I vaguely remember what I learned about in my standard seventh-grade Washington state history class: the homesteading movement, the Oregon territories, a sanitized version of local tribal history and the logging industry. While I am positive there was much more in the curriculum, I do distinctly remember one looming question: Where were all the Black people?
As the grandchild of Southern sharecroppers who moved to Seattle during the Great Migration and daughter of a former WSU football player, I’ve often wondered about the 20th-century history of Black Pacific Northwesterners. The answers were found, I thought, only in bits and pieces of the Central District, living rooms with plastic-covered sofas and oral histories by community activists. That’s what I believed until I was presented with the opportunity to read “Washington State Rising: Black Power on Campus in the Pacific Northwest” by Marc Arsell Robinson.
Robinson’s in-depth history of the Black Power movement in the Pacific Northwest under the landscape of the ’60s is nothing short of a revelation. Specifically, “Washington State Rising” focuses on Black Student Unions (BSU) at the University of Washington (UW) and Washington State University (WSU). Even as a Black Seattleite with deep ties to the area, I was consistently amazed by the information gleaned from the book’s 209 pages.
Washington, especially the Seattle area, is often touted as the utopian liberal North, where all can succeed on their own merits, free of discrimination. This claim is made now, as it often was back in the 1960s as well. Washington didn’t have Jim Crow laws, but as Black Americans moved to Seattle and exponentially grew their percentage of the population, they were presented with the stark reality that Jim Crow was still in practice.
Seattleites are often quick to claim that racism and discrimination are prominent in Eastern Washington but that King County is a haven. This is not the case. As Robinson details, Seattle schools and businesses were forced to integrate. Although Seattle didn’t have the “Little Rock Nine” or Ruby Bridges, we did have students who were part of the Voluntary Racial Transfer program, which began on Aug. 28, 1963 — the same day Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech. This program was meant to help foster integration, although Seattle Public Schools would not provide transportation to the few students willing to help integrate.
While Seattle — and by extension Washington — had a more liberal start than our Southern counterparts, the same issues of racism pervaded and had an effect on Black liberation in the Pacific Northwest. The work Black students did at local universities, high schools and even middle schools between 1967 and 1970 set the path for improving life for the state’s Black population, including my father, who attended WSU and was part of the then brand-new Black Greek life, and myself, whose participation in the Seattle University BSU was only possible because of the work UW’s BSU did from 1968 to 1970 to start similar groups in Seattle area schools.
Robinson writes about how the primary founders of UW’s BSU didn’t have a familial background in activism but instead became radicalized by discrimination on campus, lack of access and the larger cultural events happening across the nation. This upbringing is opposite of their fellow BSU at WSU; many of those founding members came from the South and Midwest, where direct action and activism were much more visible.
At UW, the BSU had the benefit of a larger liberal city where members could focus their community organizing on the Central District and “High Point,” now better known as West Seattle. They reached out to the students and parents at Garfield, Franklin, Cleveland and Chief Sealth High Schools, as well as Meany and Washington Middle Schools. UW’s BSU also made BIPOC liberation a core part of its mission, finding solidarity among Indigenous and Chicano students in particular. The UW BSU organized a large sit-in at then-president Charles Odegaard’s office, a catalyst event for what is now the Office of Multicultural Affairs at the school.
Over in Pullman, a Black student body in the dozens and a white, conservative county meant students had to rely heavily on each other and the supportive — but new — WSU president. The close-knit nature of Black WSU students may also have contributed to the Black WSU football players joining their protests. Due to financial aid being tied to the university, many Black athletes at American universities could not safely participate in activism on campus, which makes the 1968 Cougar football team doing so a rare occurrence.
Robinson is incredibly skilled in his retelling of the trials and tribulations students faced at both universities against the backdrop of the larger Black Power movement. Taking incredibly dense nonfiction material, he skillfully paints a picture for those who would pretend that Washington has always been a harmonious state free of protests. The attitude of the white population in the 1960s is similar to what many white people expressed in the wake of Black Lives Matter and C.H.O.P. The same narratives have been recycled, with the same intention of dismissing the experiences of Black Washingtonians.
The common, public story of a liberal Washington has done us all a disservice by allowing the real history to go untaught in our schools. By erasing the racism and discrimination that was prevalent toward the Black communities, the public account also erases the incredible work young Black people did to improve the lives of generations to come. In school, we learn white patrons stubbed their cigarettes out on peaceful protesters at the Greensboro, North Carolina, sit-in — but not that, five hours from Seattle, college students in Pullman threw cigarette butts onto Black students visiting from Franklin and Garfield High Schools.
Although the Black community may no longer be confined to a few blocks of the Central District [see page 6], the combination of NIMBYs and gentrification have driven our communities of color into South Seattle and further into South King County. Even as Seattle Public Schools faces a deficit in the millions for the 2024-25 school year, displacement is forcing some of these same schools to lose their Title I funding, which directly helps the Black students UW’s BSU advocated for.
What struck me most as I read “Washington State Rising” was how the demands the UW and WSU BSUs had in the 1960s are nearly the same as those students have today, just set in a different millennium. Students are still asking to be involved in decision-making processes, for schools to include BIPOC narratives in academia, to have Black voices present at every level of the institution and to have funds to serve the community.
Respectability politics abound in Washington, including in Seattle. Protests are only supported if they are convenient. The comments of any Facebook post are riddled with violent threats whenever a rally stops I-5 traffic in the downtown corridor, while the commenters claim they would have supported Dr. King during the Selma protests, sometimes even sharing photos of him walking across the road arm-in-arm with other civil rights activists.
To those folks, I believe Robinson included the perfect quote from UW BSU student and activist Larry Gossett: “Our militancy is entirely dependent on the white reaction to the concrete proposals that we make. It’s the white communities’ responsibility.” In the eyes of many people, inequality and state-sanctioned violence are more convenient than having their commute impeded.
Similar to the way Washington has turned a blind eye to the history of activism and protests led by Black youth, many Seattleites would rather pretend problems like racial inequality don’t exist today. “Washington State Rising” shines a light on the past, so that it can hopefully light our way forward.
There is no way to do “Washington State Rising” service in a review — it can and should be read in every classroom in the state.
Leinani Lucas is an Indigenous and Black writer from the Pacific Northwest. She can be found on Twitter @LeinaniLucas
Read more of the Feb. 28–March 5, 2023 issue.