Labor Archives of Washington: Labor/Civil Rights Activists & Supporters

Asberry was a music teacher who was born Nettie J. Craig on July 15, 1865, in Leavenworth, Kansas. She earned a degree from the Kansas State Conservatory of Music and later earned her Ph.D. from the University of Kansas. She moved to Seattle in 1890 and relocated to Tacoma in 1893. Following her marriage to Albert J. Jones, who died three years after their move to Seattle, she married Henry Joseph Asberry. In 1908 Nettie Asberry helped found the Clover Leaf Art Club, one of the first African American Women’s clubs in the state. She became a leader in the Washington State Federation of Colored Women’s Organizations and served as its president. The organization was founded in 1917 and was known by various names, including the Washington State Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs, the Colored Women’s Federation of Washington and Jurisdiction and, in later years, the Washington State Association of Colored Women (and ... Colored Women's Clubs). Asberry was also a founder of the Tacoma Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and a member of the Progressive Mothers' Club of Tacoma and the Tacoma Inter-Racial Council. Nettie J. Asberry died in 1968.

Richard Carbray moved with his family from Canada when he five years old. He was educated in the Catholic school system in Seattle. He graduated from the University of Washington and did graduate work at University College, Dublin. Carbray taught at Lakeside School from 1941-1949 with time out for Army duty. Later he was chairman of the language department of Lake Forest Academy, Illinois, and then taught at Rosary College, River Forest, Illinois. Carbray was an active member of the Catholic social movement and an early opponent of the Vietnam War and has taught courses on dissent at the University of Washington and various Seattle area community colleges. He was chairman of Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam (CALCAV) and worked closely with the Berrigans and other individual resisters and protest groups. As personal "peritus" to Archbishop Thomas, D. Roberts, he attended the Vatican II Ecumenical Council in Rome, 1964-1966. Carbray credits two men with having a major influence in his life: one was Gordon Zahn, who established his credentials in the peace movement as a Catholic conscientious objector in World War II; the second was the Most Rev. Thomas Roberts, S.J. former archbishop of Bombay and a persistent voice against war, especially in a nuclear age.

ohn Caughlan was a Seattle attorney and civil rights leader.

John Caughlan was born in Missouri in 1909, the son of a Methodist clergyman. The Caughlan family moved to Eastern Washington in 1911, living chiefly in Ellensburg, and then to Seattle where Caughlan graduated from Ballard High School and earned a B.A. at the University of Washington. In the early 1930s he enrolled briefly in a graduate program in English literature at Yale University but, feeling the discipline to be removed from the issues of the day (the problems of the Great Depression and the proposed solutions of the New Deal), he enrolled instead in Harvard Law School, graduating in 1935.

Caughlan returned to Seattle in 1937 after a short stint in New York. He worked briefly for a law firm but was fired after refusing to withdraw from a case in which he represented the Communist Party in a dispute with the city, which had revoked the Party's lease for the Civic Auditorium. In 1938 Caughlan became a deputy prosecutor for King County, although he took leave from this position to represent the Grays Habor Civil Rights Committee as they investigated the destruction of a public hall in Aberdeen, Washington. He also represented CIO official Dick Law at the inquest into the death of his wife, labor activist Laura Law.

Caughlan returned to the King County Prosecutor's Office in 1940, but was informed that he would only be permitted to resume work there if he would publicly denounce the Soviet Union. He refused to do so, was dismissed, and spent the rest of his career in private practice, having as partners at various times Siegfried Hesse, Leonard Schroeter, C.T. Hatten and Lee A. Holley.

Civil liberties and human rights were the two overarching concerns that informed Caughlan's professional activities. In the 1940s and 1950s he represented labor unions, union activists, the Communist Party, the Washington Pension Union, Henry Huff in the Smith Act case of United States v. Henry Huff et al., foreign-born residents facing deportation because of their political activities, and individuals accused of "subversive" or "un-American" activities in cases related to the Smith Act, the McCarran Act, and the McCarran-Walter Act. Hazel Wolf was one of these, threatened with deportation for Commumist Party membership. He also represented, with his partner C.T. "Barry" Hatten, a number of witnesses before the hearings conducted by the Washington State Legislature's Joint Legislative Fact Finding Committee on Un-American Activities, led by Albert F. Canwell, in 1947-1948. He also represented several individuals before the House Committee on Un-American Affairs (HUAC) at its Seattle hearings in 1954, and handled many cases involving screening of Coast Guard personnel. Caughlan had been charged with perjury in 1948, two years after stating in the course of testifying in an immigration case that he was not a member of the Communist Party. He was acquitted, but was himself called before HUAC in 1954 to face the charge again. In 1961 Caughlan was convicted of failure to pay income tax. He served six months in the federal prison camp on McNeil Island and was suspended from practice for thirty days.

