Food & Drink
This Week Then: Celebrating Black History Month in Washington
Plus: How King County got its name
By Alan Stein February 21, 2019
This story was originally published at HistoryLink.org. Subscribe to their weekly newsletter.
Firsts of the Month
February is Black History Month, and this week HistoryLink notes some of Washington’s many African American “firsts.” We begin with George W. Bush and his family, who in 1845 were among the first Americans to settle north of the Columbia River, in what is now Thurston County. Seven years later, Manuel Lopes became Seattle’s first black citizen and businessman, and in 1883, John Conna moved to Federal Way and would later become Washington Territory’s first black political appointee.
Long before Seattle hired its first black teachers, Kitsap County hired Jane A. Ruley in 1897, the same year that Mary B. Mason became the first black woman to seek her fortune in the Klondike gold rush. In 1899 the University of Washington School of Law admitted William McDonald Austin, who would become its first black graduate.
In 1913 Seattle got its first national civil rights organization with the founding of an NAACP branch. In 1939 Yesler Terrace received federal funding and would become the first racially integrated public housing in the United States, and in 1942 Florise Spearman was hired by Boeing, its first African American employee. In 1950 Charles Stokes became the first black legislator from King County, and Zoë Dusanne opened Seattle’s first professional modern-art gallery. In 1971 Carl Gipson was the first African American elected to Everett’s city council, and in 1975 the Roslyn city council appointed William Craven as the state’s first black mayor. Norm Rice was elected Seattle’s first African American mayor in 1989, and in 1994 Harold Moss was appointed the first African American mayor of Tacoma.
In 1954 John Prim was appointed Washington’s first African American judge, and in 1963 Carver Clark Gayton became the first black F.B.I. agent from the state. Carl Maxey was Spokane’s first black attorney and Benjamin F. McAdoo was the first African American architect to maintain a practice in Washington. Dorothy Hollingsworth was the first African American woman in the state to serve on a school board, Dr. Earl V. Miller was the first African American urologist west of the Mississippi, Dr. Rosalie Reddick Miller was the first African American woman dentist to practice in Washington, and Dr. Blanche Lavizzo was the state’s first African American woman pediatrician.
Changing the Name
King County was originally named in 1852 for William Rufus DeVane King, an Alabama slave owner who died days after being sworn in as vice president in 1853. More than a century later, King County councilmen Ron Sims and Bruce Laing argued that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would make a better eponym.
Their colleagues agreed on February 24, 1986, but in 1999, when councilmember Larry Gossett moved to replace the county’s crown logo with an image of Dr. King, it was noted that only the state legislature had the power to rename a county. The county resolution was later affirmed by the legislature and signed into law in 2005 by Governor Christine Gregoire as one of her first official acts.
NEWS THEN, HISTORY NOW
Wide Streets
On February 23, 1869, Waitsburg was platted around a gristmill built by Sylvester M. Wait. And on February 24, 1893, the first plat was filed for Monte Cristo in Snohomish County. The town enjoyed a brief mining boom, but flooding soon compromised access, eventually turning it into a ghost town.
Tall Trees
On February 22, 1897, President Grover Cleveland proclaimed more than two thirds of the Olympic Peninsula as the Olympic Forest Reserve. Forty years later President Franklin Roosevelt toured the area, which led to the creation of Olympic National Park.
Big Projects
On February 22, 1932, the George Washington Memorial Bridge was dedicated in Seattle, extending Aurora Avenue over Lake Union. And 50 years ago this week, on February 21, 1969, the initial phase of the Lower Monumental Dam was completed in Franklin County.
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