How Markasa Tucker-Harris came to be

Markasa Tucker-Harris loves Milwaukee.

That love, she says, along with her faith and family give her a deep belief that Milwaukee is where she’s supposed to be. 

“I don’t feel like my assignment is over,” she said. “I think that what’s called me back was the purpose.” 

As leader of the African American Roundtable, Tucker-Harris’ work includes building Black liberation through campaigns, advocacy and community building.  

Under Tucker-Harris’ leadership, the Roundtable has worked to move funds from the Milwaukee Police Department into the community, piloted a participatory budget program that awarded $10,000 each to local organizations supporting youth and elders, and created tools like the Milwaukee Northwest Side asset map to promote economic development. 

Tucker-Harris credits her faith and God’s guidance as foundational to her decisions and leadership. 

“I think God stretches me and gives me strength and capacity. It’s been a wonderful experience,” she said. “I’m privileged to lead a beautiful organization. I’m privileged enough to be a parent, to be in this city at a time like this, and that’s what fuels me.” 

Rooted in the city

Before she ever organized a budget campaign or sat in a Fire and Police Commission meeting, Tucker-Harris was a girl on Milwaukee’s Northwest Side, watching her family work together to make their dreams come true. 

She said her parents came to Milwaukee during the Great Migration, first living in the central city, then buying a home on the far Northwest Side. Her father worked at A.O. Smith and invested in real estate. Her mother’s side pooled money to run semi-trucks. 

She said both sides of her family moved like a collective, siblings helping siblings, one generation pulling the next into opportunity.

Back then, she didn’t realize how much that mattered, she said. Now, she does the same for her daughter. 

“I get intertwined into her work,” said Tucker-Harris’ daughter, Zoe Chambers. “My community work started off working with her and we are often sharing space for one reason or another.”

Her path to advocacy and community organizing

Tucker-Harris studied mass communications at Grambling State University in Louisiana. 

“The best years of my life,” she said. 

She came back to Milwaukee after college to work in television news at both WISN 12 and CBS 58. 

She said she loved storytelling but eventually grew disillusioned with newsroom culture and the way stories about Black people were handled. When she realized the path upward wasn’t opening, she walked away.

From there, a friend invited her to help manage a day care. Despite having no formal training, she said yes. 

The job opened her eyes again to the inequality in Milwaukee that she noticed but didn’t understand as a child. 

She said she learned more about the conditions families lived in, mental health issues children carried, the instability of the child care system and the systemic barriers stacked against parents simply trying to work, study or survive.

In 2014, when 31-year-old Dontre Hamilton was shot and killed by a Milwaukee police officer, Tucker-Harris felt pulled to support his family. 

She said his death was the catalyst for her turning to social justice work, protest and eventually leadership in Milwaukee’s nonprofit and advocacy community.

Her daughter remembers how the case activated her mother and how she was brought along to experience it. 

“I was quite little so I don’t remember all the details, but I’ll always remember my mom seeing the marches and being like, I’m going to go down there,” Chambers said. “From there, she was a part of this work, and she would take me, which I always thought was so cool and important.” 

At the same time, Tucker-Harris, through the then loosely organized African American Roundtable, began learning the landscape of advocacy, policy, power and community organizing. 

She also learned she had a gift for pulling people together, building strategy and turning hope into action, all things she did casually in other aspects of her life. 

By 2017, she became director of the Roundtable.

Antrea Taylor, her friend of over 10 years, said Tucker-Harris is a trusted voice and presence because she is genuine and always listening to God. 

“When she walks in a room, she brings unity, hope and clarity,” Taylor said.

Looking forward

While she’s not rushing out, Tucker-Harris is clear that she won’t lead the Roundtable forever.

In between her other work, Tucker-Harris founded The Alternative, a Christian arts-based organizing space. She also became president of her neighborhood association.  

Taylor said that wherever Tucker-Harris is, she’ll be there to support her. 

“Our friendship is God’s intentional design,” she said. “My prayer is that others will experience this kind of God-centered, unwavering friendship like Markasa is to me and I am to her.” 

Focusing on her family

Along with serving the community, Tucker-Harris said she’s looking forward to being in service to her loved ones. 

As the proud mother of Chambers, Miss Juneteenth, an artist and organizer in her own right, Tucker-Harris wants to sew more into her and her dreams. 

Tucker-Harris is also a bonus mom to four adult children, and a God mom of eight. 

She also wants to pour more into her husband, Terrell, a small business owner and the soul behind Milwaukee State of Mind.

Tucker-Harris also wants to support her parents as they age. Her mother, Shirley, once nervous about her daughter speaking out politically, is now one of the Roundtable’s most active members, testifying at budget hearings and challenging city leaders.

“Three generations,” Tucker-Harris said. “God really does bring things full circle.”

Though her plate is always full as she helps others, Tucker-Harris doesn’t view service as sacrifice. It’s love in action.

“I’ve poured so much into this city. And now I want to pour even more into the people I love,” she said.  

“That’s what I look forward to. That’s joy to me.”