Labor Archives of Washington: Labor Unionists

World War II veteran administering an Army program that provided correspondence courses for overseas personnel, later a creer counselor for veterans at the University of Washington. Called to testify before the Canwell Committee in 1948 on charges that he was a communist, Astley refused to answer any of its questions. Shortly after, Astley was fired from his counseling position at UW. The cause of his dismissal is controversial. The university claimed that there was no correlation between his refusal to cooperate with the committee a month earlier and his dismissal from his job. Astley maintained that his Canwell Committee experience was a direct cause of his firing, along with the fact that he participated in student organizations that were critical of the committee. In 1954 Astley, who was now working as a sawmill "dogger," was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee when hearings were held in Seattle. In 1962, Astley became a teacher, working in education as a secondary level English and social studies in the Seattle area. Having been a union member and supporter ever since he worked for General Motors in Pontiac, Astley was active in various education unions, such as the Washington Education Association and the Seattle Teachers' Association.

Pastor of Grace Methodist Episcopal Church in Seattle (renamed Grace Methodist Church ca. 1939). Attebery was active in civic causes. In 1929 he played an active role in the effort to free Industrial Workers of the World members jailed after the 1919 Armistice Day clash between workers and veterans in Centralia. He was also a vocal advocate of Prohibition and a critic of American isolationism. Attebery joined the Washington National Guard as a chaplain in 1929. He was called to active duty in September 1940, and sent overseas the following year. He died while landing with his division on Biak Island, New Guinea, in May 1944. Scope and Content The E. Raymond Attebery Papers document the Seattle pastor's activities as a civic leader, soldier, and military chaplain. Accession 3176-1 includes correspondence with his family. The bulk of the letters are to his wife, Miriam, written while Attebery was serving as a chaplain during World War II. There are also letters to his children, Eliot, Jerry, Edgar, and Gay. (Edgar also served in World War II and would be killed in action just months after his father's death.) Letters to his mother, Betty, date largely from his time in France during World War I. A scrapbook containing letters and clippings documents Attebery's career from the early 1930s. The Class Notes were made while Attebery was attending Harvard Divinity School. Accession 3176-2 includes additional personal and church-related correspondence. Of note is a letter from President Franklin D. Roosevelt asking for Attebery's comments on local social conditions. His stance on Prohibition is outlined in the Writing file. The Friends of City Light subgroup includes correspondence and minutes of the organization, which was formed to support municipal ownership of Seattle's electric utility. The Committee on the Centralia Armistice Day Tragedy subgroup documents the efforts of Washington State church groups and individuals to exonerate International Workers of the World members imprisoned after the 1919 confrontation. The committee was established by the Puget Sound Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1929 to investigate the Centralia shootings and was part of a local movement that eventually led to a joint investigation by several national religious organizations. Attebery served as secretary of that special committee. The correspondence files document Attebery's requests to national organizations to join the effort. The report issued by the national groups in 1930 is also found in this subgroup.

Powell S. Barnett was musician, civil rights activist, and African American community leader. Born in Brazil, Indiana in 1883, Barnett's family migrated to Roslyn, Washington, in 1889. His father, an ex-slave, was one of many black miners recruited to work in the coal mines of Washington state. As a teenager, Powell also worked in the Roslyn coal mines and played in the "colored" band. Barnett was a community leader who worked to improve race relations, organizing the Leschi Improvement Council and serving as its first president in 1967, organizing the East Madison YMCA, and acting as its chairman, and chairing the committee that revised the Seattle Urban League. Barnett, a sousaphone player, was the first black member of the once all-white Seattle Musicians Union, Local 76 and was instrumental in the merger between the black and white musicians' locals into the Musician's Association of Seattle 76-493. Tape recorded interview regarding his migration to Roslyn, Washington in 1888 as well as his move to Seattle and subsequent activities there.

Biographical Note

Stephen Richard Blair was born on July 19, 1917, in a sod house built by his father in Swanville, Minnesota. His parents, Louis and Eva (McPhee) Blair, raised a large Catholic family in Minnesota and Saskatchewan, Canada. Blair attended Duluth Central High School and the University of Minnesota in Duluth. In January 1936 Blair entered the U.S. Army and served as a field paramedic. He was discharged for suspicion of homosexuality in October of the same year. He later moved to San Francisco, where he met his partner Frank McCormick. Blair and McCormick's relationship lasted roughly forty-one years, until McCormick died of lung cancer in the 1980s.

When Blair and McCormick met, McCormick was serving as a union officer for the National Union of Marine Cooks and Stewards (NUMCS). He was also on the executive board of the California Congress of Industrial Organizatons (CIO) and was actively involved in the Pacific coast maritime strike of 1936. NUMCS was a small union known for full integration of African American and gay members. NUMCS leaders were blacklisted in the 1950s, and the union was expelled from the CIO in 1955 for communist leadership. Blair became involved in NUMCS while working as a ship's delegate on passenger cruise lines and freighters. He served as a delegate for a union-wide meeting on the S.S. Aleutian . Blair earned top wages waiting tables on luxury liners before being blacklisted in the 1950s by the Merchant Marines. He also held positions as an hospital orderly, a medical assistant for an Arctic oil rig named Kavik , and a studio prop man on Hollywood movie sets.

McCormick and Blair were born twenty years apart but had similar interests in theater and performance. In World War I, McCormick served in a drag troupe called the Pink Stockings. He also sang in the Fighting American Quartet to entertain troops. In World War II, Blair performed in the United Service Organizatons' (USO) theater and entertainment shows. These experiences sparked a continuing interest in theater. Blair played in stock theater shows in Hollywood, San Diego, and Los Angeles, California. After visiting Hawaii with the USO, he decided to stay and work in advertising. He performed under the name "Mickey Blair" in a 1945 Honolulu Community Production of The Petrified Forest by Robert Sherwood.

McCormick and Blair moved to Seattle in the late 1960s. In the 1970s and 1980s, Blair was involved in Democratic election campaigns. In 1980 Blair sang in the Seattle Men's Chorus, which formed in 1979. Blair was also one of five Seattle gay and lesbian elders who performed their own life stories in the 1992 Alice B. Theatre production, Hidden History: True Stories from Seattle's Gay and Lesbian Elders. The play was directed by Patricia Van Kirk and was based upon interviews completed as part of the Alice B. Theatre Oral History Project. Stephen R. Blair died in April of 1997.