Five of Caughlan's cases went to the United States Supreme Court; the most significant of these were Herbert Schneider vs. Willard Smith, Commandant, United States Coast Guard, 1968, which invalidated Cost Guard screening procedures for personnel on United States merchant marine vessels, and United States vs. Eugene Robel, 1967, which invalidated a section of the Subversive Activities Control Act (McCarran Act) which had prohibited employment at defense facilities of members of Communist-action organizations.

In the 1960s and 1970s Caughlan's focus moved to other issues such as segregation and racial discrimination, and human rights beyond the United States. He travelled to Mississippi in the summer of 1964 with other attorneys to assist in the defense of civil rights activists there; at home in Seattle he was involved in racially charged cases, working with members of the Black Panther Party and protesting inquest procedures (which were later changed) in the inquest into the killing of black activist Larry Ward by Seattle police. Caughlan handled many conscientious objector and Selective Service cases during the Vietnam War.

Human rights abuses by governments supported by the United States were an issue of ongoing concern for Caughlan. In 1977 he went to the Philippines as part of a delegation headed by former United States Attorney General Ramsey Clark, on a fact-finding mission to investigate human rights violations by the Marcos regime. During the 1980s he travelled several times to Central America, particularly Nicaragua, participating in a National Lawyers Guild mission in 1984 to observe the Nicaraguan elections, and also represented Central American refugees in their immigratio

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.

Richard V. "Dick" Correll (1904-1990), described as "one of the leading masters of printmaking in the West", was best known for his powerful black and white linoleum cuts, etchings and woodblock prints. For most of his life he earned a living as a commercial artist in the book publishing and advertising fields while producing a large body of fine art in his own time. His themes ranged from landscapes, animals and agricultural scenes, harbors and ships, and music and dance to those which reflected his lifelong concern with political and social issues. As one curator wrote, "the maturity of his technique, with its rich textures and dramatic contrasts, combines with a wide range of subject matter to produce a body of work of great warmth, power, and depth". Correll stated that, above all, he was a humanist.

Born in Missouri 1904, Richard Correll spent most of his life in the three West Coast states, spending his early years in small farms or towns in Oregon and California. He absorbed his intellectual thirst -- and the craft of fine woodworking - from his father, a lawyer, school teacher, master carpenter, and voracious reader, and the love of art and music from his mother, a musician trained at Oberlin. A natural artist from early childhood, by the age of four Dick was cutting perfect farm animals out of paper with his mother's sewing scissors. He was largely self-taught: "I combed the library of every place we moved to for reproductions and critical articles on artwork or artists. I’m a constant student." He also became sensitized to the environment early on through working in his family’s small garden plots and farms and caring for the occasional family cow, horse or flock of chickens.

By the later 1920s the family had moved to Los Angeles. Dick's father and uncle began building houses there during the housing boom, with Dick doing the architectural drafting and his younger brother the electrical work. The two young men helped their father and brother with everything from basic construction to fine cabinetry. After the building boom collapsed with the Depression, Dick opened a couple of sign shops and did sign painting and calligraphy. He took a few art classes at what was then Chouinard Art Institute, but never attended as a matriculated student. He continued to sketch and draw on his own.

Dick's political thinking deepened with the Depression and seeing flocks of people uprooted by the Dust Bowl, hungry and homeless, stream into California. He began to see that art could be a vehicle to express ideas.

Correll specialized in printmaking, primarily wood and linoleum block prints, but produced etchings and lithographs as well. In addition, he produced drawings, gouache paintings and two murals. Especially notable from Correll's WPA period is a suite of prints depicting the legendary American folk hero, Paul Bunyan. In one exhibition catalogue these were described to be "as large in spirit as their inspiration."

During the Seattle years, Correll was a founding member of the Washington Artists' Union. He married his wife Alice in 1938. He had several solo shows and exhibited widely in national juried group shows (Print Club of Philadelphia, the California Etcher's Society, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art's Print Annual.) In 1939 his work was exhibited at the New York World’s Fair. Many of the works from the WPA period are today in the collections of museums, universities, and public buildings and continue to be shown and circulated. His murals of Paul Bunyan remain in a high school in Bremerton, Washington.

