Mary Ward Scott was a human rights activist who fought for causes ranging from civil rights in the Jim Crow South to increasing LGBTQ materials in libraries. Scott helped develop support systems for people with AIDS and was passionate about finding new ways to foster a more connected and empowered LGBTQ community in Snohomish County. For more than 35 years, until her death in 2019, her home in Snohomish served as a social hub for lesbians, hosting countless potlucks, book clubs, and a private lending library.
Early Years
Mary Ward Scott was born on May 26, 1942, in Baltimore, Maryland. Her father, Hardy Lee Scott (1906-1997), was a representative for the International Fur and Leather Workers Union. Scott’s mother, Verna Lucille Scott nee Ward (1911-2008), was a homemaker who was often left caring for her family alone as Hardy traveled to organize. Not long after Scott’s brother Hardy (b. 1944) was born, the Scotts relocated to Verna’s childhood hometown of Ashland, Alabama. The move allowed Verna to raise her children near family while her husband was away for work. Despite what may seem like a disruptive childhood, Scott’s accounts are filled with proud memories. In an interview conducted in 2009 by the Northwest Lesbian and Gay History Museum Project (NWLGHMP), she described her parents as New Deal Democrats. She was aware from an early age of the dangers inherent in her father’s profession, recounting a foundational memory of him returning home visibly injured after being beaten at one of his campaigns when she was about 3 or 4 years old. Despite these observations and an awareness of her mother’s anxieties on his behalf, Scott said that she and her brother did not grow up fearful due to Verna’s ability to educate and protect them.
Hardy Scott left his union organizing role in 1951 or 1952, just prior to the family relocating to Houston. In Houston the family worked as a unit gathering signatures to protest the Korean War, with all members canvassing neighborhoods. Verna Scott, an activist in her own right before motherhood, began hosting leaflet-folding parties with both young Scotts assisting. It was during this time that Hardy Scott left union organizing for good. After years of violence, surveillance, and threats to his family, he suffered a mental breakdown. Their early lives helped shape the adults Scott and her brother would become:
"So, I just grew up with our phone being tapped. And somehow, my brother and I grew up to be pretty much fearless because we were politically left in a very reactionary, uneducated, hostile, anti-left, anti-union part of the country, and in that time. We were atheists in the Bible Belt. We were integrationists in the segregated South ... And because we moved every year for the first four or five years of my schooling, we never fit in. And there was always something to be afraid of, but somehow, we were not afraid of it. My brother and I were not afraid of the Ku Klux Klan. Some of our neighbors were in the Ku Klux Klan. We were not afraid of the FBI. We were not afraid of our phone being tapped. So, when we got out and went away to college and out beyond that, we were active in Civil Rights stuff. My brother emigrated to Canada to avoid military service during the Vietnam War. We were not afraid of the local police because we had been to school with them, with their children ... And my parents, obviously, were afraid at times, but I think it was because they had children ... But then, again – I mean, the world is scary, if you look at it in that way. But on the other hand, there too, there were all the other people out there marching and being on demonstrations and stuff, and they were out there even though they were afraid. So basically, we grew up pretty fearless, I think. And yet we got that from our parents. And even though my parents were afraid at times, they always just kept doing what they were doing, essentially. Yeah – but now, of the people that I know, the gay people, the feminists, the anti-war people – they’re all people that I would consider fearless. I mean, all the way from the World War II vets, the World War II widows, people who’ve been involved in this, that, and the other for all of their lives – and yet they’re still – they’re out there doing it" (Mary Scott Interview, 2009).
Young Adulthood
Mary Scott attended Blackburn College in Carlinville, Illinois, from 1960-1964, graduating with a bachelors in sociology. She and her brother both selected Blackburn because it offered tuition relief for student workers. During their studies the siblings worked as janitors, a field Scott would return to frequently throughout her life. In addition to pursuing her education, it was during these years that she was able to explore her sexuality more in depth. Prior to her college years, she had a handful of experiences that stood out in her mind that made her feel that she was different, and that she had an attraction to women. The college rumor mill played a part in helping her learn to recognize other women like her. She recalled "hearing about other students being outcast or not coming back. So, I learned – these two girls were in bed with each other, and I’m thinking to myself, 'But that’s me. That’s me ... I don’t really know what happened, but I learned some names. So, this Marion who was allowed to come back – I was over in the other dorm and had left my overcoat there accidentally and had come back to my dorm. And Marion brought my overcoat back to me and just said, "Hi. Here’s your overcoat. You left it over at Joan’s." Oh! Marion spoke to me! Oh! Oh, my God. She’s probably a lesbian, and she spoke to me! It was just such a thrill and a shock. And that is probably the only conversation that we had in the entire year"(Mary Scott Interview, 2009).
