Civil Rights
On July 25, 1963, police made the first arrests of the civil rights movement in Seattle when 22 persons were removed from the city council's chambers after a four-day occupation. Earlier that month, 35 young African American and white demonstrators occupied Mayor Gordon Clinton's lobby to protest the make-up of the city's new Human Rights Commission, tasked with writing an open-housing ordinance. That protest ended within 24 hours without incident or arrests, but also without action from the mayor.
When the council met on July 22 to consider Clinton's nominees for the 12-member commission, hundreds of citizens showed up to express concerns that only two of the nominees were Black. At the end of the meeting, four young women sat down in protest. Other protestors joined them over the next four days until they were all removed by the police. The commission was created as planned, and although it submitted an open-housing ordinance the following year, voters rejected it. A similar law didn't pass in Seattle until April 1968.
A month earlier, at Franklin High School, a sit-in protested the expulsion of two students, demanded the hiring of more Black educators, and called for an African American history curriculum at the school. Four days after its peaceful ending, police arrested University of Washington Black Student Union members Aaron Dixon and Larry Gossett and local SNCC (Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee) head Carl Miller. Their sentencing for unlawful assembly triggered riots in Seattle's Central Area, and their case traveled up through the courts for years. Gossett was later elected to the King County Council and served there from 1993 until 2019.
Lofty Heights
This week marks three anniversaries, two atop and one above Mount Rainier. On July 28, 1896, Olof Bull carried his violin to the summit and played several solo songs, including "Nearer, My God, To Thee." Thirteen years later, on July 30, 1909, the summit had other visitors of note when a group of suffragists joined The Mountaineers to plant a "Votes for Women" banner atop the mountain.
And on July 25, 1920, Seattle aviator Herbert Munter became the first person to overfly the peak when he soared above the summit in his Boeing Model 8 biplane. Ever the showman, Munter circled the peak three times before crossing over it. Spectacular for the time, his feat of aviation was bested 30 years later when another intrepid pilot actually landed his plane atop the mountain.