Curator and fine print dealer M. Lee Stone writes, "In 1941 Correll and his wife moved to New York City where he remained for 11 years working in the commercial art field. New York's commercial and fine art scenes, however, were not without their difficulties. While commercial work paid decently, Correll always thought it a 'sorry thing' to use one's artistic abilities to sell products. His values were completely opposed to those of Madison Avenue, and this contradiction plagued him throughout his commercial career.

As America entered World War II, Correll, at 36, was too old for the draft. He joined the Civilian Defense Corps as an Air Raid Warden in the Greenwich Village area. He also did artwork for Civil Defense, producing dozens of pro bono flyers, banners, signs and posters for various causes." Daughter Leslie was born in 1944.

After joining the Artists League of America (ALA), an organization of progressive artists and sculptors "devoted to social, cultural, and economic interest of artists", Correll served as Publication Chair of the ALA News from 1943 on, and by 1946 was Editor. Membership in those years included Rockwell Kent, Lynd Ward, Jacob Lawrence and Moses Soyer. He exhibited regularly with ALA, and his linocut, "Air Raid Wardens" was included in the "Artists for Victory"

Civil servant, elected official, moral reformer, surveyor, and engineer, George Fletcher Cotterill helped shape the city of Seattle in the literal as well as the figurative sense.

Cotterill was born in England to Alice and Robert Cotterill on Nov. 18, 1865. In 1872, the Cotterill family immigrated to the United States and settled in Montclair, New Jersey. Cotterill graduated from high school as class valedictorian in 1881, and studied surveying and engineering under the tutelage of a New Jersey county engineer for the next three years. During this time he participated in the platting and construction of Arlington cemetery.

Cotterill migrated to the Pacific Northwest in 1884. For several years he worked as a surveyor on various land, mining, and railroad projects before being hired by surveyor R.H. Thomson. With Thomson, Cotterill surveyed for the city's first sewer system and platted additions to rapidly expanding Seattle. When Thomson was appointed city engineer in 1882, Cotterill became his assistant. Among his responsibilities as assistant city engineer, Cotterill was assigned to the city water department and became instrumental in the development of the Cedar River water supply. The city, needing a fresher and less expensive source of water than the Lake Washington pumping system, approved the Cedar River gravity system in the mid 1890s. At the time, the city was out of funds to pay for the new water system, and Cotterill, a member of the task force responsible for improving Seattle's water supply, proposed the novel revenue bond system for municipal ownership of public utilities. The first of its kind in the United States, this public utilities plan was approved by citizen vote in 1896. Cotterill was also involved in the project to convert the tide flats south of the city into property capable of development.

Cotterill's advocacy of public utilities drew him into the political arena. In 1900 the nonpartisan party, through which he was promoting public utilities, nominated him for mayor. Cotterill accepted the nomination contingent on backing from the Democratic Party, which he received, and he ran as a Democratic candidate. Though Cotterill had grown up a Republican, the recent campaign of William Jennings Bryan had made him a Democrat. Cotterill did not win this election or the next, but in 1906 he ran for the state senate and won. One of his principal accomplishments while in office was the framing of the successful amendment to the Washington State constitution recognizing female suffrage. Because of this amendment, he recalled later with pride, his mother had been able to cast a ballot for the first time at the age of 75. Cotterill received the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate in 1908 and again in 1910, but lost both times.

In 1912 Cotterill again ran for mayor, this time on a platform demanding moral reform. In an "open" city where vice had flourished since the Klondike gold rush, his campaign targeted Hiram Gill's legacy of graft in city government as well as rampant prostitution and gambling houses. Cotterill won this election, helped in part by the new ability of women to vote. Cotterill's term was punctuated by conflict and controversy, due to corruption in municipal government and the police department, labor unrest, an unsympathetic Seattle Times, and other causes. He regularly confronted opposition to his moral reform agenda, which was for the most part driven by strong temperance beliefs.

At the center of Cotterill's commitment to moral reform was his life-long crusade on behalf of temperance. His parents had joined the United Kingdom Temperance Alliance in 1865, consequently indoctrinating Cotterill from birth. As a child in England, Cotterill attended the local chapter his mother had formed of the Band of Hope, an organization for children's temperance education. Cotterill attended his first convention of the International Order of Good Templars in 1897 and remained involved in this organization for the rest of his life. He served for a time as Grand Secretary of the Washington State division and later as Chief Templar of the national division. In addition to his work with the Templars, he was a member of the Anti-Saloon League. In 1909, Cotterill was appointed by President Taft as U.S. representative to the International Congress against Alcoholism; in 1913 President Wilson reappointed him.