After graduation, Scott found a position working for a state welfare office in Alabama. She remained in that role for four and a half years but gradually grew frustrated with its limitations. "I don’t like restrictions ... especially if you’re working with the poor and the uneducated and the needy ... There’s never enough help. There’s never enough of what they need and what they would want. So, you’re so limited in what you can do, I was thinking, 'I should be marching with Dr. King instead of doing this other stuff'" (Mary Scott Interview, 2009).
What Scott alludes to here is that she and her family did march with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Alabama. Scott was present at the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery, joining the crowd to walk from Brown Chapel AME Church to the Edmund Pettus bridge, and then stopping to cheer everyone on when her father, then unable to walk very far, could no longer continue. Scott and her mother also saw King speak in Washington, D.C. Fallout from her trip to Selma played a part in her decision to leave her position with the Alabama welfare office. Though clients who learned of her involvement in the march appreciated her allyship, colleagues sympathetic to her activities advised her that she could be fired if people higher up learned of her involvement.
Moving West
After leaving Alabama, Scott struck out on her own. She spent a brief but eye-opening time in Philadelphia exploring the gay community of Rittenhouse Square, then shifted her attention west. Her roadmap for relocation included religious and military 'off limits' publications that were produced at the time. These were often used by members of the LGBTQ community as guides to locate places where they would find acceptance. Scott followed a winding path to Washington, making stops in Florida and the Gulf States to work odd jobs; up into British Columbia to visit her brother’s family; down to the San Francisco Bay Area to try farm labor; and finally, to Port Angeles in the fall of 1971. Once in Port Angeles, she started visiting Seattle, where she began doing volunteer handyperson work for the Lesbian Resource Center (LRC). She quickly made connections with local gay and lesbian activists and got involved with organizing and other volunteerism.
Although Seattle would become an important nucleus for her organizing network, it would never become her permanent place of residence. After a brief period on the road with her then-partner, Alice, Snohomish caught her attention. In 1983, Scott purchased 51 Maple Avenue, a modest 1890s farmhouse with a well-tended garden overlooking the Snohomish River that the couple had previously been renting. For the next 36 years the home would serve as a social hub for lesbians in Snohomish County, hosting countless potlucks, book clubs, and a private lending library.
Scott’s earliest forays into Snohomish County activism began upon arrival. They were as grassroots as one could imagine. As Scott recounted in her 2009 interview, "whenever a new lesbian moved to Snohomish County and checked with the LRC to know if there were other lesbians in the County, they were always given my phone number and address. So occasionally some strange woman would show up on my front porch and say, 'I got your address – I got your phone number from the LRC.' So, I met, maybe, two or three or four women in that way" (Mary Scott Interview, 2009). These women rarely stayed local for long, choosing to relocate to the larger LGBTQ community in Seattle. Instead, Scott would build a lasting circle of friends and extended family while organizing a personal care network for people with AIDS through a Snohomish County organization called the Gay and Lesbian Coalition of Snohomish County (GLC), and through local activity groups that organized via newsletters such as Lucie’s Snohomish County Dyke Hikes and Lesbian Excursions and Potlucks (L.E.A.P.).
In the summer of 1988, Scott hosted a potluck to discuss forming a personal-assistance network for people with AIDS. Al Jung, Dick Mathes, and Bob Griegle answered the call and committed to the project. "'This is all there is. We are the only volunteers there will ever be, because nobody else will ever want to do this,' is what I thought five years ago when the first little group that became HOPWA got together," Scott wrote in a January 1994 issue of the Snohomish County Gay and Lesbian Coalition Newsletter celebrating the fifth anniversary of Helpers of People with AIDS. An event held to mark the event was attended by over 80 current and former volunteers and supporters, of whom she knew only six. While Scott had been instrumental in founding HOPWA, her time spent volunteering after her organizer work had completed lasted about a year.
Potluck Library and Public Library Outreach
Access to books with lesbian undertones played a large role in Scott’s exploration of her sexuality as a young adult. These materials were rare but vital for people who often felt isolated from their peers. Helping to combat this problem would be a mission of Scott’s for most of her adulthood. In one issue of a GLC newsletter, she shares a story of how restricted such materials were in the Seattle Public Library in the 1970s:
"I was tagging along with Alice, the woman I lived with at the time. That was in 1972, and Alice was looking for a book on homosexuality. There were only a few such books in the early '7O's. She was probably looking for something by one of the early German sexologists or psychologists. When she asked for the book at the main desk, she was told that she could get the book from the head librarian, who told her that the book was in a 'special collection' in another room.
