Quin\u2019Nita Cobbins-Modica: Washington State, in the popular imagination, is seen as this racially progressive\u2014and subsequently exceptional\u2014place. What I mean by that is that it\u2019s seen as being more racially tolerant, without much of the racial issues that other cities may have experienced. This is due, in part, to its early civil rights laws that were on the books in the late nineteenth century: collectively, Black men and women, especially by 1910, could vote unencumbered. For Black people, there were not really any legalized forms of segregation or profound instances of racial violence\u2014to a degree.<\/p>\n
At the same time, there did exist, of course, laws and legal barriers for Indigenous groups and Asian American groups, especially the Chinese\u2014both of whom experienced varying forms of racial violence and vitriol. Even in the absence of legal barriers for Black residents, there has always been a color line, or Jim Crowism that existed in the state. In that sense, it doesn\u2019t make Washington State that different from other parts of the U.S.<\/p>\n
I complicate this idea, or myth, of Washington being exceptional through the examination of Black women\u2019s activism, and to understand the ways they consistently fought against what we call de facto racial segregation. De facto segregation is discrimination by custom and practice. It\u2019s not necessarily something that\u2019s legalized. Whereas de jure is legalized, which is what you would find in the American South.<\/p>\n
I explore how Black women exposed and challenged this color and gender line on multiple fronts: particularly in housing, education, and employment. Essentially, by the 1960s, they understood that their perceived relative freedoms in the state (and what I mean by \u201crelative freedom\u201d is the absence of the legal barriers, with the exception of racial covenants) were precarious. They had to be vigilant in advancing Black freedom and expanding women\u2019s rights against the forces that sought to undermine their humanity and citizenship.<\/p>\n
In a letter written to Dr. King, one of the women I highlight drove home this point. She drew a connection between Black struggles here and Black struggles in the South. She argued against the notion that Black people have an exceptional life in Washington. They encountered covert forms of oppression and, quite frankly, were not free at all, because she recognized that Black freedom in the PNW was tied up with the freedom\u2014 or unfreedom\u2014of those in the Jim Crow South. They did not deal with racial violence, per se, but they dealt with high unemployment rates, residential segregation, school segregation, and other societal barriers throughout the state. She contended that Black Pacific Northwesterners, collectively, were feeling the weight of oppression and white supremacy that was having the same impact on Black life here.<\/p>\n
“Many people often associate the civil rights movement as a Southern phenomenon and are unaware that a movement existed here in Washington State. It was indeed a nationwide movement.”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
What did the activism of Black women look like in the height of the civil rights movement?<\/strong><\/p>\n
We can start with the 1940s when we began to see a surge in Black activism due to wartime migration. Black women were involved in concerted efforts and campaigns to challenge racial discrimination and segregation here in Washington State\u2014one of them being employment discrimination. You have groups of women representing different organizations, such as the Seattle Ladies\u2019 Auxiliary of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters [a labor union founded to improve the working conditions of those employed by the Pullman Company]; also, women in the NAACP [Women in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People]; the Association of Colored Women\u2019s Clubs, and to a certain degree women in the Urban League. They all fought to secure a fair employment practices law [the Washington State Law Against Employment Discrimination], which was one of the first in the nation to ban racial discrimination in employment. That occurred in 1949.<\/p>\n
A law is only effective if it\u2019s enforced. Even though the Fair Employment Practices law banned racial discrimination in employment and had a provision that established a state board against discrimination, it was somewhat ineffective. Black women had to continue to fight for the enforcement of these laws in the 1950s. By the time we get to the 1960s, many joined new organizations such as CORE [Congress of Racial Equality], where they engaged in non-violent direct action campaigns and strategies borrowed from the Southern movement. Many women went out to stores to fight head-on with those businesses that wouldn\u2019t hire Black folks. They worked through negotiation, boycotting, and picketing in order to force private businesses\u2014like Nordstrom, the Bon Marche, and Safeway\u2014to hire African American workers. Over two dozen Black employees, for example, were hired because of that direct action campaign (this was in 1962), but that was just a small victory in changing that social policy.<\/p>\n
