On July 21, 1911, members of the Fern Bluff Grange in Sultan approve a resolution opposing development of a proposed Western Tuskegee community for Black settlers. Supporters of the plan have envisioned an 800-acre settlement north of Sultan where Black agriculturalists and entrepreneurs could create a self-supporting community. Opponents, including the Fern Bluff Grange, claim that locating a Black community next to a white community would lead to strife.
The Western Tuskegee Proposal
The earliest known account of the Western Tuskegee settlement was published in a Seattle Post-Intelligencer article on July 18, 1911. A large colony for Black settlers was to be located on 800 acres of land near the junction of the Startup and 45 Mine roads in Snohomish County. Reverend Thomas L. Cate (1881-1922?) was identified as one of the settlement’s promoters. Rev. Cate and his wife Rosa were residents of Everett, where he had served as pastor of the Bailey Chapel A.M.E. church and was the publisher of The Rising Sun newspaper. During their time in Everett the Cateses stayed in the home of J. T. Payne (1878-1957), who with his future wife Minnie (1885-1955) would become one of the first proprietors listed in the Green Book for Negro Motorists. Cate and his colleagues hoped to settle 150 families in a self-sustained community focused on animal husbandry, agriculture, and other pursuits by the following winter. Per the article a considerable amount of land had already been sold to eager settlers. Due to illness, Cate reportedly had been unable to visit Oklahoma, where he expected to recruit a trainload of additional colonists. The Black residents of Oklahoma were said to be dissatisfied with the conditions there and wished to migrate to Washington or Canada.
The Seattle Republican followed this announcement on July 21, 1911, with an opinion piece on the Western Tuskegee settlement. The tone of the article was scathing and contained sentiments that to modern readers would appear racist. This was a confusing editorial decision for one of Seattle’s first successful Black newspapers. It is possible that the piece was meant to be satire, though the unnamed author, identified only as the editor, claimed that they were "opposed to the colonization of Negroes or any other weaker race" ("That Western Tuskegee 1911"). The paper’s masthead credited Horace Roscoe Cayton (1859-1940) as the publisher and Susie Revels Cayton (1870-1943) as the associate; the husband-and-wife duo founded and ran the paper from 1894-1913 and it is unclear if they employed any other staff.
The article likened the plan to create a community for Black settlers to controversial Seattle development schemes that landed Clarence Dayton Hillman (1870-1935) in federal court. The author went on to state opposition to any plan to create exclusively Black settlements on the pretense that their proximity to majority-white settlements would lead to increased racial prejudice and strife. The author claimed that the establishment of segregated communities would result in separate counties, states, political representatives, and eventually a separate Black civilization that would be at odds with white civilization. The piece concluded by speculating that a race war would be the eventual outcome of a dual society separated by race, and that the only reasonable solution was the gradual homogenization of American society through intermarriage and assimilation into "Caucasian civilization" ("That Western Tuskegee 1911").
The Fern Bluff Grange Resolution
The following day the Everett Morning Tribune added an update to the Western Tuskegee discussion. Included in the coverage was the full text of a resolution passed by the Fern Bluff Grange in Sultan opposing the settlement:
"Whereas, A negro colony is in process of establishment in the Sultan district.
"Whereas, It is the sense of the members of the grange that, while racial prejudice is wrong and should not be encouraged, there is, however, a legitimate racial antipathy mutually existing between the white and the negro races which is moral and salutary. Therefore, be it
"Resolved, That, without seeking to cast any stigma on the moral or industrial qualities of the negro colonists (who, indeed, may be of a high order), we beelieve [sic], on account of the social and racial differences and the inevitable injustice in the administration of the law which accrues as the result of the presense [sic] of negroes and white in the same locality, that their presence would be a detriment to the community.
"Resolved, further, That the members of this grange will not seek to injure or to blame the negro colonistsh [sic] but believe that the promoters of the scheme should be condemned by public opinion for working an injury to this district.