"'Come with me.' she said. We all trekked off into the other room. I always went wherever Alice went until we got to the special collections room and was told that I couldn't go in because I was not the one requesting the book. Slam went the door. The room had metal mesh walls, like a tool room in a manufacturing plant, and was located in a huge warehouse-like room in the basement. The door was kept locked, to be opened only by the head librarian, the one person with a key. Having nothing else to do, I wandered back to the main room and then outside. About 45 minutes later Alice found me fishing coins out of the wishing fountain. She took notes on what she had read because the book was a reference book and could not be checked out. This is not a joke; it's not a made up story. It really happened. That is the way books on homosexuality were handled by public libraries 30 years ago" (GLC, March 2000).
In the summer of 1990, Scott created a list of 419 books on LGBTQ topics informed by bibliographies from Red and Black Books, a leftist bookstore formerly located in Seattle's University District that was the precursor to Left Bank Books Collective. Her goal was to approach Sno-Isle libraries with a list of suggested titles for acquisition. To her delight, the staff at Sno-Isle were receptive, purchasing 70 of her suggested titles, as well as adding several new titles that were not on her list, and replacing many books that had been missing from their shelves. Scott commented that Sno-Isle’s collection had not been bad to begin with; it had about 100 titles of interest, but they were scattered throughout a large system, which spread the collection thin. At one point she had heard that the Marysville location had a strong concentration of books on gay topics. She remarked, "That makes me think that someone was checking out books and that they were accumulating there until requested elsewhere. Whoever you are, keep it up" (GLC, June 1992).
Following her success with Sno-Isle, Scott approached the Everett Public Library and received a similarly warm reception. Books were ordered, and from Scott’s and the library’s records, it appears that there was regular communication related to suggestions moving forward. Early in 1993, the Everett Public Library found itself tangled in a minor controversy related to the growing collection due to a suggested titles brochure. In January of that year, members of the community requested that the library discontinue distributing the list of LGBTQ-interest titles. A group of residents attended a library board meeting to convince the board to vote to compel library director Mark Nesse (1943-2018) to remove the brochure from circulation. Even though one city councilmember, unnamed in Everett Daily Herald coverage, and Mayor Pete Kinch (1943-2023) were in opposition to the brochure, the library board voted in support of Nesse and the retention of the handout. Though public comments continued to be submitted to Everett City Council on the brochure after the library board vote, the issue was not revisited.
Aside from suggesting titles to library systems, Scott fundraised to help the libraries grow their collections. In January 1991, she launched a series of what she called bookish potlucks, asking people to bring relevant literature, or to donate funds to purchase suggested titles. The collected books were offered to local libraries, and many were accepted. Scott and her associates (Joanne, Kay, and more) decided to use the remainder of the books to create a roving private lending library, eventually christened the Potluck Library. The Potluck Library grew through a combination direct donation, and via surplus materials that were not accepted by the public libraries. Potluck Library volunteers would bring selections from the library to events to be checked out, and eventually house the collection in the office of the Gay and Lesbian Coalition of Snohomish County, discussed below. At its height the library hosted potluck events with speakers on a range of topics and received hundreds of donations. The Potluck Library would remain an active private library until 1995, when it dissolved due to diminished use. By that time, libraries in Snohomish County had significantly increased their holdings of LGBTQ materials, and it is likely that those who used the Potluck Library to access content safely and anonymously felt more comfortable accessing those resources.
Gay and Lesbian Coalition of Snohomish County
Scott was not involved with founding the Gay and Lesbian Coalition of Snohomish County (GLC), but the group was important in supporting the work she and her associates did to promote libraries and literacy. The GLC was formed in 1990 to provide a supportive environment for LGBTQ individuals in Snohomish County. As Scott recalled, "it was to give gay men and lesbians a place – an opportunity to come out, to be public. Also, to provide social services to the gay and lesbian community and a place to socialize ... a framework in which to do things together, to develop resources for the gay and lesbian community ... It was basically what the Lesbian Resource Center was providing, and what before then that the Gay Community Center down on Cherry had provided. Yeah, it’s just ... a generation later. So, what I in my early 30s – now I was doing again up here in my 40s and 50s" (Mary Scott Interview, 2009).
Scott was a frequent contributor to the GLC newsletter, which was published monthly from 1990-1994; her first mentions were calls for help with a "project to get gay books in county libraries" (GLC, 1990). She would later provide updates on the library outreach project, as well as the growth of the Potluck Library and how to access or contribute to it. After the library outreach work ended, the Potluck Library secured a permanent home in the GLC office in Marysville. It was at this location that a volunteer cataloger named Selma was able to establish a self-serve checkout system. The Potluck Library remained at this location until the dissolution of the GLC in August 1994, when the library went into the care of Scott for the remainder of its use.
