Topic: Government & Politics
Randy Revelle, a third-generation Seattleite and King County Executive from 1981 to 1985, was born into a family with a tradition of public service and politics, a tradition he diligently tried to uph...
Norm Rice was elected mayor of Seattle in 1989 and served two four-year terms. He was the first African American to win the office and the first in the nation to govern a city that had an African Amer...
Al Rochester, a lifelong Seattle resident, was active in the Democratic Party, served on the Seattle City Council (1944-1956), and published The Seattlite. Rochester was the original advocate and foun...
Mary Lou Hanify was a teenager in 1937, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt visited Port Angeles to look at the wilderness area proposed for Olympic National Park. More than 30 years later, Hanify wr...
Albert D. Rosellini, governor of Washington state from 1956 to 1965, was born to Italian American immigrants in Tacoma on January 21, 1910. The family relocated to Seattle's Rainier Valley in 1916. De...
James Delmage (J. D.) Ross is known as the Father of Seattle City Light. A firm believer in the municipal ownership of power utilities, Ross helped design and build the power plant at Cedar Falls on t...
Bob Royer was one of Seattle's deputy mayors from 1978 to 1983, working closely with his brother Charley Royer (b. 1939), who served three terms as the city's mayor from 1978 to 1990. Their mayoral ar...
The careers of Charles T. ("Charley") Royer span journalism, politics, and civic activism -- sometimes independently and sometimes in concert. He served three four-year terms as mayor of Seattle, the ...
Bill Ruckelshaus played a wide and varied role in American political and agency history during the 1970s and 1980s. In 1970 he was nominated by President Richard Nixon (1913-1994) to become the first ...
John Henry Ryan and his wife Ella Ryan were two of the earliest African American business owners in Tacoma, where they owned and were the editors of The Forum, a weekly newspaper in the Tacoma area. A...
The San Juan County Land Bank was established in 1990 when county voters approved a new excise tax on real-estate sales to fund acquisition and stewardship of public lands. San Juan County, an archipe...
The "Pig War" is the name commonly given to the 13-year standoff between the American Army and British Royal Navy on San Juan Island that began in the summer of 1859 after an American settler shot a B...
The military confrontation between the United States and Great Britain over the San Juan Islands known as the "Pig War" lasted for 13 years from the shooting of the pig in 1859 until its belated but p...
Bob Santos (1934-2016), born and raised in Seattle's Chinatown-International District, spent most of his life as an activist in his old neighborhood -- saving it, nurturing it, defending it against ou...
Paul Schell was a politician, attorney, developer, and urban planner who helped guide Seattle's transformation from a medium-sized city into a vibrant metropolis. Born, raised, and educated in Iowa be...
The Port of Seattle built Seattle-Tacoma International Airport during World War II to relieve pressure on existing airports such as Seattle's Boeing Field. Following the war, Sea-Tac quickly establish...
Seattle's waterfront is a natural location for an aquarium, and proposals to build one go back many years, though it wasn't until a Forward Thrust bond issue was approved in 1968 that funds were alloc...
The Seattle Arts Commission was formed in 1971. The commission evolved out of the Municipal Arts Commission, founded in 1955 with the aim of integrating artistic experiences into Seattleites' daily li...
Since the City of Seattle was incorporated in 1869, city government has occupied various spaces, beginning with rented facilities all over town. Seattle's first City Hall, built in 1882, was located a...
The Seattle General Strike began at 10 a.m. on February 6, 1919, and paralyzed the city for five days. Never before had the nation seen a labor action of this kind. Many in Seattle were expecting revo...
The Seattle Housing Authority (SHA) was established in 1939 during the waning days of the Great Depression. It was inspired by New Deal legislation and brought to life largely through the tireless eff...
The 1960s brought a renaissance of sorts for the Seattle Housing Authority (SHA), which had been established in 1939 and endured bleak years during the 1950s. In the Sixties different forms of federal...
The Seattle Housing Authority (SHA) was founded in 1939 as part of a federal program to clear slums and create jobs by building housing for the poor. After the United States entered World War II, the ...
In this interview, former Seattle mayor Charles Royer (b. 1939) discusses the housing crisis that faced older residents of Seattle in the early 1980s, and how the City of Seattle and the Seattle Housi...