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In 1909 the Washington State Legislature voted to put women's suffrage on the ballot. Washington's male voters passed the measure in 1910, making Washington the 5th state in the Union to acknowledge women's right to vote. Women were not given the vote; they earned it. Across the state, professional women and middle-class club ladies joined with women from unions and granges, working for years to win over male voters. They gave speeches, put up posters, dropped flyers out of biplanes, and delivered “Votes for Women” pies to Old Soldiers’ Homes. Our corner of Seattle did not produce any prominent leaders in the suffrage movement. But the women of Rainier Valley have been active in public life in many ways- from the Rainier Beach Women's Club, which founded the first kindergarten in Seattle in 1910, to Denise Gloster who organized the first March for Youth to protest youth violence in 2008. Marion Southard Weiss used her social work training with the Seattle Housing Authority among other worthy causes. Ruby Chow defied stereotypes to emerge as a leader in the Chinese community and beyond. And Dawn Mason has worked tirelessly on behalf of women, people of color and other marginalized members of the community. This exhibit was created in 2009 in conjunction with the Washington State History Society's Exhibit, "Women's Votes, Women's Voices". Rainier Valley Historical Society celebrates Rainier Valley's many women leaders and their varied avenues of public life and commitment to improving their communities and beyond. Explore other articles in this exhibit: Working for Change without the Vote Mothers Club Leads the Way Marion Southard West

Children's issues were deemed an appropriate arena for women: Washington Women started voting in school elections in 1890. The Rainier Beach Women's Club began in 1908 as the "Mother's Club". In 1910 they established a public kindergarten at Emerson School. According to club records "The Board of Education supplied heat, light, and janitorial service; the Mothers supplied...furniture and equipment, and paid the salary of a teacher. A small fee was charged each child, but underprivileged children were there at the expense of the Mothers." Kindergartens allowed children to make friends, develop social skills, and learn through play. They also ave mothers a few child-free hours each week and they showed the women who organized them that they had the power to change the work in their own way. By the 1930s the Emerson mothers had created a preschool as well. Today Mothers' Clubs have evolved into PTAs, many of which still subsidize the salaries of kindergarten teachers. This exhibit was created in 2009 in conjunction with Washington Sate History Society's Exhibit, "Women's Votes, Women's Voices". Rainier Valley Historical Society celebrates Rainier Valley's many women leaders and their varied avenues of public life and commitment to improving their communities and beyond. Explore other articles in this exhibit: Beyond the Laundry: Women Changing the World Working for Change without the Vote Marion Southard West

Please join us for an online talk with David J. Jepsen, author of “Contested Boundaries: A New Pacific Northwest History” on the primary themes of exclusion, racial issues, and the disproportionate impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on communities of color.

Change is now. The video documenting George Floyd’s murder has shaken the world. America’s silence has been broken and voices have been heard loud and clear across the country. In support of ending anti-Black racism, RVHS is committed to the voices of Black Lives Matter. As we dig deep into our mission statement to find how history connects us, we are ready to improve how we collect, preserve, interpret, and share African American heritage. We are committed to hosting the Dismantling Racism series, sharing educational resources, supporting Black owned- businesses, and exhibiting Rainier Valley's Black American history. We stand in solidarity for justice and equality for Black Americans and for the changes needed now. RVHS Board of Directors and Archives and Programs Manager

Watch a presentation on voting rights, voter suppression, and disenfranchisement that results from institutional racism and racist policymaking. Our presenter is Maya Manus the Advocacy and Civic Engagement Coordinator of the Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle Watch Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGFUpM8GjqQ

