 In 1968 the Milwaukee Common Council approved a desegregation law, only after a federal housing law was passed.She was arrested at a rally following the firebombing of an NAACP office, the only city official to be arrested during the "long hot summer" of 1967, bringing further national media attention to the city.Phillips resigned from the Common Council in 1971, when appointed to the judiciary, the first woman judge in Milwaukee County and the first African American judge in Wisconsin.