This day in history: Legendary Spokane attorney Carl Maxey decried the ‘bunch of Archie Bunkers’ behind the nation’s lack of progress

From 1975: The Spokesman-Review did a dual personality profile of Spokane’s only two Black lawyers: Carl Maxey and Tolmon “Toby” Gibson.

Maxey, 50, was the older and better-known of the two, but both had “striking similarities in their backgrounds.” Both had been elite boxers. Maxey won an NCAA championship in 1950, and Gibson, 32, was on the 1964 Olympic team. Both graduated from Gonzaga Law School and opened practices in Spokane.

The similarities ended there. Gibson was not a Maxey-style firebrand.

Gibson believed that “Spokane is a conservative yet fair town.”

Maxey said he was saddened that all of his work toward racial justice and equity “never really made that much difference to the people on the top and the people in power.”

“You wonder why I am the way I am now?” Maxey asked. “The sum total is that the whole damn country is a bunch of Archie Bunkers.”

From 1925: Automobiles had proliferated over the entire region, but many of the state’s highways remained unpaved.

The state highway engineer announced plans to remedy that on a few key stretches. He said that 6 miles of paving would be added on the Inland Empire Highway, north of Colfax toward Spokane.

On the Sunset Highway, he planned to add a half-mile of paving just west of Spokane.

In total, he said the state would fund 44.7 miles of paving in 1925. Most highways, however, would be merely “graded” and “surfaced.”