Milwaukee’s Gee’s Clippers marks 30 years of cuts and community

Milwaukee’s Gee’s Clippers turns 30 this month, and the milestone is more than a birthday party for a beloved barbershop. Founder Gaulien “Gee” Smith is using the anniversary to spotlight three decades of cutting hair, mentoring boys, registering voters and even checking blood pressure in a former bank vault on King Drive. A three-day celebration mirrors the shop’s evolution from a one-chair start-up in 1995 to a community cornerstone that shows how Black barbershops can double as civic, cultural and health hubs. 

A three-day celebration

June 19 – Juneteenth Parade & Community Open House

• Gee’s Clippers will march in Milwaukee’s Juneteenth Parade, beginning promptly at 9 a.m. on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive.

June 20 – Block Party

• Join the block party on MLK Drive at Garfield from noon to 4 p.m. Enjoy food trucks, youth dance performances, and a barbers‑versus‑Bucks “cut‑off” challenge.

June 21 – 30th Anniversary Grand Finale Celebration

• 7–11:30 p.m., Downtown Marriott: A ticketed celebration with Gee’s Clippers owner, staff, and friends. Dress is business‑casual. Tickets are $30 (“for 30 years”).

From clippers to community cornerstone

When Smith opened Gee’s Clippers on June 1, 1995, it was a single-chair shop on Capitol Drive. Within five years he moved into the former Columbia Savings & Loan building on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and carved out space for 30 chairs and an NBA locker-room vibe that soon attracted Milwaukee Bucks stars. Yet the pivot from haircutting to holistic help happened in 2018, when Smith and poet-educator Kwabena Nixon launched Real Men, Real Talk, a candid, dinner-hour forum held every third Monday. The circle routinely draws 100 to 150 men and boys who unpack fatherhood, trauma, finance and mental health alongside psychologists and re-entry coaches. 

The programming now touches almost every aspect of Black male well-being:

• Gee’s MKE Wellness Clinic—housed in the building’s 1930s bank vault—offers Friday blood-pressure screenings, glucose tests, flu shots and cancer checks in partnership with Froedtert & the Medical College of Wisconsin. Barbers are trained to start health conversations and walk clients straight to an on-site nurse. 
• Barbershop Monday—co-hosted with the Milwaukee Bucks during National Mentoring Month—pairs free fades with round-table mentoring for boys and young men ages 10-23.
  
• Shape Up the Vote turns the shop into a polling-prep hub; in 2020 and 2022 Smith exchanged shape-ups for completed voter-registration forms as part of a national drive to boost turnout among Black men.
  
• GRIND 5K and summer hoop clinics promote physical fitness. At the same time, pop-up prostate-cancer town halls tackle health disparities that give Wisconsin’s Black men some of the state’s worst hypertension and diabetes outcomes. 

Why barbershops matter in Black Milwaukee

Historians trace the Black barbershop’s civic role to Reconstruction-era America, when entrepreneurial barbers provided one of the few spaces where free Black men could speak openly about politics and business. Modern scholarship agrees: studies call barbershops “sanctuaries” where trust, informal mentoring and peer accountability flourish. 

Public-health researchers have harnessed that trust. A landmark 2018 New England Journal of Medicine cluster trial found that coupling barber coaching with on-site pharmacists lowered Black patrons’ systolic blood pressure by nearly 30 mm Hg—four times the drop seen under usual care. The success spurred programs from Los Angeles to Nashville and inspired Gee’s in-house clinic model.

As Gee’s Clippers steps into its fourth decade, the buzz of the clippers is matched only by the hum of blood-pressure cuffs and the cadence of honest conversation—proof that in Milwaukee, a barbershop can still be the heartbeat of the block.