This project was completed in 2011 and was founded by a special project grant from King County 4Culture. John Hoole and I began our exploration of community activism in the Rainier Valley with a simple question: How do ordinary people affect positive change in their communities? The Rainier Valley has a long tradition of civic activism, dating back at least as far as the petition filed by the ladies of Columbia City in 1905, urging the Town Council to close the local pool room on Sundays and at 11 pm the rest of the week. We were particularly curious about the period from 1970 to 1990, when many of the issues facing the Rainier Valley today came to the force, and man of the people and organizations now at work in the community got their start. Our research began with a treasure trove of slides, minutes, correspondence, and other materials documenting the activists of SESCO, the South End Seattle Community Organization, which was founded in 1975. The materials were donated to the RVHS by Rodney Herold, one of SESCO’s founders. We knew SESCO represented a specific approach to community activism, inspired by the work of Chicago organizer Saul Alinsky, author of the classic “Rules for Radicals.” We were curious to understand SESCO’s philosophy, goals, and strategies, to compare them to the work done by other community activists during the same period, and to see what lessons we could glean from the mix. As we read through documents and conducted oral history interviews, we learned many interesting connections (and a few conflicts) among the people and groups that were at work in the Rainier Valley in the 1970s, ‘80s, and ‘90s. We saw successes and failures, flashy media-savvy campaigns and long hard slogs behind the scenes. We saw people were empowered by small victories, and good intentions that lead to unintended consequences. The threads are complicated; it would take years of research to fully untangle them. We hope to continue our research in the future, and we encourage those of you with stories we failed to capture, to share them with RVHS. (2021 note: We would still love to hear your stories please email us at office@rainiervalleyhistory.org) Meanwhile, we would like to share a few of the lessons we drew from the various stories people told us over the course of the project. First of all, we learned that experts can be wrong. As the story of Greenwood Gardens shows, bureaucrats and planners do not always make decisions that benefit individual communities. They may have self-serving motives, like maintaining their jobs or perpetuating their organizations. Or they may have broader goals—from ending homelessness to balancing the state budget—that may not align with the priorities or needs of local residents. Or they may be under the say of a new trend in city planning or education reform that will prove to be deeply flawed. That large government entities often wield massive resources only make their blunders bigger. Second, social capital is powerful. People who live and work together over a long period of time—like the members of the Rainier Chamber in the 1970s —develop a network of mutual trust and reciprocal responsibility that can be called upon when they want to make a change in their community. Small acts of neighborly generosity can help build that network. Never underestimate the power of a shared lawnmower! Alinsky- style campaigns can be extremely effective. A narrowly defined issue with a clear target, and escalating tactics designed to hold that target accountable, will almost certainly produce action on that narrowly defined issue. The story of the Dunlap Dump demonstrates this, as does the tale of the Lucile Street Bridge. (The Lucile Street Bridge story also shows us the necessity of vigilance in the endgame!) Focusing on small, achievable goals, can prevent activists from seeing the bigger picture. Now, the bigger picture can be overwhelming, confusing, discouraging, and paralyzing; there generally isn’t a simple, obvious solution—this is why Alinksy advised organizers to focus on small, achievable goals. But sometimes the problems are bigger than that, and the solutions have to be bigger too. In the case of  Whitworth School, there were systemic, fundamental problems underlying Whitworth’s situation—systemic problems that pitted school against school, parents against neighbors. What might have happened with everyone had worked together to address those systemic issues? Finally, and perhaps most importantly: ordinary people can change the world. Despite the cautionary principles listed above, we have found ourselves inspired again and again by the stories we heard and the people we talked to during this project. Kay Godefroy; the PTA President who went from founding an afternoon Kindergarten at Whitworth to heading up the Rainier Chamber’s anti-crime work in the 1980s, told us: “If you can organize a PTA spaghetti dinner, you can do anything. You don’t need professionals, you don’t need funding, you can make changes with the force of your will.” Many other people embodied this spirit, Pauline Wilson, Brighton resident, and mother of seven, whose talent and passion were brought out by SESCO organizers and who became a powerful voice in the fight to tear down Greenwood Gardens. Jean Vel Dwyk, whose tireless advocacy on behalf of Rainier Valley businesses and residents has wrong positive change out of the worst situations. B.J. Santos, who at the age of eleven organized a talent show at Whitworth that raised $135 to paint the boys' bathrooms, and who told the School Board that the students “could not take care of all such problems” without their help. Jim Diers, who started out as a SESCO organizer, and went on to take Saul Alinksy’s principles of community empowerment and build them into the city government, as the first director of the Department of Neighborhoods. It was an ironic idea, city hall training people to fight city hall, but the DON—particularly the Neighborhood Matching Fund—has been a powerful force for improvement and citizen empowerment in neighborhoods across the city. We see a lot of hope even in the most contentious arguments in the Rainier Valley—over density, light rail, school closures, and so on—even though they sometimes weaken the social capital that gives neighborhood activists their true power. These conflicts are the result of a necessary tension among different people, institutions, and perspectives in our community. Conflicts also show us that people here care what happens in their community. They know its past (thanks to the work for the RVHS) and they have a stake in its future. And time and again they have fought passionately for the kind of future they want to see.

