Peggy Joan Maxie was the first black woman elected to public office in Washington State. She served as Washington State Representative, position no. 2 in the 37th Legislative District in Seattle, from 1971 through 1982. Maxie was born August 18, 1936, in Amarillo, Texas to … Read MorePeggy Joan Maxie (1936-2024)
The Scottsboro Boys were nine young black men, falsely accused of raping two white women on board a train near Scottsboro, Alabama in 1931. Convicted and facing execution, the case of Charlie Weems, Ozie Powell, Clarence Norris, Olen Montgomery, Willie Roberson, Haywood Patterson, Eugene Williams, … Read MoreScottsboro Boys Trial and Defense Campaign (1931–1937)
In 1949 Washington State enacted the Fair Employment Practices Act (FEPA) to make discrimination in hiring on the basis of race, creed, color, or national origin illegal. The Washington State Board Against Discrimination (WSBAD) was created as a provision of the act to make sure … Read MoreWashington State Board Against Discrimination
The trial of Dr. Ossian Sweet along with ten family members and friends for murder after a mob attacked his Detroit home caught the nation’s attention in 1925 and 1926. This trial and a re-trial of Ossian Sweet’s younger brother Henry exposed racial tensions in … Read MoreOssian Sweet (1895-1960)
Mary Jane Holmes Shipley Drake, born in Missouri in 1841, was one of six children of Robin and Polly Holmes. From 1852 to 1853 Mary Jane was the subject of a fifteen-month legal battle known as Holmes v. Ford to obtain her freedom. That battle … Read MoreMary Jane Holmes Shipley Drake (1841–1925)
The New Rochelle, New York annulment trial of Leonard “Kip” Rhinelander and his wife, Alice Jones Rhinelander, was a much-publicized issue in the 1920s which highlighted white America’s definitions of race, class, and marriage. Alice Jones was the daughter of working-class English immigrants. Her mother … Read MoreLeonard “Kip” Rhinelander Trial (1925)
Angelo Herndon was the defendant in one of the most publicized and notorious legal cases of the 1930s. In 1932, nineteen-year-old Herndon was arrested under an obscure 19th century servile insurrection law for attempting to organize a peaceful demonstration of unemployed workers in Atlanta. Largely … Read MoreAngelo Herndon (1913-?)
On March 25, 1931, nine African Americans, ranging in age from thirteen to twenty-one, were arrested for allegedly raping two white women on board a train near Paint Rock, Alabama. An all-white jury quickly convicted the defendants on flimsy evidence, and eight of the nine … Read MoreScottsboro Case (1931-1950)
On August 14, 1944, African American soldiers “rioted” against Italian prisoners of war (POW) at Seattle’s Fort Lawton, an Army staging area for combat in the Pacific. American officers and POW’s under their guard were severely beaten. The next morning, one of the POW’s, Guglielmo … Read MoreFort Lawton (Seattle) “Riot” and POW Lynching, 1944
Joseph Sylvester Jackson became the first executive secretary of the newly founded Seattle Urban League when it received its charter from the national headquarters in New York in 1930. Little is known about Jackson before 1928. That year he graduated from Livingston College in Salisbury, … Read MoreJoseph Sylvester Jackson (?–?)