Content Description

Images of Stephen Blair's Hollywood career, service in the Merchant Marines, union activities, interest in alternative health, and involvement in the 1992 Alice B. Theatre production, "Hidden History." Also includes images of Blair's and his partner, Frank McCormick's family, friends, and travels.
Use of the Collection

Jackie Boschok (b. April 24, 1952) was a 30-year member, employee, and officer of the International Association of Machinists (IAM) 751. Boschok was also an officer in the Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW) Puget Sound chapter as well as a member of the organization's national board. Boschok first became active in the union as soon as she started working at Boeing in 1980, working in a variety of positions and holding a variety of offices including steward and local lodge offices including recording secretary; treasurer; and auditor. Boschok served for seven years on the IAM District Council and worked as a Business Representative beginning in 2001, Union Organizer, and Health and Benefits Representative beginning in 2009.
Boschok also served on the Snohomish County Labor Council from 1993-2010, serving on their Executive Board for 10 years and serving on its Community Services Committee. Boschock was a member and leader of the Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW) beginning in 1979 and in 1991 became a member of the national Executive Board. Boschok also served on the Washington State Labor Council’s Women’s Committee from 1994 to 2008, chaired the District 751 Women’s Committee beginning in 2006, and served on the United Way of Snohomish County Board of Directors for six years.

Carlos Bulosan was a Filipino-American author, poet, and mirgrant laborer. He was born in the Philippines in 1911 and began working as a day laborer at age 11 after only 3 years of formal schooling. He left home to provide for himself at age 13. In 1931, at the age of 17, he came to Seattle, Washington but within 2 days was shanghaied by a local hotel proprietor and sold to an Alaskan fish cannery. At the end of the season he came back to Washington and began work as a migrant farm worker, mostly in Washington and California. During the years 1935-1941, he attempted to organize mirgrant workers into unions and began to write about their conditions, particularly those of Filipino immigrant workers. He had begun to write in 1936 during a two year stay in a Los Angeles hospital for tuberculosis. He published some poetry in 1936, and short stories in 1938. He continued writing until about the mid-1940s, but wrote very little during the last 10 years of his life. He died in 1956.

Castle (1915-2006) was a labor activist, union officer and member. Born in Spokane, Washington, Castle graduated from Broadview High School in Seattle and the University of Washington but worked mainly in blue collar jobs like lumber mills, railroad yards, steelmills, shipyards and longshoring. Castle first became a labor organizer in the 1930s, participating in strikes with the Sawmill and Timber Workers Union and an early farmworkers union. In 1937, as co-chair of the King County Workers Alliance he helped organize a two week occupation of the King County Council chambers by hundreds of the unemployed seeking benefits. In 1942 he was elected secretary of the Shipscaler's Union. After WWII, he organized lumberworkers in Aberdeen. During the Korean War, Del was active in the anti-war movement, as he would be later during the Vietnam War and the Iraq wars. In 1957, Del became a longshoreman, joining ILWU, Local 19. He served on the Executive Board from 1963 until he retired in 1980. He was elected to one term as secretary of Local 19 in 1975. Following his retirement, he served as editor of the Rusty Hook, the newsletter for retired longshore workers, until, at age 89, he felt it was time to step down.

Megan Cornish was born in 1947 into a military family and grew up in various locations around the United States. After graduating from Cornell University in 1969 with a BA in literature, Cornish moved to the Puget Sound region and worked at The Shelter Half, an anti-war GI coffeehouse in Tacoma. In her early years in the Pacific Northwest, Cornish was not a member of a formal group or organization. However, Cornish joined Radical Women after being drawn to the group's intersectional approach and became more interested in labor organizing. She took a job at a nursing home and also briefly worked in an industrial laundry facility.

In 1974, Cornish was recruited by Clara Fraser, a cofounder of Radical Women and education coordinator at Seattle City Light, to apply for a position as an Electrical Trades Trainee (ETT), an all-female affirmative action program designed by Fraser to integrate women into the electrical trades. Cornish was selected to be one of ten women ETT's out of an application pool of over 300. In the first weeks on the job, the sense of solidarity between workers as the result of a walkout that occurred just weeks before caused Cornish and the other female ETT's to be received well. The shared resentment towards City Light Superintendent Gordon Vickery and management created a sense of unity amongst the electrical workers and reduced their hostility towards their new female coworkers. The severed relationship between Fraser and management, however, left the ETT's in a highly vulnerable position as management sought to retaliate against Fraser through damaging the ETT program.

Only a week after starting, the ETT training program was canceled and Fraser was removed from her position as the training coordinator. Trainees were told on a Friday afternoon to report to field work the next week, where they made $1 less per hour than the other electrical helpers. In response, the ETT's filed a complaint with the City of Seattle Office of Women's Rights (OWR) stating that they were being denied the typical amount of training and pay reserved for male employees. After a year of training, Cornish and seven of the other ETT's were laid off, along with Fraser. The ETT's and Fraser saw their terminations as politically motivated and retaliatory, and they added the lay-offs to their OWR complaint.

As their case was being reviewed, the former ETT's engaged in a massive public relations campaign to win the support of the public. Numerous articles about the case were published in the local press, and the case became a central focus of the local women's movement. In July 1976, in a major victory, City Light was ordered to reinstate six of the terminated trainees, including Cornish, as well as to pay a settlement, give them back pay, and make them eligible for apprenticeship programs.

After the victorious court ruling, Cornish applied for a City Light apprenticeship as a lineworker, along with two other Radical Women members Teri Bach and Hildreth (Heidi) Durham. Cornish described this period as the "roughest" time during her career at City Light. Vickery and management, angered by the ruling, placed Cornish and her female colleagues into positions that were designed to be the most difficult to succeed in. Each of the women were placed into divisions that were known to be hostile to them, which ultimately led to Durham falling from a pole and breaking her back in a near fatal accident.

In addition to being antagonized by management, Cornish and the other women apprentices were also met with animosity from the male electrical workers that they worked alongside. In 1975, Local 77 of the IBEW staged a failed strike that led to harsher working conditions. Many male electricians, frustrated and demoralized by their strike's defeat, held resentment towards the former ETT's for winning their discrimination case, and these feelings were exploited by management to increase the sexist hostility of the work environments.

Despite having an affirmative action plan to diversify its workforce, Cornish, Bach, and Durham remained some of the only female electrical workers at City Light for nearly ten years. The three regularly gave public comment at Seattle City Council meetings to demand the hiring of more women and people of color at City Light. In the early 1980's, City Light hired its first new female electrical worker in nearly a decade.

In 1983, Cornish helped establish the Employee Committee for Equal Rights at City Light (CERCL) to fight workplace harassment and discrimination in response to inaction from management, union leaders, and the City of Seattle Human Rights Department (HRD). CERCL membership grew rapidly in the mid-1980's and pressured the HRD to investigate discrimination cases. In 1991, Cornish and Durham were jointly named Advocate of the Year by the Washington Women in the Trades.

Cornish retired from Seattle City Light in 2004 after 30 years. At the time of her retirement, she held the position of outage dispatcher, the highest position in the utility trades. She credits her adherence to feminism and political radicalism as essential to her successful accomplishments in her organizing at City Light. She remains an active member of Radical Women and the Freedom Socialist Party and continues to write for the Freedom Socialist newspaper.

