Primary Documents: (Slip Opinion) December 4, 2006, Argued June 28, 2007, * Decided SYLLABUS: Respondent school districts voluntarily adopted student assignment plans that rely on race to determine which schools certain children may attend. The Seattle district, which has never operated legally segregated schools or … Read More(2007) Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1
Green Fields, former Seattle City employee, early African American resident of the Queen Anne Neighborhood in Seattle, and soldier with the U.S. Colored Troops during the Civil War, was born a slave in DeSoto, Mississippi, the son of Fannie Jackson and Richard Fields. In 1864 … Read MoreGreen Fields (1840-1914)
In 1849 the U.S. Army established its first military post in the Pacific Northwest at Vancouver, Washington. Known varyingly as Columbia Barracks, Fort Vancouver, and, since 1879, Vancouver Barracks, the post played a leading role in major military actions in the nineteenth century American West, … Read MoreBuffalo Soldiers at Vancouver, Washington Barracks (1899-1900)
Camp George Jordan was a United States Army facility established in Seattle, Washington, during World War II. It was generally known as a Black army camp, because it was segregated in such a way that the African Americans were housed on one side of the … Read MoreCamp George Jordan
Born in Indianapolis, Indiana, in March 1860, Charles Henry Harvey was the youngest of nineteen children of Albert and Elsy (Brewer) Harvey. Albert and Elsy were married on Valentine’s Day in 1839 in Halifax County, North Carolina, where their first child, Jesse, was born a … Read MoreCharles Harvey (1860-1937)
The endowment named in honor of V Ethel Willis White is unusual in that the person honored was not a wealthy woman in the usual sense of the word. Instead V Ethel Willis White’s wealth derived from her inspiration to others. White began life in … Read MoreV. Ethel Willis White (1920-2003)
On July 18, 1988, Charles Z. Smith became the first African American to serve on the Washington Supreme Court. He was appointed to the court by Washington’s then Governor Booth Gardner and was subsequently elected to his position on the court for a two-year term … Read MoreCharles Z. Smith (1927-2016)
Seattle-based civil rights activist, labor leader, and lay Catholic leader Walter Hubbard envisioned a church and world without racism and worked his entire life to achieve that vision. Hubbard was born in New Orleans in 1924. He received little formal education but acquired extensive knowledge … Read MoreWalter Hubbard Jr. (1924-2007)
Emmett B. Reed was born in Virginia but moved at age 16 to work in the coal mines of British Columbia. Within 10 years he had become a licensed minister, and in 1919 was called to pastor Calvary Baptist Church of Spokane, beginning a tenure … Read MoreEmmett B. Reed (1878-1961)
The black presence in Alaska has been severely under recorded. This is particularly the case for the role of African American women. One of the most remarkable black leaders was Blanche Louise Preston McSmith, a native of Marshall, Texas, who, like the majority of African … Read MoreBlanche McSmith (1920-2006)
