In the extended article that appears below historians Daudi Abe and Quintard Taylor explore the history of African Americans in King County from 1858 to 2014. They analyze the forces which encouraged people of African ancestry to settle in the county and discuss the rapid … Read MoreFrom Memphis and Mogadishu: The History of African Americans in King County, Washington, 1858-2014
The Black Arts Movement was the name given to a group of politically motivated black poets, artists, dramatists, musicians, and writers who emerged in the wake of the Black Power Movement. The poet Imamu Amiri Baraka is widely considered to be the father of the … Read MoreThe Black Arts Movement (1965-1975)
COINTELPRO was a counterintelligence program run by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from roughly 1956 to 1976. It combined the efforts of the Bureau and local police forces to track, harass, discredit, infiltrate, destroy, and destabilize dissident groups in the United States. COINTELPRO targeted … Read MoreCOINTELPRO [Counterintelligence Program] (1956-1976)
Assata Olugbala Shakur—political activist, author, fugitive, and step-aunt of the famed, slain hip-hop artist Tupac Shakur—was born JoAnne Deborah Bryon on July 16, 1947 in New York City, New York. Following her parents’ divorce in 1950, she moved with her mother and maternal grandparents to … Read MoreAssata Olugbala Shakur (1947- )
Angela Davis, activist, educator, and scholar, was born on January 26, 1944, in the “Dynamite Hill” area of Birmingham, Alabama. The area received that name because so many African American homes in this middle class neighborhood had been bombed over the years by the Ku … Read MoreAngela Davis (1944-)
In 1966, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale created the Black Panther Party for Self Defense to address police oppression of blacks in Oakland, California. Because community members also turned to the Panthers for help with economic and social problems like job discrimination and evictions, the Panthers started community services in 1969 … Read MoreBlack Panther Party’s Free Breakfast Program (1969-1980)
Eldridge Cleaver, author and civil rights activist, was born on August 31, 1935 in Wabbaseka, Arkansas. Cleaver, a child of six, lived in a household where his father abused his mother. The Cleavers moved to Phoenix, Arizona and finally settled in Los Angeles, California where … Read MoreEldridge Cleaver (1935-1998)
Lyle Quasim, born Lyle Rogers in Chicago in 1943, has held leadership positions in public health and administration in Tacoma, Pierce County, and the state of Washington. In 1995 he became the first African American to head Washington’s Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS). … Read MoreLyle Quasim (1943- )
Fred Hampton, deputy chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party, was born on August 30, 1948 and raised in the Chicago suburb of Maywood, Illinois. In high school he excelled in academics and athletics. After Hampton graduated from high school, he enrolled … Read MoreFred Hampton (1948-1969)
Bobby Lee Rush was born in Albany, Georgia on November 23, 1946. He graduated from Marshall High School in that city at the age of seventeen and soon afterwards enlisted in the United States Army. Rush served in the Army from 1963 to 1968 when … Read MoreBobby L. Rush (1946- )
