From the desk of Rand Simmons

As a boy of 12 living in “whitebread” rural Oregon I was little aware of the significance of Wednesday, August 28, 1963. Today we celebrate the 50th anniversary of this significant moment in history most commonly know as the March on Washington.

National Public Radio’s Kat Chow wrote: “The summer of 1963 was bursting with drama and would become a pivotal moment of the Civil Rights movement. It was the year that Alabama governor George Wallace tried to block — physically and politically — two black students, James Hood and Vivian Malone Jones, from enrolling in the University of Alabama; the year Medgar Evers was shot and killed in his own driveway; and the same year that brought together more than 200,000 protesters for the March on Washington for better jobs and equal treatment.” Kat is leading a team who are replicating the events of 50 years ago in their @TodayIn1963 Twitter  site, http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2013/06/12/190680446/-todayin1963-captures-moments-from-a-historic-summer

Over 50 years ago Martin Luther King stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and gave his “I have a dream speech.” Thirty-six years after the speech ignited the nation, Congress issued as a supplement to a report Commemorating the “I Have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial : report (to accompany H.R. 2879) (including cost estimate of the Congressional Budget Office). The report is in our federal publications collection in both print and microfiche formats. (Because these will have to be retrieved for your use, please call ahead.)

The story is told from a Pacific Northwest perspective in The Facts the “official voice of the N.W. Black community.” The Facts is one of the many Washington State newspaper titles in our extensive Washington Newspaper Collection. Our issues run from 1962-1979 and are on microfilm. The August 30, 1963 paper (front page) reported:

“Seattle residents of all races joined together Wednesday in a Freedom March from 14th & Pike to the Federal Court House. Like the march on Washington, it was orderly and filled with religious tone.

Local leaders spoke to the crowd gathered on the Court House steps. One by one they spoke from the top of the steps with the background reading UNITED STATES COURT HOUSE.”

Father Lynch; Charles Johnson, Seattle NAACP President; State Representative Sam Smith; and Father Anton are shown in photographs. A short story with the headline, “Mixed Crowd Demonstrates for Equality: Negroes, Whites, Join in effort to Bring End to Discrimination” tells the story of the Washington march. “Packed elbow to elbow around the memorial, they heard their leaders call for Congress to pass laws to end all manner of racial discrimination and enable the unemployed to find dignified work with decent wages.”

The same issue’s editorial ends: “True, life has not been fair, but the statement of the unfairness is merely a shaky crutch upon which to support an empty argument. The Negro standing at a new starting mark in the history of his race will fail himself if he looks behind. He must look ahead to a life struggle in which he can now and at last compete on equal terms.”

The following week, September 6,The Facts carried an editorial, “Rights March Just a Start, Negroes Reminded” and speculated on the effect of the Washington march to speed up civil rights. “The top question in race relations today is whether the successful massive civil rights demonstration will speed establishment of an integrated society in America.”

From the desk of Judy Pitchford

The Puget Sound Dispatch, published in Seattle from 1871 to 1880, has been added to the Washington State Library’s Historic Washington Newspapers Online.

Published Weekly from 1871 to 1880, the newspaper was launched by Beriah Brown and Charles H. Larrabee in December 1871. Brown, who also served for one term as mayor of Seattle in 1878, was known to be a strongly opinionated editorialist. So much so, that it is sometimes hard to distinguish between his editorials and the articles he wrote about everyday local occurrences. Since the newspaper was published during what is sometimes called the “railroad period” in the Pacific Northwest, he had much to say about the railroads and their officials, a truly hot button issue of the day.  But, as noted by an essay at Historylink.org, he also had strong words for a group of white parents complaining about “colored” children taking classes at the university. Brown wrote in the January 29, 1874 Puget Sound Dispatch that “Every child of African descent born in this country has the same right of access to our public schools as the children of the most privileged of Caucassian [sic] blood. No teacher or school officer has any more legal right to exclude one than the other”. He was opinionated and ahead of his time. Brown was also noted for composing his articles as he set them in type, rather than first writing them down on paper. Financial difficulties forced Brown to sell the paper and it was merged with the Daily Intelligencer, which later became the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

The Historic Washington Newspapers Online  project was purposely designed for students, genealogists, and historians to easily access historical information. It provides viewers with the ability to search by keywords, dates, subjects, and personal names. To view the newspapers, please visit www.sos.wa.gov/history/newspapers.aspx.