Cotterill did not seek a second term as mayor; instead he worked as a surveyor and engineer in private practice. From 1916 to 1919 he served as chief engineer of the state Highway Department. He returned to Seattle politics in 1922, running for Seattle port commissioner. He won, and served four consecutive three-year terms, 1922 to 1934.

Following his port commissioner post, Cotterill ran unsuccessfully for at least five various city and state offices between 1932 and 1951. He also ran for governor in 1928

Biographical Note

Clara Fraser was born Clara Doris Goodman in Los Angeles on March 12, 1923 to Russian-Jewish immigrant parents, Samuel and Emma Goodman. Her father was an anarchist and her mother worked in the garment industry. She grew up in a multi-racial neighborhood, the East Side ghetto of Los Angeles, which Fraser described as a very poor, but highly political environment. While in junior high school in the 1930s, Clara joined the Young People’s Socialist League, prompted by the despair of the Great Depression. In 1939 to 1945, Fraser attended UCLA and graduated with degrees in literature, education, and drama. She then joined the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party in 1945. After marrying at the age of 18, she and her first husband, Frank Krasnowsky, moved to Chicago. They then moved to Seattle to organize a Socialist Workers Party during the post-war era. Working as an assembly line electrician at Boeing, Fraser participated in the Boeing Strike of 1948. During the 1950s and 1960s, Fraser was very active in labor socialist politics. She worked vigorously to end racial segregation and the Vietnam War. She also supported women’s rights. In 1966 when the Seattle branch of the Socialist Workers Party left the organization, Fraser helped form the Freedom Socialist Party. Fraser and other feminists began a Free University of Seattle class titled "Marx and the Women's Question" which was the beginning of the Women's Studies Program at the University of Washington. Soon after, she joined the original Seattle Opportunities Industrialization Center (SOIC) and CEP, the job training arms of the anti-poverty program. She became a consultant on feminism and race relations for many public agencies. In 1967, Fraser, along with Gloria Martin and the young women of the New Left, founded Radical Women. Radical Women worked with and supported African American anti-poverty programs, Native American fishing rights, and Asian American protests for low-income housing.

After being fired from SOIC, Seattle City Light hired Fraser in 1973 as an education coordinator of the Electrical Trades Trainee Program for women. On July 11, 1975, Seattle City Light fired her, claiming that her dismissal was due to budgetary cuts. The Seattle Department of Human Rights, directed under Vivian L. Caver, a black woman civil rights and political activist, found that Fraser was discriminated because of her public affiliation with the Feminist Coordinating Council, Radical Women, and the Freedom Socialist Party. When the workers of Seattle City Light rose up against Superintendent Gordon Vickery, director of the agency, in 1974, Fraser was the leading critic and spokesperson for the massive employee walkout. She then became involved with a recall campaign against Mayor Wes Uhlman.

A legendary case not only in Seattle but across the nation, Fraser garnered broad support from local and national labor, feminist, gay, and labor unions, women’s groups, the LGBT community, and minority groups including the Black Panther Party chapters in Los Angeles and Seattle, the Native American Rights Advocate, and the Asian Law Association. In 1981, the court ruled in favor of Fraser, upholding protection for employees against sex and political discrimination. Seattle City Light was ordered to award her $135,265.00 in back pay, damages, and interests, reinstatement of her retirement account, social security contributions, and restoration of sick leave, dental and vacation benefits.

Fraser died on February 24, 1998 in Seattle, Washington.



Content Description
Materials include correspondence, newsletters, press releases, and newspaper articles relating to the activities surrounding the lawsuit Clara Fraser vs. City Light, an oral history interview with Fraser by Charlotte McAllister (1970), and records related to her co-founding and leadership in the Freedom Socialist Party and Radical Women. Also included are pamphlets and booklets regarding radicalism, industrial unionism, anarchism, anarcho-syndicalism, Marxism, Socialism, feminism, anti-war efforts, and anti-capitalism collected by Fraser (1905-1949). Personal papers include educational records; family memorabilia; calendars and diaries; and correspondence, as well as materials about cultural events that illustrate Fraser's wide range of interests.