Adapted from the Megan Cornish article on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megan_Cornish

Content Description
This collection contains records collected by Megan Cornish as one of the first female electricians at Seattle City Light between 1970 and 2003. The materials span from her apprenticeship in the Electrical Trades Trainee (ETT) affirmative action program until her retirement from Seattle City Light as a senior power dispatcher. Cornish helped found the Employee Committee for Equal Rights at City Light (CERCL) to fight race and sex discrimination within the agency. Much of the material is related to a series of discrimination lawsuits filed by Cornish and other members of the Freedom Socialist Party (FSP) and Radical Women, including Clara Fraser, Teri Bach, and Hildreth (Heidi) Durham.

There is also material related to Cornish’s involvement and organizing efforts in her union, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), Local 77, and other unions including the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE), Local 17. These records contain meeting minutes, legal briefings and reports, worker testimonies; materials from other discrimination lawsuits; City of Seattle employee memorandums; correspondence; employee evaluations and documentations; City Light job postings; negotiated union contracts; Cornish’s union cards and dues statements; leaflets; newsletters; and news articles related to Cornish’s activities at City Light. This collection would be of particular interest to those interested in women in the labor movement, labor unions, feminism, socialism, affirmative action, discrimination, sexism, labor law, and organizing in the public sector.

Cindy Domingo, along with her brothers and sisters, played a key role in the Asian American and Filipino youth movements of the 1970s, and has been a community leader in the Seattle area since then. In the 1970s, she helped lead solidarity campaigns on the University of Washington campus against the Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines. She was active in the Union of Democratic Filipinos (KDP), for which she did organizing in Seattle and Oakland. On June 1st, 1981, Cindy's brother Silme Domingo, a KDP organizer and union reform activist in ILWU Local 37, was assassinated along with fellow union leader Gene Viernes. For the next ten years, Cindy served as the National Chair for the Committee for Justice for Domingo and Viernes. The campaign resulted in the conviction of the former ILWU Local 37 President and family friend Tony Baruso for organizing the assassination, and also proved that the murders had been ordered by the Marcos regime with U.S. government knowledge.
Cindy Domingo was an active member of the Washington State Rainbow Coalition in the 1980s, and served on the boards of the Church Council of Greater Seattle, LELO, and the International Examiner. She has been Board President of the Center for Social Justice and co-chair of U.S. Women & Cuba Collaboration, and currently serves as the Legislative Aide to King County Councilmember Larry Gossett.
Records relating to Cindy's activism and work as an officer in several organizations including Committee for Justice for Domingo and Viernes, Line of March, and the Union of Democratic Filipinos (In Tagalog: Katipunan ng mga Demokratikong Pilipino), or KDP.

Robert D. Duggan, known to all as "Bob" was born in Seattle, Washington on September 7, 1932. Bob graduated from Foster High School in 1950 and immediately enrolled at University of Washington summer program. He also started work on the Seattle waterfront in August 1950. His longshore employment paid all the costs of his college education and later a large portion of his law school education. He graduated with a BA in Labor Economics in June of 1954. In December 1954 he was called to active duty with the United States Air Force. In February 1956 he was awarded his "wings" as a jet fighter pilot. In December 1955 he married Martha H." Marty" Duggan (1934-2003), the mother of his 3 children, In September 1958, he entered the University of Washington School of Law, graduating 1961. In September 1961, he began what turned out to be 40 years of law practice, representing longshoremen, harbor workers, seaman and fishermen. He also represented all ILWU locals in Washington over that 40 year span. In 1989-90 while serving as president of the University of Washington Alumni Association, he began to promote the idea of establishing an endowed chair in honor of Harry Bridges. He was instrumental in raising the funds to establish the chair in 1992. Bob married Judith Turner Duggan on December 17, 2006.

Garland Ethel, an English professor at the University of Washington, was best known for his involvement with the state legislature’s Canwell Committee and the University Faculty Committee on Tenure and Academic Freedom during their anti-communist investigations in the late 1940s. During these hearings Ethel admitted to being a former Communist, but because he renounced his beliefs he was allowed to stay at the University and served a two-year probation. These anti-communist hearings set a precedent for other states and the U.S. Congress to follow during the Red Scare of the 1950s. Correspondence, speeches, writings, minutes, conference and convention files, lecture notes, clippings, wire recordings, and photos, relating to Ethel's principal research interest, Samuel Taylor Coleridge; together with unpublished short stories and novel, as well as material relating to his activities concerning the state's Joint Legislative Fact-Finding Committee on Un-American Activities and Local 401, American Federation of Teachers.
During his years as a UW student, the Seattle General Strike, the activities of the Industrial Workers of the World, and the amount of poverty that Ethel witnessed in the U.S. led him to embrace Marxist ideology. In the 1930s Ethel became involved with many liberal and radical organizations. He was active in the labor movement, especially through the the American Federation of Teachers, Local 401, and was active in trying to defeat anti-labor candidates and initiatives. One of his major campaigns was fighting Initiative 130 which was an effort to restrict the right to strike. To explore his Marxist beliefs further Ethel traveled to the USSR where he worked as assistant editor of the Moscow News in 1932. During his travels in Europe he was horrified by Fascism and later claimed that he joined the Communist party in the U.S. because it was the only organized group trying to fight the burgeoning right-wing movements in Europe.

The papers of Rosa Millo Eyer consists of a small series of Association of Western Pulp and Paper Workers (AWPPW) records and another of personal papers. The first series is primarily AWPPW Northern Washington-Alaska Area Council records of which Rosa was Secretary-Treasurer, including correspondence, news clippings, notes, and Executive Board reports from Area Representative John R. Swanson as well as a file of correspondence related to Rosa's employment with the union. The series of personal papers consists primarily of letters to and from Rosa and her daughters, Gerry, Josephine, and Caroline; divorce and death records and ephemera from her first marriage with Richard J. Millo; several photographs of family members; and other correspondence to and from Rosa.

Clippings, photographs, and an assortment of textual items and ephemera from her employment by trade unions, most notably the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union in San Francisco. Some items date from her retirement in Western Washington.

