Topic: Women's History
More than a century ago, a debate about the ethics and authority of law enforcement began in Seattle as citizens, mainly women, voiced concerns about the abuses of power committed against women and gi...
This essay by Adam C. Eisenberg on Seattle's first female patrol officers hired and trained to be cops on the beat equal to men (nine women hired in 1976), originally appeared in the Seattle Post-Inte...
Elizabeth Shackleford, a lifelong Tacoman, was a lawyer and judge in her hometown for 60 years. She was the second female justice of the peace in Pierce County and for several years the only female la...
Dr. Ruby Inouye Shu was the first Japanese American woman physician in Seattle and an icon in the local Japanese community. Her general practice was in Seattle's Nihonmachi or Japantown. She delivered...
Actress Jean Elizabeth Smart was born in Seattle on September 13, 1951, the second of four children. After graduating from Ballard High School in 1969, she entered the University of Washington’s...
Helen Sommers was elected as a Democrat in November 1972 to represent Seattle's 36th District in the state House of Representatives. She won re-election 17 consecutive times over the next 36 years, wa...
Michael Spafford was a young art student at Pomona College in Claremont, California, in 1956 when a car accident put him out of commission for months. When he returned to school, he found another youn...
Lillian E. Anderson Sylten Spear was an important player in Snohomish County's public-power movement. She began her career as an educator, served as president of the Snohomish County Parent-Teacher As...
Shirley Ross Speidel, the devoted wife of Seattle Underground Tour founder Bill Speidel (1912-1988), was active in her community. She was one of the first members of the King County Landmarks Commissi...
St. Nicholas School was a private nonsectarian girls' school founded in 1910 and located in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood. The school was named to honor St. Nicholas, the patron saint of childr...
Bernice Stern devoted much of her life to public service, starting at age 15, and was the first woman elected to the King County Council, where she served for 11 years, retiring in 1980. Before and af...
The author of this People's History, Barbara Fleischman Cochran, was a regional historian in Spokane, author of Exploring Spokane's Past, and a member of the faculty at Washington State University. Sh...
Anna Louise Strong remains one of the notable radicals in the history of the United States. During her Seattle years (1914-1921), she won her election as the lone woman on the School Board, only to be...
The Sunset Club of Seattle is a private women's club with deep ties to its city's history, tradition, and culture. The club was founded in 1913 by women from some of Seattle's most prominent and wealt...
Marie Svoboda, Seattle’s pioneering grande dame of yoga, opened her Queen Anne studio in 1969. It was a bold move for one of the city's few leotard-clad women then offering yoga classes at community...
Helen Thayer was the first woman and oldest person to make a solo journey to the magnetic North Pole. She competed internationally as a world-class discus thrower, and in 1975 became the U.S. National...
Robert A. Clark authored two books and numerous magazine articles dealing with the Old West. He operates Arthur H. Clark Company, in Spokane, publishers of books on the American frontier experience. H...
This is an exerpt from an interview with Dotty DeCoster conducted by HistoryLink's Heather MacIntosh in April 2000. DeCoster was an outspoken member of the Women's Movement in the late 1960s and 1970s...
The former Executive Director of Seattle's Northwest African American Museum, Barbara Earl Thomas is far more than an institutional administrator. She is also an inspiring lecturer on the topics of ar...
Chris Smith Towne is a Seattle-based community and environmental activist and consultant. Her career trajectory began in Bellevue as a member of Bellevue's Park's Board and as a Bellevue City Council ...
This is the third in a special series of essays commissioned by The Seattle Times to examine pivotal turning points in Seattle and King County history. This essay examines the struggle for woman suffr...
This is a transcript of an oral history by Megan Cornish and Henry Noble. Cornish was one of the first women hired by Seattle City Light as a light-pole climber. She eventually made it to senior power...
Tamara A. Turner is a retired medical librarian, a longtime resident of Seattle's University District, and a gay-rights activist. In this oral history transcript she recalls the district, especially t...
Jolene Unsoeld's political beginnings date to the early 1970s, when as a self-described citizen meddler she worked on Initiative 276, a successful 1972 ballot measure that required the state to make i...