Civil rights activists; state official

Gerber's career as an active civil rights worker particularly emphasized the area of housing and vocational opportunities. He worked through a number of different organizations: the Washington State Board Against Discrimination (he was appointed by Governor Rosellini and chaired the State Board from 1957 until his resignation in 1962); the Fair Employment Practices Committee, of which he was treasurer; the Washington State Committee for Human Rights; American Friends Service Committee (regarding Seattle CAMP Program); American Technion Society; National Associaton for the Advancement of Colored People (Housing Committee); National Citizens Political Action Committee; Washington Citizen's Committee for Civil Rights Legislation; Washington Independents for Wallace; and the Washington State Committee for Human Rights. He also established some organizations to deal with the problem of fair housing such as the Fair Housing Listing Service and Harmony Homes.

Sidney Gerber was a champion of civil rights in Seattle, and notably was the founder of the Fair Housing Listing Service, which worked on the issue of minority housing in the Seattle area. He chaired the Washington State Board Against Discrimination. In 1961 he was awarded the Seattle Lodge 503 B'Nai B'rith "Man of the Year" award for his civil rights leadership. He died in 1965 in a plane crash, along with passengers Wing Luke and Kay LaDue.

On November 30, 1999, first day of the ministerial meetings, thousands of largely peaceful protesters blocked delegates’ entrance to the opening plenary session. According to press reports, Seattle police in riot gear responded by releasing volleys of tear gas and pepper spray at 10:00 am and continued to do so throughout the day. The police eased up when the 20,000-member labor march reached the downtown core from the Seattle Center, where a large rally had been held. WTO officials cancelled the opening ceremonies. At a time difficult to verify after the fact, Mayor Paul Schell declared a civil emergency, ordering streets to be cleared by 7:00 pm and imposing a curfew on a large area of downtown, from Yesler Way to Denny Way and from Interstate 5 to Elliott Bay. Word of the curfew reached people on the streets at about 4:00 pm. Some dispersed, but others remained and were herded out of downtown by police firing tear gas and pepper spray. At approximately 10:00 pm the State Patrol reinforced the police. Scattered vandalism and looting of several downtown businesses had occurred during the day.

Early the following day, Wednesday, December 1, Seattle police established a ‘demonstration-free zone’ around the WTO meeting site at the Seattle Convention and Trade Center. They severely restricted access to the area, but protests continued. The ministerial meeting was shut down for five hours that day. Governor Gary Locke sent additional State Patrol troopers and two National Guard units to relieve and assist the Seattle police. Clashes between protesters and police spilled over in the evening to Capitol Hill, east of downtown. By then the focus had shifted somewhat, away from the WTO and towards the police response to the protests. Several hundred protesters were arrested, and other protesters demonstrated outside the King County Jail.

The following day the Mayor’s Office reduced the size of what it called a ‘limited curfew zone’ to the area bounded by Fourth Avenue, Pine Street, Boren Avenue, Seneca Street, and Interstate 5. Some protests were staged on Friday, especially inside the convention center. protesters demonstrated outside the King County jail again on Friday evening. Eventually charges were dropped against most of the over 400 people arrested.
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Video recordings and logbooks created by filmmakers and activists during the 1999 protests against the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Seattle, Washington. The video recordings from the Independent Media Center (IMC) collection offer a unique perspective into a historic moment that brought together grassroots activists, labor leaders, environmentalists, farmers, anarchists, and artists who made history and shaped social justice movements around the world.

Robert C. Scott was a charter member of Group Health Cooperative of Puget Sound (founded 1946) and served on its Board of Directors from 1946-1953. From 1946-1948, he was chairman of the Group Health Cooperative Finance Committee.

Scott's interest in the cooperative movement grew out of his enthusiastic involvement in the Student Cooperative Association (S.C.A.) at the University of Washington during his student years (1931-1937). He was a founder and charter member of the S.C.A. and served four terms as president of its Board.

Often one local cooperative organization spawned others as members defined their needs and evolved cooperative solutions. Such an organization was the Co-op Agency, Inc. of which Scott was a founder and Board member from 1953-1958. The agency was organized as a buyer's club (mostly of food) but soon was providing its cooperators with appliances, loans and other services through a number of subsidiaries and related organizations. In 1954, the Agency had approximately 300 members.

