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Topic: Black Americans

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King, Marjorie Edwina Pitter (1921-1996)

Marjorie Edwina Pitter King was the first African American woman to serve as a Washington State legislator and was one of the state's earliest African American businesswomen. For nearly 50 years she o...

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Kirk, Priscilla Maunder: An Oral History

Priscilla Maunder Kirk (1898-1992), an African American Seattleite, was born on August 9, 1898, in Seattle. In 1919 she moved to Montana with her husband, where she lived until 1929. She also lived in...

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Lavizzo, Dr. Blanche Sellers (1925-1984)

Dr. Blanche Sellers Lavizzo was the first African American woman pediatrician in the state of Washington. She arrived in Seattle in July 1956 and began her pediatric practice on East Madison Street an...

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Lawrence, Jacob (1917-2000) and Gwendolyn Knight (1913-2005)

Jacob Lawrence and Gwendolyn Knight, two of the country's preeminent visual artists, moved to Seattle in 1971 when he accepted a teaching position in University of Washington's art department. The two...

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Lawson, Walter Vernon (1926-1982)

Walter Vernon Lawson was the first African American police officer in the Seattle Department to be promoted to Sergeant (July 1964). He went on to become Seattle's first African American police Lieute...

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Leonard Gayton Family

This People's History relates the history of the Leonard Gayton family. The jazz drummer, jazz singer, and band leader Leonard Gayton (1908-1982) was the fourth child of the early African American res...

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Lewis, Dave (1938-1998)

Dave Lewis was the singularly most significant figure on the Pacific Northwest's nascent rhythm & blues scene in the 1950s and 1960s. By 1955 he'd helped found Seattle's first notable teenage doo-...

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Locke, Hubert (1934-2018)

Hubert Gaylord Locke was a longtime professor and administrator at the University of Washington, where he served for five years as dean of the School of Public Affairs. Locke was a moral leader, an au...

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Lopes, Manuel (1812-?)

Manuel Lopes arrived in Seattle in 1852, and operated a barbershop equipped with the first barber chair to be brought around Cape Horn. He was Seattle's first black resident, businessman, and property...

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Madrona Memories, Part 1

This people's history recalls life and society in Seattle's Madrona neighborhood in the 1960s and 1970s. The main author is Carol Richman, and this segment also includes reflections by Mary Kenny and ...

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Mandatory Busing in Seattle: Memories of a Bumpy Ride

Jovelyn Agbalog (b. 1969) and Linnea Tate Rodriguez (b. 1969) were in grade school when the Seattle School Board implemented mandatory, cross-town busing in the interests of racial integration in 1978...

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Mann, Dorothy, Ph.D.

Dorothy Holland Mann, a public health expert, consumer advocate, and civic activist, arrived in Seattle in 1979 as Regional Health Administrator for Region X (Washington, Idaho, Alaska, Oregon) of the...

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Mary Mahoney Professional Nurses Organization (Seattle)

On July 9, 1949, there were 13 African American registered nurses in Seattle and it was on this day that they were called together at the home of Anne Foy Baker to form the Mary Mahoney Registered Nur...

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Mason, Dawn Taylor (b. 1945)

Democrat Dawn Mason served in the Washington State House of Representatives from 1995 to 1999, representing the 37th District encompassing much of Central and Southeast Seattle. She was assistant mino...

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Maxey, Carl (1924-1997)

Carl Maxey was Spokane's first prominent black attorney and an influential and controversial civil-rights leader. He was born in 1924 in Tacoma and raised as an orphan in Spokane. He overcame an almos...

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Maxie, Peggy (b. 1936)

Peggy Joan Maxie was the first African American woman to be elected to the Washington State House of Representatives. As a Representative from the 37th District in Seattle she served for six consecuti...

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McAdoo, Benjamin (1920-1981)

Benjamin F. McAdoo was the first African American architect to maintain a practice in the state of Washington. He was a local civic leader and national advocate for the advancement of low-cost housing...

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McElroy, Colleen J. (b. 1935)

Before she was an internationally acclaimed poet, Colleen J. McElroy was a speech pathologist. In 1970, living in the Midwest, in landlocked Kansas, and the single mother of two young children, she wa...

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McKinney, Samuel Berry (1926-2018)

Reverend Samuel Berry McKinney served as pastor of Seattle's Mount Zion Baptist Church from 1958 until his retirement in 1998 and provided the longest continuous pastorship in the history of the churc...

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Merceedees (1913-2000)

Seattle was graced throughout the 1950s by the presence of an extremely elegant and popular local chanteuse who billed herself simply as "Merceedees." Born Mercedes Welcker, she was a piano-playing Ch...

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Miller, Dr. Earl V. (1923-2005)

Dr. Earl V. Miller was the first African American urologist in Washington and the first west of the Mississippi. He was also a civil rights activist, and was honored in 1989 by the Black Heritage Soci...

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Miller, Dr. Rosalie Reddick (1925-2005)

Dr. Rosalie Reddick Miller was the first African American woman dentist to practice in the State of Washington. She arrived in Seattle with her husband, Dr. Earl V. Miller, the first black urologist i...

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Mimms, Maxine Buie (b. 1928)

Dr. Maxine Mimms, best known for founding the Tacoma Campus of The Evergreen State College, worked as a teacher, social worker, educator, administrator, trainer, professor, mentor, consultant, public ...

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Moss, Harold G. (1929-2020)

Harold Gene Moss was the first African American member of both the Tacoma City Council and the Pierce County Council, and Tacoma's first African American mayor. He became active in the civil-rights mo...

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