Topic: Government & Politics
This is an excerpt from a HistoryLink interview by Heather MacIntosh with Dotty DeCoster in April 2000. DeCoster was an outspoken member of the Women's Movement in the late 1960s and 1970s in Seattle....
During the 1950s and 1960s, Charles O. "Chuck" Carroll was, arguably, the most powerful man in Seattle and King County. As King County Prosecutor he was the effective head of all law enforcement in th...
Horace Cayton was the African American publisher of the Seattle Republican, a newspaper directed toward both white and black readers and which at one point had the second largest circulation in the ci...
Roger Martinsen (b. 1936) was born in Seattle and attended Roosevelt High School and the University of Washington, graduating in 1958. After three and a half years serving in the United States Navy, M...
Glyn Chandler (1926-1990) was 20 when he and his new bride relocated from Arkansas to Wenatchee and Chandler began a successful business career. Twelve years later he and his growing family moved to M...
James E. Chase was a popular and respected Spokane civic leader who went from shoe-shiner to the first African American mayor in Spokane's history. He was born in Wharton, Texas, in 1914, to a poor fa...
A broad-based citizen-activist movement spearheaded the numerous political and social changes that took place in Seattle during the 1960s and 1970s. Although many organizations participated, this acco...
A broad-based citizen-activist movement spearheaded the numerous political and social changes that took place in Seattle during the 1960s and 1970s. Although many organizations participated, this acco...
Ruby Chow was dubbed a "living legend" (Rhodes) for her 50-year career as a restaurateur, Chinese community pioneer, civic activist, public official, and a major bridge between Seattle's Chinese commu...
The first Washington state elected official to make national history in a crusade against cigarettes was not Attorney General Christine Gregoire, who brokered a settlement between the tobacco industry...
City Light, Seattle's publicly owned electric utility, began to take shape in 1902, when voters approved bonds for a hydroelectric dam on the Cedar River. The project, completed in 1905, was a direct ...
The City of Seattle’s civic art collection was founded on monuments to great men, but soon expanded to include symbolic works, works that embraced the modernism of the twentieth century, works t...
The City of Seattle’s civic art collection was founded on monuments to great men, but soon expanded to include symbolic works, works that embraced twentieth century modernism, works that explore...
In January 1944, Mayor William F. Devin (1898-1982), who was Seattle's mayor from 1942-1952, formed Seattle's Civic Unity Committee to manage and assuage growing fears of racial violence. Riots in Det...
Gordon Clinton served as the mayor of Seattle more than a half century ago, but he helped lay the groundwork for the city that exists today. During his eight years in office, Seattle adopted its first...
The Columbia River Treaty, signed in 1961 and ratified in 1964, was a landmark event in the joint U.S.-Canadian possession of the Columbia River. Yet for most of the river's vast history, the notion o...
The Columbia River Basin encompasses nearly 700,000 square miles in the United States and Canada. The river's main stem and several of its tributaries have their headwaters in eastern British Columbia...
Canada and the United States initially signed the Columbia River Treaty in 1961. At first glance, the treaty seems straightforward, as its formal title suggests: "Treaty Between Canada and the United ...
This is a complete historical list of the Washington territorial and state delegations to the United States Congress, currrent through 2021. Washington Territory was created on March 2, 1853, and the ...
Dow Constantine, active in politics from a young age, first won elective office -- a seat in the Washington State Legislature -- in 1996. He served on the King County Council from 2002 until 2009, whe...
Samuel Cosgrove served as Washington's sixth governor for two months between January and March 1909. Seriously ill with Bright's disease – persistent kidney inflammation that today is known as g...
George Fletcher Cotterill served Seattle and the state of Washington for more than 40 years as a civil servant and elected official. He advocated woman suffrage, parks, port districts, Prohibition, an...
Establishing a water system for the residents of Friday Harbor on San Juan Island was a topic of discussion as soon as the town was incorporated in 1909, but it took five years to complete a system. S...
On August 5, 1968, Washington Governor Dan Evans delivered the keynote address at the Republican National Convention in Miami Beach, Florida. Evans, then 42 and a relative newcomer to national politic...