Another example is women organizing, again through CORE, the NAACP, and the Urban League to eradicate housing and residential discrimination. For instance, they fought to get an open and fair housing policy passed through the Seattle City Council. Vivian Caver set up human rights councils in a number of white neighborhoods in King County to try to win white support for fair housing legislation. She would go on to head the Seattle Human Rights Department in 1975. Women\u2019s efforts in helping to drive those campaigns led the Seattle City Council in 1968 to pass a housing ordinance that prohibited unfair and discriminatory housing practices. This also came at the same time Congress passed a federal act to ban housing discrimination across the nation.<\/p>\n
Another profound area of activism was education. Again, Black women\u2014through the NAACP, CORE, and other organizations\u2014banded under the leadership of E. June Smith, president of the Seattle NAACP between 1963 and 1968. She helped lead a two-day boycott of the Seattle Public Schools in 1966 because of the school board\u2019s inaction to integrate the public schools. Due to the ongoing education demands, by 1978, the Seattle School Board instituted a voluntary desegregation plan without a court order\u2013which remains controversial. Many community members, especially Black mothers and parents, didn\u2019t particularly like the fact that their children were being bussed to white schools, nor did they support the closure of their neighborhood schools, which exacerbated the internal conflicts within the community on the direction of the civil rights agenda. For the most part, though, Black residents were very much committed to desegregating the school system, eradicating racial inequities, supporting the hiring of Black educators and administrators, and ensuring that their children received a quality education.<\/p>\n
Was your focus more on groups of women activists or did you look at individuals?<\/strong><\/p>\n
I\u2019m looking at both individual and collective efforts by Black women. Women helped to devise strategies, disseminated information, gave speeches, wrote correspondence, picketed, boycotted, facilitated meetings, and provided leadership and resources to the many organizations. They often held multiple memberships. So, I\u2019m interested in women who worked through organizations and also those who worked independent of them as well. They did not all necessarily agree on strategy, method, or even what issues to prioritize.<\/p>\n
Like the woman who wrote the letter to Dr. King. What was her name?<\/strong><\/p>\n
Yes, that\u2019s where I begin the talk to frame the discussion. Her name is Freddie Mae Gautier. She was a Seattleite and, at that time, a clerk in the King County Sheriff \u2019s Office. She was also a very respected community organizer and helped co-found the Western chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, founded by King and a cohort of Black ministers in the South. She was also a founder of the Benefit Guild, which emerged in the aftermath of the 1963 Birmingham church bombing that killed the four little girls. They raised money for the families.<\/p>\n
In her letter, she urges King to come to Seattle, to the Pacific Northwest. She clearly outlines the conditions and the specific grievances that Black people are facing here: she says, essentially, \u201cWe\u2019re having some of the same problems that exist in the South, but a lot of people can be complacent here. We need you to come.\u201d She was very much concerned with Black women who were on the front lines in the South\u2014because, she said, we are also ready to act, and we\u2019re going to be on the front lines as well of this movement for justice.<\/p>\n
She\u2019s just one of the individual women I mention. I focus on others: Vivian Caver, who worked with the Urban League and held workshops to teach and encourage white residents about the importance of supporting open housing legislation; and E. June Smith, who was arguably one of the most visible Black women leaders at the forefront of the movement.<\/p>\n
Another person I highlight is Roberta Byrd Barr, who was an educator in the Seattle Public Schools. She also ran a television program called Face to Face to address the racial issues Black people were experiencing in this city and in the state. In the height of the [Seattle Public Schools] boycott, she invited members of the school board to engage in a public discussion around school integration. She also traveled the state advocating for Black history and designing culturally responsive curricula for teachers to implement in their classrooms. She believed there needed to be intensive training for educators in relating to students of color and Black students\u2014as the school districts underwent significant changes to address school integration and the push for bussing.<\/p>\n
Those are just four of the six or seven women I highlight in the talk. Of course, there are more!<\/p>\n
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