On August 6, 1945, Private First Class Malvin L. Brown was killed after falling 140 feet during a “let-down” from a tree while fighting a forest fire in the Umpqua National Forest in southern Oregon. Brown was the first smokejumper to die while fighting a … Read More555th Parachute Infantry Battalion [Triple Nickles] (1944-1947)
In the article below, Syracuse University historian Herbert Ruffin explores the rapid rise of the Black Lives Matter Movement in 2013 as the most recent development in the ongoing struggle for racial and social justice in the United States. In the summer of 2013, three … Read MoreBlack Lives Matter: The Growth of a New Social Justice Movement
“Image Ownership: Public Domain” Businessman, educator, community leader, and political activist Herman McKinney was born on October 2, 1938 in Klamichi, Oklahoma to Herman L. and Ozella (Harris) McKinney. His family moved to Vancouver, Washington when Herman was young child. His family was part … Read MoreHerman McKinney (1938-2014)
Letitia Carson was born enslaved in Kentucky sometime between 1814 and 1818. Little is known of her early life or how she got to Missouri at some point before 1845. In May 1845, Letitia began a 6-month journey on the Oregon Trail with Irish immigrant … Read MoreLetitia Carson (ca.1814-1888)
“Image Ownership:CTC96” Fitzgerald Redd Beaver was a mid-and late 20th century media entrepreneur in the Pacific Northwest. He was the founder and publisher of The Facts, one of the two major black newspapers in Seattle, Washington since the 1960s. Building on a long tradition of … Read MoreFitzgerald Redd Beaver (Fitz) (1922–1992)
African American artist and dancer Thelma Johnson Streat was born in Yakima, Washington on August 29, 1912, the second of Gertrude Beatrice Carson and James A. Johnson’s five children. Streat’s artistic ability was evident at a young age. She graduated from Washington High School in … Read MoreThelma Beatrice Johnson Streat (1912-1959)
“Image Ownership: Public Domain” Samuel Eugene Kelly, soldier and educator, was born in Greenwich, Connecticut on January 26, 1926 to James Handy Kelly, a minister, and Essie Matilda Allen-Kelly, a homemaker. Educated at Greenwich public schools, Kelly dropped out of high school in 1943 and … Read MoreSamuel Eugene Kelly (1926-2009)
Grafton Tyler Brown, the most successful African American artist in the 19th Century west, lived his adult life as a white man. This says more about America’s racial structure than it does about his choice to pass for white. Brown was born on February 22, … Read MoreGrafton Tyler Brown (1841-1918)
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
Bethel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church is the oldest continuously operating black church in Portland, Oregon. It was founded by 20 people in 1889 in the home of Phillip Jenkins and organized under its current name. Its first pastor was Reverend S.S. Freeman who was … Read MoreBethel African Methodist Episcopal Church (1889- )
