100 years ago in Spokane: New Gonzaga football coach vows team will be ‘giving our best’

Charles E. “Gus” Dorias, Gonzaga University’s new football coach, arrived in Spokane for the first time and delivered a less-than-inspiring message to assembled alumni.

“Being absolutely in the dark in regard to the athletic conditions at Gonzaga, I am not in a position as yet to furnish much of a line on my plans for the fall season,” he said.

He said he had a “wholesome respect for the brand of football played in this section of the country,” and added that “it will be necessary to develop a speedy team if Gonzaga is to hold a place in football among the institutions of the Northwest.”

He vowed not to “sidestep” any of the varsity teams in the region.

“We may not beat them all, but we will be here trying and giving our best, and that is about all any organization can do,” he said.

From the suffrage beat: A huge mass meeting was in the works in Spokane to celebrate the national women’s suffrage victory.

Spokane’s suffrage workers were devising plans for a large outdoor celebration, with speeches and “demonstrations of various kinds,” to be held on Sept. 8.

On this day

(From Associated Press)

1955: Emmett Till, a Black teen from Chicago, was abducted from his uncle’s home in Money, Mississippi, by two white men after he had supposedly whistled at a white woman; he was found brutally slain three days later.

1963: The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.