(Signed)
"GEORGE P. CAMPBELL (ca. 1874-1959),
"Master,"
"Murret [sic - Muriel] D. Bayspoole (1876-1970),
"Secretary (Everett Morning Tribune, June 22, 1911).”
Response to the Resolution
On July 25, the Everett Daily Herald published a response to the resolution from one of the settlement’s planners. In this piece, a local named James T. Hubbard (1875-?) was referenced as the project’s promoter and quoted extensively. Hubbard was a white miner and real estate agent who lived in Everett but owned and had worked claims in the Sultan Mining District. In 1911 he was listed in the Everett Polk City Directory as the President of the Western Tuskegee Land & Development Co., as well as co-owner of a real estate and insurance firm named Sound Investment Co.
Hubbard claimed to be undeterred by the resolution passed by the grange and argued that his plan was in line with the sentiments expressed within. In his view, summarized by the Herald, "as the grange stands for racial segregation the proposition of colonization is exactly what the grange desires, though the organization does not, apparently, see it in that light. He says the colony will take a large number of blacks from the environments of the whites, thereby bringing about racial segregation the Sultan grange believes to be necessary for the good of both races" (Everett Daily Herald, June 25, 1911). Hubbard also expressed the opinion that American-born Black settlers would be "vastly better to settle up the rough land of Snohomish County ... than with Greeks and Italians and other aliens" (Herald, June 25, 1911).
According to Hubbard, he had already been receiving strong interest from Black families around the country at the time of the resolution’s passing. Quoted in the Herald, he stated, "I have ... mailed copies of the Herald containing the resolutions of the Sultan grange all over the United States, everywhere that negroes have shown interest in the colony. I want to thoroughly advertise the stand taken by the Sultan people" (Herald, June 25, 1911). Hubbard further claimed to have received strong interest from settlers from Washington, Montana, and other states, some of whom had gone so far as to purchase acreage at the proposed colony site.
Hubbard believed that there would be a Methodist school created on the settlement to accommodate the children of the families who were to arrive. Rev. Cate, originally credited as the plan’s sole promoter, was very active in the A.M.E. church both within Everett, and at a state level. Hubbard told the Herald that he intended to attend a Black church conference in Portland the following month to further promote the settlement. A separate notice published in The Havre Plaindealer of Havre, Montana on July 29, 1911, also referenced this conference in connection to Western Tuskegee, but no records of its proceedings have been located to further illuminate what promotional efforts may have taken place.
At the end of the article, Hubbard took full ownership of the Western Tuskegee plan, perhaps as a way of sheltering Rev. Cate from further backlash: "I am the originator of the colonization plan and am willing to assume full responsibility. Rev. T. L. Cate was simply acting as an agent for us" (Herald, June 25, 1911). It is assumed that the ‘us’ Hubbard referred to in his statement was himself and his partner Martin E. Johnson (1886-1947), a man listed as the Secretary-Treasurer of the Western Tuskegee Land & Development Co. in the 1911 Polk City Directory for Everett.
Aftermath
It is unclear how the Western Tuskegee plan ended, but there is evidence that a settlement was attempted. The last article located covering Western Tuskegee was published on August 4, 1911, in the Monroe Monitor-Transcript. According to the piece, an unspecified but impressive number of colonists had arrived at Western Tuskegee and were at work clearing land. "The colored folks are coming out from Oklahoma" the paper quoted a Mr. Fred Knutson, "and they are being located on the country back of Winter’s Lake. It is about the roughest clearing anywhere in this section and I don’t look for the negroes to be very anxious to stick to the work. There is a negro preacher along and I heard him Sunday night and he is a good one. There is some objection to the colored folks but I do not believe they will do any harm. What land they do clear will be of much value to the community and what they earn, at least, they will spend right here and not send it out of the country like the [Japanese] or Chinese" (Monroe Monitor-Transcript, August 4, 1911).