On the national level, Scott served a term (1950-1954) on the Board of Directors of the Cooperative League of the United States, an association linking nearly ten million families through thousands of member cooperative ventures. Its local branch, the Cascade Chapter (founded 1949), fostered the development of many Puget Sound area consumer cooperatives, chief among which was the Consumer Insurance Agency, Inc. Robert Scott was an original board member.

Scott was also a research chemist for Adhesive Products Company, a division of American Marietta.

Emil Skowronek (aka Clark) (1904-1993) . Was born in Poland and immigrated to the United States. Skowronek graduated high school in Tcoma. As a young man, Skowronek was worked as a logger on the Olympic Peninsula for five years to fund his education as Washington State University, where he was a member of the wrestling team. Skowronek married Edna Theodosia Bundry Skowronek in 1935. He was radicalized by Skowronek was a member of the Communist Party USA and served as a left wing labor organizer who helped found the Seattle Ship Scaler's union in 1936. Skowroneck later became a ship rigger in the boilermaker's union and served as a business agent in the union. During World War II, Skowronek served in the merchant marine, where he was involved in the Battle of Okinawa. He lost his seamen's clearance for his political affiliations but was able to regain it.

Edna Theodosia Skowroneck (1903-1976), graduated in 1932 with Bachelor's of Science in nursing from the University of Washington. She worked as a registered nurse.

Theo Nassar (1939-), Emil and Edna's daughter, was born Thesoia Skowronek. Nassar recieved her BA in Sociology from Washington State University and her MS in Teaching/Communications from Gonzaga University, working as a caseworker at Eartrern State mental hospital and a copywriter and journalist in Spokane before moving to Los Angeles to become a screenwriter for ten years.

Felix Skowronek (1935-2006), Emil and Edna's son, played principal flute for the Seattle Symphony from 1956–1957 and 1959–1960. Skowronek also played in the Seventh Army Symphony from 1957–1959, Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra 1960–1966, and St. Louis Symphony 1966–1968, and was a member of the Casals Festival orchestra in Puerto Rico and a founding member of the Soni Ventorum Wind Quintet. He became a member of the faculty of the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico, followed by the University of Washington, where he taught for 38 years, and served as president of the National Flute Association and Seattle Flute Society. He was a leading figure in the revival of wooden Boehm-style flutes in the USA and an expert in the use of various hardwoods in flute manufacturing.

Anna Louise Strong was a journalist, world traveler, observer of revolutions and author of over 30 books and countless articles. She was the daughter of a Congregationalist minister, Sydney Strong, who was a pacifist and practitioner of the social gospel. She was educated at Oberlin College, Bryn Mawr and University of Chicago, where she earned a Ph.D. After finishing her education, Strong joined the National Child Labor Committee and organized child welfare exhibits throughout the country from 1910-1912.

Sydney Strong moved to Seattle in 1906 where he lived until his death in 1938. Anna Louise Strong, who seldom lived anywhere for long, joined him there from 1916 to 1921, which was for her a time of radicalizing events, including the Everett massacre and trial, and the Seattle General Strike. In Seattle, she began her journalism career and wrote for the Seattle Union Record. During this time, she was elected to the Seattle School Board and subsequently recalled because of association with the Industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W.). In the wake of these events, Strong went elsewhere in search of socialism in practice. Her quest took her first to the Soviet Union, where she was based from 1921 until 1940. During this period she spent part of the year in the Soviet Union, but would return to the United States for a lecture tour, usually between January and April.

Strong also became one of the earliest journalists to cover the Communist revolution in China. She visited China first in 1925 and returned frequently until 1947. During the course of her visits to China, she met and interviewed the Chinese Communist leaders, including Chou En-lai and Mao Tse-tung, gaining their respect and trust. In his 1946 interview with her, Mao first used the expression "paper tiger" to describe the United States.

Strong's enthusiasm for the Chinese revolution may have led to her arrest, imprisonment and expulsion from the Soviet Union in 1949. After these events, she was cut off from the Soviet Union, shunned by American Communists and denied a passport by the United States government. She settled for a time in California, where she wrote, lectured and invested in real estate. She was cleared finally of the Soviets' charges against her in 1955. When her passport was restored in 1958, she immediately made her way back to China, where she remained until her death in 1970. During the latter part of her life Anna Louise was honored and revered by the Chinese, one of the few Westerners with entree to China after the revolution and one of the last "Old China Hands" to remain in the good graces of the Chinese through the cultural revolution. The Chinese leaders considered her their unofficial spokesperson to the English speaking world.