Garlic Gulch Legacy by Mikala Woodward, Excerpted from Rainier Valley Food Stories Cookbook Many Italian families – like many other Rainier Valley residents at that time -- raised their own vegetables and fruits in their gardens. Vincent’s grandmother “raised garlic, onions, peppers, tomatoes. Round the edge of the garden there was a big fence, and in that fence was raspberries. Oh man! In the middle of that there garden was a pear tree. And oh! It used to produce pears, I’m gonna tell you that. Then she had five great big cherry trees. Oh man! And one great big Italian prune tree. They would pick the prunes and they’d bring them down to the store and they’d sell them for a pretty good price. Real tasty.” Many of those prune trees – Italian plums -- are still there: the living heritage of the old “Garlic Gulch” neighborhood. And they are still feeding Rainier Valley neighbors. Phyllis Macay moved to Mount Baker in 1994 and bought a house with seven Italian plum trees in the yard. She came up with a delicious way to enjoy the fruit: “There seems to be no bugs that attack ‘em. I don’t even water ‘em or anything, and they’re really, really pretty, and very, very sweet. Two years ago, I got a million plums and I had no idea what to do with them. I gave them away to everybody. I mean, what am I going to do with these plums? I didn’t just wanna let them rot. I made a Chinese plum sauce. I tried to make plum pies, but that didn’t work – they’re too moist. Plum with pork is really good, but how many times can you make a pork roast? “I had already been experimenting with this bread. I called it my Soon To Be Famous Plum Bread, and now all my friends, when I go to a party they say “Bring your plum bread!” There is no fat at all in it. Yet it’s rich and it’s good. You can make it sweet and not so sweet. If I don’t put any sugar in it at all, it’s still really sweet ‘cause the plums are so sweet. It’s a great dessert; it’s a great breakfast.” RECIPE: NOW FAMOUS PLUM BREAD Phyllis Macay 1/2 cup sugar 1 1/2 cup plums, chopped 1/2 cup dried fruit – cranberries or raisins 1 cup whole wheat flour 1/2 cup unbleached flour 2 Tbsp Wheat germ 1 tsp each baking soda, salt, and nutmeg 1 1/2 tsp each baking powder and ground fresh ginger 1 cup shredded raw carrots 1 cup chopped nuts 1 Tbsp vanilla 2 eggs Mix sugar, plums, and dried fruit. Set aside. Mix flours, wheat germ, soda, salt, nutmeg, baking powder, and ginger. Set aside. Lightly coat 2 bread pans with cooking spray. Dust with flour. Mix plums into flour mixture well; add carrots and nuts; add vanilla and eggs. Stir well. Pour into pans. Top with whole halves of nuts. Sprinkle with sugar. Bake at 350° for 50 minutes. Cool, then wrap in wax paper. Wait for 24 hours, enjoy or freeze.

