived in the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, Library’s Vel Phillips Special Collection.

My phone call to Milwaukee City Hall yielded, “We don’t keep records like that.” The person I talked to didn’t know any place that did. That couldn’t be right, I thought, and decided to start at the top. I made an appointment to see the city clerk about a book on Vel Phillips that I was doing. He turned out to be a gold mine!

He gave me a tour of council chambers, hallways, the infamous men’s room the Vel used, Vel’s old office (now the office of another Black female alderman, Monica Pratt, daughter of the only Black man who ever served as mayor of Milwaukee. When Monica Pratt became an alderwoman, she was intent to have Vel’s office, despite its tiny space and obstructive support post. Vel was her hero.)

The City Clerk also showed me Common Council anteroom, now named Vel Phillips anteroom with a dedicating wall plaque and Vel’s picture. The city clerk also told me about exactly what I was looking for—the Milwaukee Municipal Research Center, which contained records of Milwaukee Common Council proceedings.

3. Understanding what real nonfiction is. Nonfiction means just that. Every fact in the narrative and every direct quote had to be verified and sourced with citation. I couldn’t state Vel’s emotions or implied actions as fact. Had to learn how to write what I inferred from Vel’s writings that I couldn’t verify elsewhere without stating it as fact. Examples are, Vel “must have felt like a load was lifted off her shoulders” and “She probably breathed a sigh of relief.”

4. The value of persisting, of not giving up. If I hadn’t persisted, Valiant Vel would not exist.

Writing a nonfiction book about a historical figure takes a lot of research. Can you share some of your tips for researching a book?

A few tips include:

• Follow the dots.
• Listen to your gut.
• Be a good conversationalist.
• Don’t overlook side/peripheral characters.

You have a background in journalism, how did that help you as you wrote this book?

Some rules I learned and followed as a journalist that I guided me as I researched, interviewed and wrote Valiant Vel include:

• Discerning what’s a story and what isn’t. What is different about a story topic that might make it a story.
• Never rely on a single source for a story. Get at least two, either people or documents, on the record.
• Verify everything, then double check.
• Knowing where to look for the type of information I was seeking.
• Understanding bureaucracies and who to ask for the kind of information I’m seeking.

What are you reading now?

• The Clockwork Three by Matthew J. Kirby
• Little Bee by Chris Cleave

About the author. Jerrianne Hayslett is an award-winning journalist, writer, and trial court information officer. Professionally, Jerrianne has worked as a newspaper reporter and editor and a freelance writer. Her book Anatomy of a Trial: Public Loss, Lessons Learned from The People vs. O. J. Simpson was published after she served as media liaison and court communications officer during O. J. Simpson’s criminal trial in Los Angeles. She left her native state of Virginia at age nineteen. Jerrianne has lived overseas and in several US states, including Wisconsin, which has been her home for longer than anywhere else. Her new book is called Valiant Vel: Vel Phillips and the Fight for Fairness and Equality. Visit her online at https://jerriannehayslett.com/