Homecoming
In 1992 or 1993 Scott was approached by Jeanne Johnston, an alumna of Snohomish High School, about a statewide project called Homecoming aimed at inviting LGBTQ adults to speak to students at their alma maters about their lives. One advocate of the initiative, Everett High School Graduate Molly O’Neil, told the Snohomish County Tribune that "getting information into schools is important because most gay high school students see only negative images of gays. 'Gay kids need to see happy successful gay people who don’t drink and take drugs'" ("Gay Alumni Plan Events"). Johnston was having a hard time finding schools that would support her idea. She was told, "No, we don’t have gay and lesbian students out here," and "We don’t want to start anything controversial" (Mary Scott Interview, 2009). Because Scott was not from the area, she did not feel that she could provide any perspectives on growing up a lesbian in Snohomish County, but she wanted to support the cause any way that she could; she and Johnston continued to correspond over the idea.
Because Johnston was already out in high school, she had an idea of who her LGBTQ classmates had been. She was able to assemble a small network of them and others who had not grown up in the area and continued to seek ways to help the youth of Snohomish County. Johnston was eventually approached by a member of the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker organization, who invited her group to present to an assembly of area secondary school teachers about LGBTQ youth experiences. It is unclear from records when this meeting took place. Scott felt that this presentation was impactful, "for some of the teachers it really meant something. It gave them some knowledge – it made them think about things. It made them aware that there are gay kids in the schools" (Mary Scott Interview, 2009).
Anti-War Activism
Scott was introduced to anti-war activism at an early age. Her continued interest in this issue is alluded to in her writing and in her obituary, but there is a gap in the record until the 2000s. From 2003-2005, Scott was involved in protests at the corner of Colby and Hewitt in Everett in opposition to the war in Iraq. Scott expressed her views to the Herald in April 2003:
"I am opposed to war as a means of settling international disputes, as a means of one nation imposing its will upon others or to prevent assumed future aggression by others. I oppose this particular war, the one called 'Operation Iraqi Freedom.' I am appalled by the killing and destruction in the names of freedom and democracy.
"The thoughts, feelings, and beliefs that move me to protest this war are not mere 'disagreements' or 'differences of opinion' that can be set aside or negated just because bombing started.
"I think that it is time for the U.S. to withdraw our government forces and let Iraqis form their own government. I think U.N. weapons inspectors should return under the protection of a U.N. peacekeeping force.
"I cannot support our troops in their presence or purpose in Iraq. I do support them in expecting our government to see that they get health-care benefits for war-caused illnesses and injuries; to see that the dependents of disabled or killed soldiers are cared for; to see that benefit of health care, education, and retirement are not rescinded, reduced, or denied.
"I cannot support this war and shall continue to protest the war and its aftermath" ("War Just Isn't ...").
Archival Activities and Advocacy
Little would be known of Scott’s work had she not possessed a strong interest in collecting and preserving the records created by her community. In 2009 she gave an oral history interview to Ruth Pettis for the Northwest Lesbian & Gay History Project, which is quoted from heavily in this article. She also assisted Pettis in interviewing at least one other individual, Ken Scott (no relation) on his life and involvement with HOPWA. Scott used her involvement with numerous local and regional publications to urge people to participate in initiatives to collect LGBTQ history and encourage their libraries to add materials that reflected their lives.
In 2016 Scott contacted the Northwest Room of the Everett Public Library about donating materials from her personal collection to its archives. Over the next two years, Scott brought in what amounted to 10 archival boxes of LGBTQ newsletters from the Salish Sea region; records of her library system outreach; GLC records, minutes, and newsletters; Potluck Library records and ephemera; recordings of KSER shows on LGBTQ topics, including an interview with Cal Anderson (1948-1995); and records of her AIDS-related work.
Personal Life
Scott was a private person who frequently referenced long hermit phases in her writing. She only frequented Everett’s two Gay bars, first the Stage Stop, and then the Underground, when she wanted to pick up copies of the Seattle Gay News; she preferred to socialize by meeting people through her interests. She made a modest living working at a dairy farm until a work-related death exposed unsafe conditions and she left that job. She did occasional custodial work, sold nutritional supplements out of her home, and even opened an upholstery business that advertised in various LGBTQ outlets. Aside from her mention of living with onetime partner, Alice, Scott referenced not having lived with anyone in the past 28 years in her 1999 Pettis and Scott interview.
In conversations with the author of this article, Scott discussed a belief within the lesbian community of her generation in not naming names or keeping lists out of respect for personal privacy. This sentiment seems to have been shared by her peers, as publications within her collections almost exclusively refer to individuals by first name only, which is why they remain referred to in this way. (If you are named in this piece and wish to be fully credited, please contact HistoryLink.org.) While Scott was out and proud, her personal life remained her own concern. What is clear is that she spent her time in Snohomish County opening her home to all sisters who shared her love of literature, mutual aid, hiking, good food, and picking from her raspberry garden. Mary Ward Scott died on May 22, 2019; per her obituary, her ashes were scattered in Snohomish, "the town she loved" ("Mary Ward Scott").