Michael Withey is a Seattle-based lawyer who served as a representing attorney in the Domingo v Marcos court case. He is a public interest lawyer who has made a career representing the “little guy” against powerful interests to protect constitutional rights, civil rights, and human rights for the past 42 years. He is the former president of the Public Justice Foundation and received numerous prestigious awards.

Gene Viernes was born in Yakima on August 16, 1951, the eldest of nine children born to Felix and Betty Viernes. Felix had emigrated from the Philippines in the 1920s. He was a fruit picker and also worked in canneries. His son Gene grew up picking fruit before going to school. Gene joined Local 37, ILWU in 1966 at the age of 14, after lying about his age and paying a $50 bribe to a cannery foreman. He spent many summers as an "Alaskero," working in the Alaskan salmon canneries along with his father and brothers. In the 1970s, he met Silme Domingo and they became close friends. Together they formed the Alaska Cannery Workers' Association, a workers' legal advocacy group. Within Local 37, Gene Viernes played a crucial role in the formation of the Rank and File Committee, the group that spearheaded the reform movement in 1977.

Silme Domingo was born in Killeen, Texas, on January 25, 1952. His father had emigrated from the Philippines in the 1920s, and had joined the Army and fought in the Pacific during World War II. Silme was the third of five children born to Nemesio and Adelina Domingo. He grew up in Texas and Germany in accordance with his father's military career, and the family moved to Seattle in 1960. Silme attended Ballard High School and graduated with honors from the University of Washington. Silme, following his parents' social activism, participated in the effort during the 1970s to save Seattle's International District, and joined the work to establish social services for people in the district. In 1974 Silme joined the Union of Democratic Filipino (KDP) and established the Seattle KDP chapter, which organized the first protest in Seattle against the Marcos dictatorship. He was best known for his work in the Alaska Cannery Workers Union. He was survived by two children, Ligaya and Kalayaan.

On June 1, 1981, Seattle-based Filipino American labor activists Gene Viernes (1951-1981) and Silme Domingo (1952-1981) of Local 37 of the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union(ILWU) were murdered near Pioneer Square in downtown Seattle. They were attempting to reform the union, which they thought was corrupt, and were calling for better working conditions in the canneries.

The murders were originally thought to be an isolated act of violence, but friends and family organized a Committee for Justice for Domingo and Viernes (CJDV) eventually found links between the murders to Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos and his wife Imelda, who had ordered the murders in retaliation for the victims’ anti-Marcos organizing. In 1989, and a federal jury agreed with the CJDV, finding Marcos guilty of the murders.

Documents, including depositions, court documents, drafts, notes, exhibits, and other material, tapes, video, and photographs relating to Michael Withey's role as a representing attorney in the Doming v. Marcos court case. The case came as a result of the 1981 assassination Seattle labor leaders Silme Domingo and Gene Viernes in a plot involving Philippines dictator Ferdinand Marcos and a Seattle union leader Tony Baruso. Domingo and Viernes, in addition to serving as cannery union officers, had been organizing as part of a Filipinx diaspora organization to oppose the Marcos Regime. After the murders, a Committee for Justice for Domingo and Viernes was formed and a legal case against Marcos made its way through the US judicial system.

Biographical Note

Harold Wright is an electrical contractor, author, activist, and community leader in Seattle, Washington. Wright was born in New York but grew up in Virginia. After graduating from high school and spending three years in the United States Marine Corps, Wright completed electrical apprenticeship training in New York City. He worked as a journeyman electrician from 1960-1972. Wright moved to Seattle in 1966 and started his own independent electrical contractor firm, Wright, Inc., in 1972. Wright is a co-founder of the Seattle Model City's Economic Task Force, the United Construction Workers Association (UCWA), the Central Contractors Association (CCA), the Community Coalition for Contracts and Jobs (CCCJ), and the Black Builders Association (BBA). In addition, Wright has authored numerous books about his activism and Black history, including Freedom , Reconstruction , Pain Inflicted by a Nation , Light Rail in the Valley , and Radiant .

Adapted from http://www.booksbywright.com/about-harold.html

Content Description

Materials from Harold Wright’s career as an electrical contractor, activist, and community leader. The collections includes research materials from Wright’s books Reconstruction, and Light Rail in the Valley. This collection would be of particular interest to researchers interested in Black-owned small businesses, construction, transportation, public transit, and African Americans in Seattle.