No records have been located to connect Rev. Cate or J. T. Hubbard to any properties near the described townsite, so it remains to be discovered exactly where it was located and how many lots were sold and cleared by Black families. Per land records located in the Washington State Archives in Bellingham, the property immediately surrounding Winter’s Lake belonged largely to the Wallace Lumber and Manufacturing Company. In 1909, a man named John L. Deierlein (ca. 1861-1925) purchased a large portion of the Wallace property, encompassing more than the 800 acres promised by the Western Tuskegee promoters. This land appears to have stayed in Deierlein hands until after his death in 1925. According to probate records, Deierlein appears to have owned a large amount of property around Washington, as well as received mortgage and loan payments from numerous individuals; it is possible that the land worked by Western Tuskegee colonists was leased rather than purchased without leaving records kept in the State Archives.
According to papers filed with the Snohomish County Auditor’s Office, Hubbard and Johnson had liquidated the contents of their Western Tuskegee offices in Everett by September 5, 1911. It appears that the two then parted ways; Johnson to pursue life as a farmer, and Hubbard to continue working as a miner and later a mining engineer.
Thomas and Rosa Cate
Rev. Cate and his wife Rosa left Washington by early 1912. After a brief posting at an A.M.E. church in Arizona, the Cates settled into the greater Pueblo area of Colorado, living at various times in La Junta, Cañon City, and Pueblo. Rev. Cate remained active in the A.M.E. church, as well as education, and journalism. In June 1914, Rev. Cate was appointed by Governor Elias Milton Ammons (1860-1925) to attend the fifth annual convention of the Negro National Educational Congress in Oklahoma City. As World War I escalated, the Cates became involved in war efforts on various fronts. Rev. Cate returned to miliary service where he soon became a Captain and was appointed to the Council of War in Colorado; his initial enlistment had been from 1899-1902 when he served with the Buffalo Soldiers of the 24th Infantry. Capt. Cate was put in charge of the “B” company of the Colorado National Guard and was sent to officers training school in Iowa.
From here the story of the Cates becomes hazy. They were living in Pueblo at the time of the Great Flood of 1921. They survived that disaster and appeared to have been relocating to Idaho in the summer of 1922. On August 11 a notice was published in The Monitor of Omaha, Nebraska, that Capt. Cate had established a weekly paper for Black Idahoans titled the Pocatello Appeal. On August 16 the Pocatello Tribune wrote that Captain Thomas L. Cate had died that morning at a local hospital. A death record for Cate seems to indicate that he died among those who did not know him well; his family information is left blank, his birthdate is unknown, and either an error or flourish in the handwriting of the undertaker led to a typo in Cate’s name when it was reprinted in subsequent coverage of his death.
A follow-up notice in the Pocatello Tribune on August 18 stated that Cate’s remains were to be sent back to Pueblo on the evening train, accompanied by a Rev. Thornton. No cemeteries in the greater Pueblo area have any record of his burial, however there is a burial record for a "Tate F. T. Cate" in an unmarked grave in the potter’s field of the Mountain View Cemetery in Pocatello with a matching birth year and matching date of death to Thomas’s. It seems possible that Cate’s remains never left Pocatello for unknown reasons.
Rosa L. Cate remained untraceable until the 1925 Polk City Directory for Everett, where she reappeared as Mrs. R. L. Cate, widow of Thomas. For the rest of her life, Rosa L. Cate was active in Everett’s Black community, frequently hosting the Nannie Burroughs Study Club, and dedicated to the activities of the Bailey A.M.E. church. Rosa L. Cate died at her home on the 1800 block of Lombard on May 21, 1956, at the age of 95 and was buried in Evergreen Cemetery.
Unanswered Questions
What remains to be discovered are the stories of the colonists who came to work the land of Western Tuskegee. How many families arrived at Winter’s Lake the summer of 1911? How long did they stay? What were their names? It is the hope of the author that bringing this incomplete accounting to HistoryLink might grab the attention of descendants who know more of the story. Anyone with family stories to share related to Western Tuskegee or any of the individuals named in this article are encouraged to use the contact information on HistoryLink to reach out.
