Gentrification, Integration or Displacement?: The Seattle Story

In the following article, Henry W. McGee, Jr., a Seattle University Professor of Law and Central District resident, discusses the recent dramatic transformation of the area from a predominately working class African American community into an area of high income white, Asian American and African … Read MoreGentrification, Integration or Displacement?: The Seattle Story

Defending Nikkei: Hugh MacBeth and the Japanese American Internment

In the account below University of Quebec at Montreal historian Greg Robinson describes the activies of Hugh MacBeth, a black Los Angeles attorney, on behalf of the Japanese American citizens and resident aliens incarcerated during World War II.  Hugh MacBeth, Sr., an African American attorney … Read MoreDefending Nikkei: Hugh MacBeth and the Japanese American Internment

Eyewitness to Terror: The Lynching of a Black Man in Obion County, Tennessee in 1931

In 1931 twelve-year- old Thomas J. Pressly witnessed the lynching of George Smith in Union City, the county seat of Obion County, Tennessee.  Now a University of Washington historian and Professor Emeritus, Dr. Pressley describes that lynching in the article below.   When I was twelve … Read MoreEyewitness to Terror: The Lynching of a Black Man in Obion County, Tennessee in 1931

Remembering Brown: Silence, Loss, Rage, and Hope, 1954

In the following article, James A. Banks, the Kerry and Linda Killinger Professor and Director of the Center for Multicultural Education at the University of Washington, Seattle, describes his Arkansas community’s reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision when it … Read MoreRemembering Brown: Silence, Loss, Rage, and Hope, 1954