Subject files on maritime and labor history and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. Correspondence, meeting agendas, and conference programs and minutes of the ILWU's Pacific Coast Pensioners Association from Gundlach's time as an officer and member of the PCPA.
Correspondence and materials from Gundlach's role in the founding and subsequent involvement in the Harry Bridges Chair for Labor Studies at the University of Washington.
Personal correspondence with friends in the labor and left political circles.
Subject files on labor and maritime poetry by poets and writers such as Carlos Bulosan, Al Valenzuela, Gus Rystad, Herb Phillips, and Jerry Tyler.
Correspondence and materials relating to Gundlach's role on the Carlos Bulosan Manuscripts Committee, which sought to assemble and donate poet and author Carlos Bulosan's work to an archives. Eventually the papers became part of the University of Washington's Special Collections.
Biographical materials on Gundlach's brother, Ralph Gundlach, as well as biographical and memorial materials on Roy J. Kennedy.
Materials from Gundlach's role as a member of Office and Professional Employees Union, Local 29 including contract negotiations and a strike.
Two scrapbooks relating to Harry Bridges, the ILWU, and labor history.
Photographs of labor and maritime subject and people, many of which appear to have been originally published or gathered.

Scrapbook created by Jean Gundlach for Harry Bridges on his 70th birthday in 1971. Bridges was the founding and longtime President of the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union. Gundlach loaned this scrapbook to Robert Cherny during the writing of his biography of Bridges. The scrapbook contains a mix of materials, including a hand-painted cover, telegrams, letters, greeting cards, photographs, and other ephemera.

Author, anthropologist, folklorist, linguist, and professor of anthropology and linguistics, University of Washington; d. 1971. Correspondence, manuscripts of writings, field notebooks, ethnographic and linguistic notes, recordings, and photos, primarily relating to Jacobs's investigations of Oregon and Washington Indian languages and oral traditions. Jacobs was one of the members of the campus faculty union, American Federation of Teachers Local 401. Because of his political beliefs, Jacobs appeared before the Canwell Committee (Washington Legislature’s Joint Fact-Finding Committee on Un-American Activities) and by the U.W. Faculty Committee on Tenure and Academic Freedom. T he dismissal of three UW professors for political reasons—the first formally acknowledged faculty firings in the United States for Communist-related activities—set a precedent for the rest of the country to follow in the 1950s. Jacobs retained his job but the incident seriously impeded his career and prospects for tenure at UW. Part of this collection documents his appearance before the Canwell Committee and its aftermath.

International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union Local 19 (Seattle) official. Worked on the Seattle docks as a longshoreman. He joined the longshoremen's union in 1934 and served as one of its officers from 1936 to 1940, and from 1943 until his retirement in 1967. Jenkins details the history of the unions' exclusionary practices in the Puget Sound area and explains the issue of blacks as strikebreakers. He discusses discriminatory hiring policies which limited employment opportunities for black longshoremen in Seattle, the 1921 and 1934 strikes, and the changed employment practices resulting from the latter strike. The structure of the longshoremen's union (ILWU) is discussed, as well as some contract negotiations that occurred during Jenkins' tenure as a union official. Military oversight of the Seattle Port during World War II is mentioned, including the discriminatory recruitment practices used by both the Army and the Navy. Jenkins illustrates the consequences of his union activism during the war and afterwards during the McCarthy era by recounting several episodes in which his port security pass was revoked and subsequently reissued. He chronicles the turbulent post-war history of the longshoremen's union in the Puget Sound area and explains the reason for the union's expulsion from the CIO in 1948.

Jeff Johnson was born in Long Island, New York, in 1951. Johnson earned his B.A. in political science from Georgetown University and his M.A. and A.B.D. in political economy from the New School for Social Research. At Georgetown University he became involved in Civil Rights and anti-Vietnam War movements. Johnson began his union career in New York, N.Y. as a member of Local 2190 of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) in 1979. He worked as a teacher of labor economics and labor studies for members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Local 3. Johnson also taught classes for the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU), Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union (ACTWU). Johnson taught classes for the National Congress of Neighborhood Women and worked as faculty at the Harry Van Arsdale Center for Labor Studies at State University of New York (SUNY) and the The National Labor College.

In 1986, Johnson drove across the country with his wife and began working for the Washington State Labor Council (WSLC) as the Research Director. He also served as the shop steward for the WSLC’s unionized employees in the Office and Professional Employees International Union (OPEIU), Local 8 from 1988-1993. Early in his career, Johnson was introduced to Tomas Villanueva, the president of the newly formed United Farm Workers (UFW) in Washington. At the time, farmworkers were not protected by minimum wage, pesticide control, or child labor laws, and they were ineligible for unemployment insurance or workers' compensation. Johnson and Villanueva worked together over a five year period to establish child labor and health and safety protections specifically for farmworkers, and they also ran minimum wage and workers' compensation initiatives. In addition, they launched a lawsuit to include farmworkers in unemployment insurance programs. In 1992, Johnson and Villanueva worked with Chicano activist and lawyer Guadalupe Gamboa and his uncle, a professor at the University of Washington, to write a collective bargaining bill for farmworkers in Washington, modeled after the California Labor Relations Act.

In 1993, Johnson became the WSLC’s Lead Lobbyist following changes in WSLC leadership due to the election of Mike Lowry as Washington governor. In 1998, he spearheaded another minimum wage initiative, creating a broad coalition of community organizations to back the campaign. Johnson was also involved in the WSLC's work around immigration reform and efforts to connect with the Latino community, including by affiliating with CASA Latina. Johnson assumed the role of Special Assistant to the President in 2008, while remaining the lead lobbyist.

In 2010, Johnson was elected president of the WSLC and served two terms before retiring in 2018. During his time as president, Johnson was involved in much of the community outreach and coalition building from before. The WSLC, under his leadership, supported the first campaigns to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour, first in SeaTac then in Seattle. He also promoted efforts to address issues of racism in labor and worked with state legislators on climate justice initiatives.

Johnson is still active in Puget Sound Advocates for Retirement Action (PSARA), the Board of Labor Network for Sustainability, and other local causes.

Pentecostal Christian socialist, UW student in sociology and campus activist. In 1957, King co-founded and served as Chairman of a socialist student group called The Anvil Club, which sought to sustain social movement activism on the UW campus. King strove to improve social conditions in Seattle throughout his career, holding positions such as Associate Director of the Seattle Urban League; Director of Action Education Centers (AEC) for the Central Area Motivation Program (CAMP); Planner for the Seattle Model City Program (SMCP); Quality Control Supervisor for the Seattle Income Maintenance Experiment; and Affirmative Action Analyst in the City's Human Rights Department & Office for Women's Rights. King was also involved with the Seattle chapter of the Congress for Racial Equality (CORE). Founder of photography group Camera Left. The collection consists of approximately 55,000 photographic prints, with associated negatives. Labor-related topics in this collection include: ethnic cultural events, local social activism, labor unions and other special events. Social protest event photos include images of protests (at Volunteer Park, Denny Park, Capitol Hill, University of Washington, the Federal Building, and Green Lake); groups such as the National Association For the Advancement of Colored People, Anti-Iraq War, Service Employees International Union and Industrial Workers of the World; performances of singing and dancing by Chinese Americans, Native American, African American, Japanese American, Vietnamese American, Filipino American.

