Active in the women's movement and the civil rights movement, Vel Phillips built a career full of "firsts" as both a woman and an African American in Wisconsin. Born Velvalea Rodgers on Milwaukee's South Side, Phillips studied law at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School, and in 1951, became the first African-American woman to graduate from the law school. She and her husband, W. Dale Phillips, became the first husband-wife attorney team admitted to the federal bar in Milwaukee. Throughout the 1960s Phillips participated in nonviolent protests against discrimination in housing, education and employment that culminated in the violent summer of 1967. The following year, Milwaukee aldermen finally approved the Fair Housing Law that Phillips had proposed six years earlier. Phillips served as Alderman and Judge and, briefly, as Acting Governor of Wisconsin.