Friends recall a fighter for justice

When Eileen Thomas left town six years ago, friends and relatives said, she left Spokane a better place than when she found it.

Today, more than 200 people are expected at a memorial service for the former president of the Spokane branch of the NAACP.

Thomas died March 19 in Garner, N.C., where she lived with the family of her youngest child, Ophelia Washington, since 2001.

“The minute she set foot in North Carolina, she was in the NAACP office,” Washington said of her mother. “I said, ‘How did you find that building? You just got here.’ She said, ‘I got my ways. There’s something I got to do here.’ “

Thomas, who was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., on July 22, 1936, moved to Spokane in 1959.

Besides the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Thomas belonged to the American Civil Liberties Union, Spokane County Democratic Central Committee, Spokane Human Rights Commission, Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations, Peace and Justice Action League, and Spokane School District Equity Advisory Board, among other boards and organizations.

Thomas was one of 25 “freeholders” elected by Spokane County voters in 1992 to propose changes in local government. The group, which represented widely divergent political views, ultimately wrote a plan for consolidating city and county government – a proposal overwhelmingly defeated by voters in 1995.

For Thomas, social justice was a community issue. She would take strangers into her home, including children whose parents were fighting or unable to care for them, Washington said.

“If she saw a homeless person, she would go home and get food for him,” Washington said. “White or black, color didn’t make any difference to my mom.”

She would take off from her job as a bookkeeper to advocate for a student about to be expelled from school or leave home in the middle of the night to get somebody out of jail, her daughter and friends said.

In 1998, Thomas became president of the NAACP and took up the struggle against racial profiling by police.

Her former neighbor, Charles Knight, recalls the day his son was stopped by a police officer in the East Central Neighborhood, just around the corner from Thomas’ house.

“She came out in her granny robe and fuzzy slippers and said, ‘I want to talk to your superior,’ ” said Knight, who had been following his son home and recalled the look on the officer’s face.

Thomas and Police Chief Terry Mangan were always at odds, Knight said. But later, Chief Roger Bragdon became a regular at NAACP meetings.

“She was a significant cultural figure in the Inland Northwest,” said Bob Zeller, a former branch secretary of the NAACP. He recalled Thomas, who built the local organization up to 200 members, always carried a bundle of applications with her.

“She was also controversial and had a way of pulling people’s chains,” Zeller said.

Never one to mince words, Thomas once had to apologize for saying, “People are always making excuses because it’s the white thing to do.”

Former Mayor Sheri Barnard, who worked with Thomas to build the East Central Community Center, said the civil rights leader “knew what she wanted and was very demanding, but stood for all the right things in the community.”

Florrie Brassier, who succeeded Thomas as president of the NAACP, recalled her supporting an ordinance adding sexual orientation to the city’s civil rights protections.

“She believed equal rights are for everybody,” Brassier said.

One of Thomas’ closest friends, Alice Moore of Spokane, remembered her friend working in her basement late into the night on social issues in the community.

Moore will read a poem she wrote for her friend at today’s memorial. One stanza reads:

“Eileen’s probably talking to God; and looking down on you and me; and asking God in her own way; ‘Have you ever belonged to the NAACP?’”

Thomas’ former husband, Cassk Thomas Sr., remained a lifelong friend even after their divorce. He died Jan. 10, 2006, in North Carolina, where he, too, had been living in Washington’s home.

Eileen Thomas died of cancer about 14 months later. At the time, she was an active member of the NAACP and the ACLU, her daughter said.

Besides Washington, Thomas is survived by her other children, Linda Bodrero, of Las Vegas; Cassk Thomas Jr., of Seattle; Shahida Kamau, of Garner, N.C.; Denise Kirby, of Galloway, Ohio; 11 grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.