Frank Krasnwosky is a labor, political, and civil rights activist. Krasnowsky was an organizer and health and safety committee officer for the United Steelworkers of America in the Bethlehem Steel plant in Tacoma, Washington. There, he worked with other union activists including Eugene Dennet to make the existing union contract more powerful for the union members at Bethlehem--particulary in regards to health and safety.

At one time, Krasnowsky was married to fellow socialist Clara Fraser. They divorced, and she left the SWP to form the Freedom Socialist Party.

Krasnowsky's mother was a Jewish and Yiddish anarchist and his father, Harry Paxton Howard, was from an old American family and a member of the Industrial Workers of the World. His parents met in Chicago, where his mother was a garment worker and they were part of the same IWW/anarchist circles. When they left the US together in 1917 for Russia to aid the Russian Revolution, and en route Frank took his mother's name--Krasnowsky--rather than his father's to allow them to get back into Russia more easily. Instead of staying in Russia, they lived in Yokahama, Japan for 4 years where Krasnowsky's father worked as an editor of the newspapers Russia Today and New Russia.

Krasnowsky is also a member of he local Jewish American community. He co-chaired the Seattle chapter of the National Yiddish Club and performed as part of the musical duo Chutzpah. He is also the published author of short stories and poems.

Records relating to Phil Lelli’s career as a longshoreman and his activities as an activist, officer, union leader, and president of Local 23 of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) in Tacoma and a Commissioner of the Port of Tacoma. Other materials are related to the labor history of the Tacoma waterfront. Correspondence, subject files, personal papers, photographs, other materials; 1933-2004. Papers relate to Lelli's career as a longshoreman, union leader, and President of the Local # 23, International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union (ILWU). Include strike and labor action-related materials, Port Commission correspondence, and related material.Correspondence, subject files, personal papers, photographs, other materials; 1933-2004. Papers relate to Lelli's career as a longshoreman, union leader, and President of the Local # 23, International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union (ILWU). Include strike and labor action-related materials, Port Commission correspondence, and related material.

Adolph Major was a member of the Industrial Workers of the World and involved in the Slavic community, serving as a member of the executive board of the American Slavic Benevolent Federation of Washington. Joining in 1923, Major was a member of the IWW during the agricultural strikes in Washington in 1933 during his time riding the rails. He was also involved in the lumber strike of 1935. Major eventually became an organizer for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. Collection of ephemera and publications including a membership book for the International Labor Defense and the Industrial Workers of the World which include IWW stamps and stickers inside; a letter on behalf of the striking lumber workers on behalf of the American Slavic Benevolent Federation of Washington. A labor calendar and an issue of the Voice of Action documenting the lumber strike of 1935 a transfer notice for the International Workers Order, a sticker from the IWW Railroad Workers Industrial Union Local 520, and a flyer for a 1987 Labor Music and Culture festival comprise the rest of the collection.

Between 1910 and 1930, a wave of Filipino immigrants came to the United States. Instead of better opportunities, many encountered discrimination, poor living conditions, and oppressive labor practices. Chris Delarna Mensalvas (1909-1978) immigrated to the United States from the Philippines in 1927. He became an important figure in the Filipino labor movements of the 1940s and '50s, organizing unions and initiating strikes for just working conditions and fair wages for farm and cannery workers.

Between the years 1949 and 1959, Mensalvas was president of the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union (ILWU) Local 37 in Seattle - the Filipino Alaska cannery workers union. He was publicity director of the local from 1948 to 1949, when it was Local 7 of the Cannery Workers' and Farm Laborers' Union. Mensalvas actively opposed the deportation of Filipinos under the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952. The noted Filipino author and activist Carlos Bulosan and fellow activist Philip Vera Cruz were among his friends. He was an inspiration for later Filipino activists Silme Domingo and Gene Viernes, who consulted him about his labor organizing experiences. Mensalvas died in 1978.

An activist, labor leader, and former member of the Communist Party USA, Art Mink was born and raised in rural Fairfield, Idaho. As a young man, he joined the ROTC and planned a career in military service. He was radicalized in the late 1930s by the apparent collapse of capitalism and by the Spanish Civil War, and joined the Communist Party in 1940 while a student at Boise Junior College. Mink moved with his wife to Seattle in 1942 where he served as a member of the executive board of the Northwest District Young Communist League and as a Party organizer in the Boilermaker's Union before being drafted into the Air Force. He was stationed in the Philippines during World War II as a 1st Sergeant in a military hospital. From 1946-1948 Mink attended law school at the University of Washington and was campus organizer for the Communist Party. During this time he was also a member of the Bookbinders Union. He moved briefly to Los Angeles to work as an editor in a small publishing firm and to conduct Party work in southern California.

Back in the Pacific Northwest, Mink began a new career on the waterfront, first as a warehouseman at a Seattle fish plant and ultimately as a longshoreman and a member of ILWU Local 19. He was active in union politics throughout his career. He worked on the Local 19 Stevedore Safety Committee for 5 years and served multiple terms as chairman of the Labor Relations Committee. In the mid 1950s Mink broke with the Communist Party and helped organize the rival Freedom Socialist Party. In 1971 he was elected Vice President of Local 19 and played an instrumental role in the union's historic strike that same year. Mink remained active after retiring from the longshore and was a great friend of the Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies. He died in 2011.

Wayne Moisio, nicknamed Waino, was an amateur boxer and longtime International Longshore and Warehouse Union, Local 19 member. He participated in the 1934 Pacific Coast Maritime Strike at the "Battle at Smith Cove" that almost completely shut down merchant access in the area. He was known for blocking train access on the Seattle Waterfront during the event and was nicknamed the "Train Stopper" as a result. The strike was in response to the port leadership's failure to comply with the National Industrial Recovery Act and the protection of collective bargaining rights for unions. Moisio was also a member of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Pacific Coast Pensioner's association and attended many conventions and gatherings hosted by the association.

Lonnie Nelson was born in Seattle Aug. 20, 1932, and named Madelon Sue by her parents Alma Viola Nickerson Nelson and Burt Gale Nelson. Her father was a founding member of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union and a leader of the Communist Party of Washington State.

In high school in 1948 she organized Young Progressives and was active in the Progressive Party campaign of Henry Wallace. She joined the Communist Party in 1951 at a time when CP members, including her father, were being blacklisted and harassed by the FBI.

She gathered signatures on the Stockholm Peace Appeal in the 1950s when Cold War elements were itching for war against the Soviet Union or China. That commitment to world peace continued in the years of solidarity with Cuba and Vietnam when she helped mobilize peace protests.

She was especially proud of a trip she took to Spain where veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, including her uncle, were honored as fighters against Franco fascism.

Nelson served as chairperson of a petition campaign against the McCarthy-era loyalty oath, which in 1972 presented 10,000 signatures to the state attorney general in Olympia. Later, she served on a committee defending the Black Panther Party.

