After Milwaukee Residents Sent Racist Emails to Block Memorial for Black Girl Killed and Dismembered, A Community Came Together and Made It Happen Anyway
Community members in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, combined efforts to raise thousands of dollars of donations to fund a memorial dedicated to Sade Robinson after the city abandoned a taxpayer-funded project due to a barrage of racist responses.
Robinson was killed and dismembered last April.
The Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors Parks and Culture committee had recently pitched a project to build a $7,000 memorial bench in the 19-year-old’s honor at a Lake Michigan park where her severed leg was found.
“We don’t have all of her remains still,” Scarbrough said. “We don’t have a memorial, a headstone, or a cemetery to go visit her.”
However, right before the project vote, committee members started receiving pushback through several emails laced with racist comments about paying for the memorial with taxpayer money.
After a county supervisor spoke to Robinson’s mother about the offensive feedback, the board unanimously voted to toss the original proposal and find another way to fund the project.
Once news about the vote spread to the city, a local business owner organized a fundraising event to mobilize the community and raise donations for the memorial effort.
The contributions amounted to roughly $4,100.
“This is the real Milwaukee,” restaurant owner Omar Shaikh told TMJ4. “Not the emails and racist emails — this is the real Milwaukee, showing love and support.”
“All these individuals have good energy,” Robinson’s mother, Sheena Scarbrough, added. “We are very thankful and have a lot of respect for how the community has shown up beyond the negativity from a few weeks ago.”
Scarbrough had started community fundraising efforts for a memorial in January. She set up a GoFundMe page that initially received about $3,000 by the end of the month.
In the weeks afterward, her fundraising efforts experienced a major windfall as tens of thousands of dollars began pouring in.
Now, she’s raised more than $35,000, with plans to pay for a memorial and way more.
Scarbrough plans to use the donated funds to launch the nonprofit Sade’s Voice Foundation, which will carry out Robinson’s legacy, “by speaking out for primarily underserved BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) individuals who are missing, murdered, or whose cases have been neglected and mishandled by media and law enforcement,” the GoFundMe page reads.
The money will also fund nonprofit events, grants, scholarships, and self-defense courses for young women in the Milwaukee area.
The man accused of murdering Robinson, 33-year-old Maxwell Anderson, is scheduled to go on trial in May. Authorities believe he killed Robinson and dismembered her body after they went on a first date on April 1, 2024.
