Black Roots Deep, Worth Attention
This month - Black History Month - Spokane’s Calvary Baptist Church celebrated its 107th anniversary.
One of Calvary’s founders, the Rev. Peter Barrow, was a black man born into slavery in Virginia. He and his wife Julia settled in Deer Park in 1889. Like many black pioneers, the Barrows came to the Northwest to escape segregation, overt racism and the economic depression that gripped much of the country after the Civil War. Ninety-five years later, Barrow’s grandson-in-law, James Chase, became Spokane’s first African American mayor.
Across our region and throughout the country, Americans took advantage of the month of February to celebrate this nation’s other founders - African American inventors, civic leaders, pioneers, entertainers and entrepreneurs who helped build this country, but who for years went unrecognized by historians.
Pioneers like Daniel Oliver, Spokane’s first known black settler. Oliver arrived in 1878, seven years after the first recorded white settlers came to Spokane. And John Parker, who opened a barber shop in 1887 on Howard Street between First and Second. As well as pioneer women like Cecilia Rogers, who came to Spokane as a house servant, but spent the latter part of her life running a boarding house where she offered free food, clothing and a place to stay for orphans and adults who were down on their luck.
There aren’t many sources that recount the important historical contributions African Americans made to the communities of Eastern Washington and North Idaho. But two that do are “All Through the Night” by Joseph Franklin, a scholar who specializes in the African American experience of the Pacific Northwest, and “Northwest Black Pioneers: A Centennial Tribute,” a handbook compiled in 1989 by a committee of Spokane citizens.
Today The Spokesman-Review celebrates Black History Month, as well as the full spectrum of American humanity, by recognizing winners and finalists of our Diversity Essay Contest. The cover of the In Life section features their essays.
In the winning essay, Joy Peck writes about the pain of watching her grandmother endure racial discrimination. Jerrelene Williamson knows that pain. “Discrimination hurts all of us,” she writes in her essay about something she experienced in 1948 while traveling with the Rogers High School glee club. Through his love of basketball, Jeremy Gugino writes, he gained a deeper understanding of the complex relationship between race and opportunity in America.
Events like Black History Month, and stories like the ones written by the 115 people who entered the Diversity Essay Contest, ensure that no American is forgotten by history again.
, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Elana Ashanti Jefferson/For the editorial board