An admirer of the Native American Indian people, she joined in the campaign to win restoration of the tribes' fishing rights. She befriended many of the Native American Indians in that struggle, working closely with Maiselle Bridges, a leader of the Nisqually tribe. Victory was won when Judge George Boldt handed down his landmark ruling 40 years ago that the tribes were entitled to half the salmon catch.

Her love of the Indian peoples and their struggles led her to join the "Trail of Broken Treaties" to Washington, D.C., in 1972, when the American Indian Movement occupied the Bureau of Indian Affairs headquarters. She helped raise funds for the legal defense of the occupiers. She knew Hank Adams and other Native American Indian leaders personally and interviewed them for articles in the Daily World during that sit-in.

Lonnie Nelson's first love was always the labor movement. During her working years, she was employed at a day care center at Providence Hospital for nearly six years. She worked to organize the workers into SEIU Local 6. She helped establish the Seattle branch of the Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW), heading up the CLUW Public Works Jobs Committee.

She was arrested three times for civil disobedience: during the Indian fishing rights struggle, against South African apartheid, and in the mid-1990s against Republican Newt Gingrich's "Contract on America" Medicare cuts.

(Source: People's World obituary for Lonnie Nelson by Tim Wheeler 02/14/14 http://www.peoplesworld.org/labor-stalwart-lonnie-nelson-dies-at-8/)

Collection of longshore maritime history materials gathered by Norman Parks relating to International Longshore and Warehouse Local 8 (Portland) and its predecessor, International Longshoremen's Association, Local 38-78. Much of the collection relates to the history of the Pacific Coast ILA and ILWU, with an emphasis on Portland and the 1934 Pacific Coast Maritime Strike.

Included are medals minted by the Citizen's Emergency League, based out of Portland, Oregon. The League was a vigilante group started by the Portland Chamber of Commerce to break through picket lines caused by the 1934 maritime strike. According to historian Michael Munk, "CEL members wore the service disks, inscribed 'CEL- for Law and Order' on one side and 'Minute Men, Lexington, Mass., 1776- Portland, Ore., 1934' on the other....they were stamped with the member's number and - together with red, white, and blue armbands bearing the letters C-E-L - were 'to be worn by members in case of being called out as law enforcement officers.'"

The context of the CEL is that many Portland police officers had relatives that were longshoremen and who were a They thought police were coddling longshoremen and passing on intelligence. The employers hired WWI veterans to beat up longshoremen during the strike, housing them on terminal 4. Oral tradition claims that longshoremen would beat the strikebreakers in retaliation for their attacks on strikes and take their coins as mementoes. Other coins in the collection include tokens good for a free meal or trade for strikers at various Portland waterfront bars, restaurants, and businesses including Ericson's Bar, Longshoreman's Social Club, the Portland Seamen's Center, and the Longshoremen's Lunch and Card Room.

Other materials relate to the history of the strike, and an article by on the history and provenance of the vigilante coins and lunch tokens. The collection also includes a roster of post- WWII members kept to document who was registered and entitled to pension.

Interview, correspondence, reports, ephemera, xerox copies of correspondence, and union newspapers. Oral history interview includes discussion of Pritchett's involvement and subsequent election to president of the International Woodworkers of America, and later affiliation with the CIO (Congress of Industrial organizations), 1930s to early 1940s.

Richard "Rick" Rice was born in 1940 and grew up in Huntington Beach, California. Rice attended the University of California at Berkeley before moving to New York City and then to Seattle in the early 1970s. Rice was active in the student, anti-war, and civil rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s.

Rice worked as a bus driver for Metro Transit for four years, where he was an active union member and a member of a rank-and-file caucus committe. Rice participated in a Metro Transit strike in 1974. During the 70s and 80s, Rice was an activist in several local organizations such as Committee for Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES), the Venceremos Brigade, and the Anti-Apartheid movement. Rice participated in weekly protests in front of the South African consulate in Seattle during this period.

His wife, Roselynn Harrell (also known as Rose Woodward) was also a Seattle metro driver and a social and labor activist. Harrell was involved in South Seattle Community College's Women's Employment Network and was a welder. Rice and Harrell worked for two years at a Uniroyal and Firestone tire plant in Long Beach California in an effort to organize it politically as an outgrowth of their activism as members of the socialist organization Line of March. Line of March was a Marxist-Leninist organization that inspired many New Left student activists to become "proletarianized" workers who would find work in industry and radicalize other workers.

During the 1990s, Rice was active in the Seattle area efforts to create a Labor Party and attended conferences on behalf of the effort. Rice's second wife, Kate Thompson is an artist and an activist and many of the prints in this collection are hers. Thompson was a cofounder and coowner of Storefront Press in Seattle. As of 2014, Rice lives in Mexico.

Jonathan Rosenblum Papers, 1993-2006
Jonathan Rosenblum is a political planner and labor organizer for local and regional campaigns. Papers document Rosenblum's involvement as founding organizer with Washington State Jobs With Justice (WSJWJ) including founding and organizational documents, 1993-1997. Rosenblum's role as an organizer for the Union Cities Campaign, King County Labor Council, AFL-CIO, 1996-1997. The formation of WashTech, 1997. Rosenblum's directorship of Seattle Union Now, AFL-CIO, 1997-2001. Rosenblum's role in the World Trade Organization protests, November 1999. As director of SUN, Rosenblum was closely involved in labor’s preparations for the WTO protests during the week of action. The records document his role in helping to create a coalition between SUN and Direct Action Network, environmentalists, international activists and students. Rosenblum's participation in the Florida Recount, November 2000. The WTO Anniversary Protest, November 2000. Rosenblum played a prominent role in the November 30, 2000 WTO anniversary protest as the King County Central Labor Council’s liaison with the city; working to ensure a peaceful demonstration without the level of confrontation of the previous year. Rosenblum's "Pro-Israel" rally arrest and of the subsequent fallout in the Jewish community, 2002. On April 30, 2002 Rosenblum and Rabbi Drorah Setel were arrested at a "pro-Israel" rally in the public plaza outside the federal building in downtown Seattle for holding up signs that called for equal human rights for Israelis and Palestinians.

