The untold story of Seattle’s racist mayor *AA Group*
Knute Berger - 2015.08.12
Portrait of frontier journalist and Seattle mayor Beriah Brown and his wife Jeanie taken at E. F. Dollarhide’s Seattle studio in the 1870s. Credit: Brown Family Papers Collection, University oF Washington, Neg # 36689
The legacy of the Civil War is in the news. The debate over the Confederate flag in South Carolina brought up reminders that the rebel banner flies along I-5 in Washington in a private park dedicated to Jefferson Davis. A Confederate veteran’s memorial on Capitol Hill has been vandalized and a local group is calling for its removal. One hundred and fifty years after the war’s end, we are learning that our region was not untouched by the conflict or its politics, and that issues of race are still unresolved and infuse our present-day politics.
In that context, meet Beriah Brown, one of Seattle’s most important pioneer citizens. When he came to the young city, he brought the first power press and in 1871 founded Seattle’s first real daily newspaper, the Puget Sound Dispatch, which later merged with a competitor to form an entity that became the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Brown also served as president of the budding territorial University of Washington’s board of regents in the mid 1870s, and was clerk to the U.S. District court here. He was active in politics, too, and in 1878 he was elected to a single term as Seattle’s mayor.
But Beriah Brown was no ordinary frontier newsman. He came to Seattle as a refugee of Civil War and antebellum politics who sought to reinvent himself in fresh country. At one point, Brown fled to the Pacific Northwest from San Francisco to save his neck from an angry lynch mob.
That’s because Brown’s politics were not unlike those of Confederate President Jefferson Davis himself: He believed in white supremacy, defended slavery, wrote harshly about the “malignant” Abraham Lincoln. He was accused of Southern sympathies and suspected of heading a secret society dedicated to extending slavery throughout the Western Hemisphere, including the West Coast...
Much more of this part of a series of Crosscut stories discussing race in the Puget Sound region:
http://crosscut.com/2015/08/the-untold-story-of-seattles-racist-mayor/
Now we see why Marissa talked the way she did. Van Jones has also come out in support of her and of BLM Seattle.
*Please read the SOP in 'About this group' and the pinned threads in the AA Group's index page. This is for the regular members of AA. This is not GD.*
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While some of the wealthy got that way by endeavors, it was built on the theft of land from the Duwamish, as people here know, and on the backs of laboring POC. Many working class non-whites did not benefit as may be assumed either, but there is a divide in some areas. But Seattle is changing rapidly.
The current icon for King County is MLK, Jr., but it was named for a slave holder, William R. King. Seattle is in King County.
The Washington State Flag Sucks
'If you’ll notice, it’s poorly designed and has a slave-owner on it', George Washingtom. For many people thinking of George gives them a nice feeling. But not for all.
By Kelton Sears -Aug 26 2014
King was an especially vocal advocate for the Fugitive Slave Act, which set aggressive legal mandates for the return of slaves who managed to escape plantations and find their way to the free states.
One hundred and fifty-five years after naming itself after this guy, King County officially acknowledged that William Rufus DeVane King, despite how cool he may have seemed in 1852, really loved that vile Fugitive Slave Act a lot. Also, he and his family collectively owned, like, 500 goddamn slaves.
King County, it realized, was named after an asshole.
In 2005, a 19-year effort led by City Councilmember Bruce Laing and County Executive Ron Sims culminated in then-Governor Christine Gregoire’s signing of a bill effectively changing the county’s namesake from racist asshole King to civil-rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. When the movement finally succeeded, Sims wrote, “This is a profound and meaningful change that sends a strong and positive message about the values of our government and the people we serve.” Two years later, the county officially changed its logo from a king’s crown to a silhouette of Dr. King.
http://www.seattleweekly.com/home/954425-129/why-washingtons-state-flag-sucks
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_R._King
An unbroken chain exists that leads to protests.
