Topic: Black Americans
Dr. Maxine Mimms, best known for founding the Tacoma Campus of The Evergreen State College, worked as a teacher, social worker, educator, administrator, trainer, professor, mentor, consultant, public ...
Harold Gene Moss was the first African American member of both the Tacoma City Council and the Pierce County Council, and Tacoma's first African American mayor. He became active in the civil-rights mo...
Mount Zion Baptist Church is located in Seattle at 19th Avenue and East Madison Street. It was established in 1890 when members -- some from First Baptist Church -- began meeting in homes. The Fi...
Esther Hall Mumford is a Seattle researcher, a writer, a publisher and an authority on the history of African Americans in the Pacific Northwest. Her first book, Seattle's Black Victorians 1852-1901, ...
The Negro Repertory Company served as the African American unit of Seattle's Federal Theatre Project. Congress had created the Federal Theatre Project in 1935, under the auspices of the Works Progress...
The Northwest African American Museum, located in the old Colman School, at 2300 Massachusetts Street in Seattle, opened on March 8, 2008, with an estimated 3,000 visitors. The surrounding neighborho...
Oscar William Holden (1886-1969) arrived in Seattle in 1925 and quickly became a central figure in the city's jazz scene, which flourished in the many clubs and nightspots that lined Jackson Street fr...
In October 2003, a statue of former Husky head coach Jim Owens (1927-2009) was placed in front of the Husky Stadium in Seattle. The statue renewed a longstanding controversy surrounding Owens. Owens c...
Gertrude Johnson Peoples is the founder of the country's first academic-support office for college student athletes. For over 40 years she has been mother, friend, and academic adviser to athletes at ...
Donald Phelps, educator, singer, and TV commentator, was the grandson of John T. Gayton (1866-1954), one of Seattle's black pioneers. He rose through the ranks, starting as an elementary teacher in Be...
Beginning in the early 1920s, Fort Lewis, located in Pierce County south of Tacoma, provided separate clubs where officers, non-commissioned officers, and enlisted personnel could enjoy meals and atte...
Edwin T. Pratt was the Executive Director of the Seattle Urban League, a member of the Central Area Civil Rights Organization, and a leader in the struggle for integrated housing and education in Seat...
John Edmondson Prim was the first African American to serve as deputy prosecuting attorney for King County and the first African American judge in the state.
This oral history of Arline and Letcher Yarbrough concerning racism during World War II in Seattle and at Fort Lewis was conducted at the Museum of History & Industry (MOHAI) on January 26. 1985, ...
In the mid-1970s, civil rights advocates painted a red line on the street in Seattle's Central District, running along 14th Avenue from Yesler Way north to Union Street. The protest action aimed to dr...
Redlining and racially restrictive covenants were used in in Spokane for decades in the mid-twentieth century as ways to steer non-white residents away from living in white neighborhoods. Redlini...
Tacoma has a documented history of rampant housing discrimination in the early to mid-twentieth century. The city used a web of legal and customary practices to codify residential segregation. Beginni...
Constance Williams Rice, Ph.D., was named in 1985 by Seattle Weekly as one of the 25 most powerful women in Seattle. Two decades later, Rice continues to be a leader in a wide range of civic activiti...
Norm Rice was elected mayor of Seattle in 1989 and served two four-year terms. He was the first African American to win the office and the first in the nation to govern a city that had an African Amer...
Michael K. Ross was a Seattle politician, construction worker, and an effective and outspoken leader in the fight for civil rights and economic justice. He was known for his demonstrations in support ...
The Royal Esquire Club is a private African American men's club in Seattle. It was founded in 1947 by five young men since there was no welcoming venue in the city where black men could socialize. Roo...
John Henry Ryan and his wife Ella Ryan were two of the earliest African American business owners in Tacoma, where they owned and were the editors of The Forum, a weekly newspaper in the Tacoma area. A...
Jennie Samuels (1868-1948) was deeply involved with the Women's Club Movement in Washington. She founded the Nannie Burroughs Study Club in Everett, and was an early executive member of the Washington...
Sandy A. Moss, a diesel engineer, was born in Topeka, Kansas, and was brought by his parents to Seattle in June 1900. As a black child growing up in Seattle during the early years of the twentieth cen...