Tyree Scott Papers, circa 1970-1995
Tyree Scott (1940-2003) was an African American labor leader and activist deeply involved in many minority workers’ and equal opportunity organizations. Scott, an electrician, grew up in Texas, moved to Seattle in 1966 and became a leader in the Central Contractors Association. This organization of minority workers led many peaceful demonstrations against discriminatory hiring practices in Seattle’s construction industry in the summer and fall of 1969. Through the protests, the issue of discriminatory employment was noted by the American Friends Service Committee. After investigating the situation, the American Friends Service Committee approached Scott and the leadership of the Central Contractors Association and proposed a new community-based organization that would organize minority workers to fight discrimination in the unions and in the construction trades. The United Construction Workers Association was founded in 1970 with financial support from the American Friends Service Committee. Tyree Scott was a founding member and worked intensively within the Association, first as a paid staff member and then later as a director.
United Construction Workers Association combined community organization, peaceful demonstrations, and legal action to fight workplace discrimination. The Association saw an early victory in the class action suit United States vs. Ironworkers Local 86 et. al. – in which the United States Department of Justice sued five local unions and apprenticeship and training committees under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. In 1970 Judge William J. Lindberg found that there had indeed been racial discrimination in the practices of all institutions named in this case. He ordered wide-ranging relief programs, including quotas for union membership, hiring, and apprenticeship classes and changes in hiring and dispatching procedures.
In 1973 Michael Woo of the United Construction Workers Association worked among Asian and Alaska Native cannery workers who lived in Seattle but worked summers in the salmon processing plants in Alaska. From this work the Alaska Cannery Workers Association was formed to combat discrimination in worker housing, facilities, pay scales and hire status. The Alaska Cannery Workers Association filed Title VII lawsuits against the world’s largest fish companies, including the New England Fish Company and Wards Cove Packing Company.
In 1973 members of United Construction Workers Association, Alaska Cannery Workers Association, and the Northwest Chapter of United Farm Workers of America came together to found the Labor and Employment Law Office. Labor and Employment Law Office hired lawyers and served workers of color, helping them pursue legal recourse in issues of labor discrimination. Labor and Employment Law Office helped United Construction Workers Association, Alaska Cannery Workers Association, United Farm Workers of America, other worker’s organizations and individual workers win landmark civil rights cases, including Domingo vs. New England Fish Company, Carpenter vs. NEFCO-Fidalgo Packing Company and Yates vs. Local 7 Asbestos Workers, et al.

Tyree Scott (1940-2003) was a labor leader and activist deeply involved in many minority workers’ and equal opportunity organizations.

Scott, an electrician grew up in Texas and served in the U.S. Marine Corps during the Vietnam War. He moved to Seattle in 1966 and became a leader in the Central Contractors Association. In 1970, Scott was a founding member of United Construction Workers Association.. He later served as a director. The United Construction Workers Association combined community organization, peaceful demonstrations, and legal action to fight workplace discrimination.

In 1973, Michael Woo of the United Construction Workers Association worked among Asian and Alaska Native cannery workers who lived in Seattle but worked summers in the salmon processing plants in Alaska. From this work, the Alaska Cannery Workers Association was formed to combat discrimination in worker housing, facilities, pay scales and hire status. The Alaska Cannery Workers Association filed Title VII lawsuits against the world’s largest fish companies, including the New England Fish Company and Ward's Cove Packing Company.

Also in 1973, members of United Construction Workers Association, Alaska Cannery Workers Association, and the Northwest Chapter of United Farm Workers of America came together to found the Labor and Employment Law Office. Labor and Employment Law Office hired lawyers and served workers of color, helping them pursue legal recourse in issues of labor discrimination. From its inception, Tyree Scott served on the board of directors of Labor and Employment Law Office.

While Labor and Employment Law Office had always combined its legal work with participation in community organization, the focus was primarily on court action in the early years of its operation. However, in 1989, the Supreme Court’s decision in the long-contested Antonio vs. Ward’s Cove case constituted a major shift in the pursuit of discrimination cases and in Labor and Employment Law Office’s operations. In the Ward's Cove case, the Court’s decision was that the plaintiffs’ statistical demonstration of racial disparity between classes of workers did not make a prima facie case for violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. This set a new precedent for the burden of proof in Civil Rights cases and vastly increased the difficulty of workers pursuing discrimination charges under Title VII.

Tyree Scott became less involved in the activities of the United Construction Workers Association in the late seventies, and the organization faded out of existence around 1981. Tyree Scott retired from the electrician’s trade and remained active as a board member for the Labor and Employment Law Office until his death in 2003.

After immigrating in the 1920s, Victorio Velasco became a participant and leader in many facets of Filipino-American life over the next half century. Velasco was perhaps best known as a leader of Seattle’s Filipino community. He published and edited the local Filipino Forum and served as the head of numerous Seattle Filipino community organizations. Because of his leadership in the Filipino community, many local and statewide organizations seeking to improve race relations sought him out to serve on their boards and committees. In addition to his leadership among Seattle’s Filipinos, Velasco also participated in the Filipino American labor movement. Like many other Filipinos during his time, Velasco spent most of his summers working in Alaska canneries and participated in the cannery unions’ turbulent internal politics.

Velasco was born in Asingan, Pangasinan, The Philippines, ca. 1903. After graduating from high school he taught in Manila and worked as a reporter for the Manila Times before emigrating to the U.S. in 1924. There he attended five colleges in Washington State before earning his B.A., M.A., and fulfilling some of the requirements for a Ph.D. at the University of Washington. Velasco had begun writing poetry in high school and early on was successful at finding publishers for his work. By the time of his death Velasco’s poetry had appeared in eleven anthologies and various newspapers and magazines.

After coming to the U.S., Velasco spent his summers working in the canneries alongside other Filipinos, who had begun filling most cannery positions after the loss of Japanese immigrants in the 1920s. Cannery work was known for being particularly strenuous and the employers often tried to take advantage of their Asian immigrant laborers, but the Filipinos developed a strong union to engage in collective bargaining with the employers. The Seattle branch of the Cannery Workers’ and Farm Laborers’ Union was organized in 1933 and represented Filipino-American cannery workers. However, the Filipino workers became frustrated with the AFL because of its stand on racial issues and in 1937 affiliated themselves with the CIO’s United Cannery, Agricultural, Packinghouse and Allied Workers of America, Local 7.

With union representation, the cannery workers were able to win concessions and improve wages and working conditions, but Local 7’s internal politics were often bitter. Many of the union elections featured personal insults and redbaiting. Velasco was involved in many of the elections both as a candidate and as a supporter of others running for office, but until the late 1940s, his attempts at winning a union office were unsuccessful. Velasco also was involved in a major split in Local 7 during the immediate postwar period. Many Local 7 members accused officers of corruption, which led to an investigation by its international union, which suspended or expelled three of Local 7’s top officers. These ousted officers formed a rival organization, the Seafood Workers’ Union (SFWU) and conducted a membership drive to try to displace Local 7. Although Velasco was not implicated in the Local 7 investigation, he joined the SFWU and became its secretary. There are a number of possibilities for why he might have joined.

One factor might have been the persistent regionalism within the Filipino-American community. Many of the people who joined the SFWU were from Velasco’s region of the Philippines. Ideology and politics may also have been a factor in Velasco’s decision, as members of the SFWU used anti-Communist rhetoric to attack Local 7. Velasco’s politics were consistently conservative and he saw Communism as a grave threat.

After merging with the AFL Alaska Fish Cannery Workers’ Union, the SFWU was able to enter a NLRB election that would allow cannery workers to determine which union would represent them. Redbaiting became a weapon in the campaign against Local 7, which affiliated with the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union (ILWU). In 1950 the ILWU finally won collective bargaining rights and subsequently became Local 37 of the ILWU. Velasco then joined Local 37 and remained a member for the rest of his life, serving frequently as a delegate and as secretary-treasurer.

Newspaper publishing was also a large component of Velasco’s life. In the early 1920s Velasco worked as editor for the Philippine Seattle Colonist and as the Seattle correspondent for the Philippine Republic . In 1928 he became the founder, editor, and publisher of the Filipino Forum , which served as a newspaper for the Seattle Filipino community. In 1937 Velasco had to suspend publication, but resumed printing the Forum after the outbreak of World War II. During the interim he published or wrote for various other Filipino newspapers, including the Seattle Filipino Outlook , Northwest Forum , Philippine Review , and the Philippine Advocate .

Throughout his life in Seattle Velasco was heavily involved in local civic organizations, mostly within the Filipino community. In 1928 he was part of a group of UW Filipino students who founded the Seattle Filipino Clubhouse Fund. The Fund was intended to raise enough money to build a center for Filipino students at the university, but the plans never materialized. However, Velasco later changed the organization’s name to Filipino Community of Seattle, Inc., and set out to build a center for the entire Seattle Filipino community. Decades later, in 1965, the center was finally completed and was open for social events and recreation. Velasco also was a founder, president, and board member of the UW Filipino Alumni Association after World War II and founded both the Pangasinan Association of the Pacific Northwest and the Asinganian Club, which were comprised of people who came from his region of the Philippines.

Velasco also served other civic organizations that were not targeted specifically at Filipinos. Many of these groups were trying to reach out to the city’s and state’s diverse groups to try to improve race relations. He helped found the Jackson Street Community Council in 1946 and served as its first secretary and then as a board member. Other community organizations that Velasco served include the King County Advisory Council of the Washington State Board Against Discrimination, and the Board of Trustees of the Neighborhood House, which served inner-city youth.

Velasco died in Waterfall Alaska in 1968. He had been working at a cannery there when the bunkhouse caught on fire. After escaping safely, Velasco went back to retrieve his typewriter but was unable to escape a second time.

Born in the Philippines in 1902, Victorio Velasco immigrated to the United States in 1924. He is best known for his leadership in Seattle’s Filipino community. He published and edited the local Filipino Forum and served as the head of numerous Seattle Filipino community organizations. Because of his leadership in the Filipino community, many local and statewide organizations who sought to improve race relations asked him to serve on their boards and committees.

Velasco also participated in the Filipino-American labor movement. Like many other Filipinos during his time, Velasco spent most of his summers working in Alaskan canneries. Velasco worked alongside other Filipinos, who filled most cannery positions after the loss of Japanese immigrants in the 1920s. Cannery work was known for being particularly strenuous and the employers often tried to take advantage of Asian immigrant laborers, but the Filipinos developed a strong union to engage in collective bargaining with the employers. The Seattle branch of the Cannery Workers’ and Farm Laborers’ Union was organized in 1933 and represented Filipino-American cannery workers. However, the Filipino workers became frustrated with the AFL because of its stand on racial issues so, in 1937, they affiliated themselves with the CIO’s United Cannery, Agricultural, Packinghouse and Allied Workers of America, Local 7.

With union representation, the cannery workers were able to win concessions and improve wages and working conditions, but Local 7’s internal politics were often bitter. Velasco also was involved in a major split in Local 7 during the immediate postwar period. Many Local 7 members accused officers of corruption, which led to an investigation by its international union, which suspended or expelled three of Local 7’s top officers. These ousted officers formed a rival organization, the Seafood Workers’ Union (SFWU) and conducted a membership drive to try to displace Local 7. Although Velasco was not implicated in the Local 7 investigation, he joined the SFWU and became its secretary. There are a number of possibilities for why he might have joined. One factor might have been the persistent regionalism within the Filipino-American community. Many of those who joined the SFWU were from Velasco’s region of the Philippines. Ideology and politics may also have been a factor in Velasco’s decision, as members of the SFWU used anti-Communist rhetoric to attack Local 7. Velasco’s politics were consistently conservative and he saw Communism as a grave threat.

After merging with the AFL Alaska Fish Cannery Workers’ Union, the SFWU was able to enter a NLRB election that would allow cannery workers to determine which union would represent them. Redbaiting became a weapon in the campaign against Local 7, which affiliated with the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union (ILWU). In 1950, the ILWU finally won collective bargaining rights and subsequently became Local 37 of the ILWU. Velasco then joined Local 37 and remained a member for the rest of his life, serving frequently as a delegate and as secretary-treasurer.

Newspaper publishing was also a large component of Velasco’s life. In the early 1920s, Velasco worked as editor for the Philippine Seattle Colonist and as the Seattle correspondent for the Philippine Republic. In 1928, he became the founder, editor, and publisher of the Filipino Forum, which served as a newspaper for the Seattle Filipino community. In 1937, Velasco suspended publication, but resumed printing the Forum after the outbreak of World War II. During the interim, he published or wrote for various other Filipino newspapers, including the Seattle Filipino Outlook, Northwest , Philippine Review, and the Philippine Advocate.

Throughout his life in Seattle Velasco was heavily involved in local civic organizations, mostly within the Filipino community. In 1928, he was part of a group of UW Filipino students who founded the Seattle Filipino Clubhouse Fund. The Fund was intended to raise enough money to build a center for Filipino students at the university, but the plans never materialized. However, Velasco later changed the organization’s name to Filipino Community of Seattle, Inc., and set out to build a center for the entire Seattle Filipino community. Decades later, in 1965, the center was finally completed and was open for social events and recreation. Velasco was a founder, president, and board member of the UW Filipino Alumni Association after World War II and founded both the Pangasinan Association of the Pacific Northwest and the Asinganian Club, which were comprised of people who came from his region of the Philippines.

Velasco also served civic organizations that were not specifically Filipino-related. Many of these groups reached out to diverse groups in the city and state to try to improve race relations. He helped found the Jackson Street Community Council in 1946 and served as its first secretary, and later as a board member. Other community organizations that Velasco served include the King County Advisory Council of the Washington State Board Against Discrimination, and the Board of Trustees of the Neighborhood House, which served inner-city youth.

Velasco died in Waterfall, Alaska in 1968. He had been working at a cannery there when the bunkhouse caught fire. After escaping safely, Velasco went back to retrieve his typewriter but was unable to escape a second time.