Excerpted from Rainier Valley Food Stories Cookbook The greatest love stories all feature a seemingly insurmountable obstacle, overcome by a devoted couple – think Romeo and Juliet, Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson. This first in our series of Rainier Valley Love Stories has all the elements of a classic tale: a handsome soldier, a pretty girl, a chain link fence furtively climbed in the dead of night, a journey across the Atlantic to bring the beloved home. This tale, worthy of Hollywood, is the love story of Mike and Mary Prontera. Mary died in 2002, but Mike still operates his barber shop on McClellan Street, as he has for 56 years. The story begins during World War Two when the United States was fighting the original Axis powers, Germany, Italy, and Japan. After Italy surrendered, the Americans began to send Italian prisoners of war back to the States. The P.O.W. camp was located down by Boeing Field, at the southern end of the Rainier Valley. The area was mostly farmland, and some of the nearby farms were owned by Italian Americans. Rose Isernio Vacca remembers: “That was not far from my mom’s and dad’s home, it was really almost across the street, where there used to be a big cow pasture, they built barracks there in order to house the prisoners.” Mike Prontera was one of those Italian prisoners, captured in North Africa. According to Rose, who would become his sister-in-law, “when [Mike] came here, as a prisoner of war, he was so peaked and so skinny. During the war there [in Italy] they had hardly anything to eat. He says, it got so that they almost had to eat snakes, he said, some of them did kill snakes and eat snakes.” The Italian P.O.W.s spent their days working in the shipyards, where wartime workers were in short supply. In the evenings they entertained their neighbors. Says Rose: “They used to have dances. They used to have music. They used to have everything. So all the girls used to flock there, on Saturdays and Sundays, to the prison.” With so many men away to war, the chance to meet some eligible bachelors must have been quite a draw. The dances became quite the rage among Italian Americans all up and down the Rainier Valley, and all over Seattle. Mary Vacca, whose father owned the farm behind Sicks Seattle Stadium on McClellan Street, met Mike at one of these dances. They fell in love, and Mike began to sneak out of the prison camp at night to go have dinner with Mary’s family. Apparently he wasn’t the only one – some men swam or rowed across the Duwamish River to visit girls in South Park. Rose’s parents hosted a huge gathering every Sunday. Ralph Vacca, Mary’s nephew, was a child at the time, but he remembers the scene vividly: the prisoners “couldn’t even speak English, but I remember they would go over to my grandparent’s farm, and my mother had nine brothers and sisters in her family. So it was this big “My Big Greek Wedding” kind of a thing. Every Sunday everyone went over to the farm. They would play bocce ball and my God, at dinnertime, the table was from here to there. There might be twenty, thirty people. And they would come over and they’d spend a day with Italian families and they would talk Italian and have spaghetti and whatever else was on the table.” Ralph goes on: “Well, the war ended and my to-be uncle Mike went back to Italy. [Laughs] My aunt chased him—went over to Italy and married him, brought him back.” Mike was from the town of Lecce, in the boot-heel of Italy. Rose recalls, “[Mary] and another gal, she was a blond that fell in love with [a] prisoner, too. So the two of them went to Italy, if you can imagine. When they got to Italy, Italy was a war-torn thing.” The trains were broken down, buildings and bridges destroyed by the war. Mary and her friend finally arrived in Lecce and found Mike. Rose recalls, “So she came back with him. They got married there, and then they came here. They lived with her folks for a while, and then [her] dad built them a house there on 30th. And that was the story.” Ralph: He was a barber by trade, and I remember as a kid, we’d sit in the big pantry and he’d cut all of our hair. Then he got that place [Mike’s Barber Shop on McClelland]. Been there ever since.

In this 1937 photograph we see the east side of Rainier Avenue’s 4800 block, with the ornate Ark Lodge building occupying center stage. The Columbia Garage is to the left, where the Washington Federal Bank stands today, and the Rainier Valley Transfer Company, a furniture moving operation, is to the right of the Ark Lodge. Streetcar tracks go up the center of Rainier in the photo, but the streetcar had ceased operation on January 1st, and the tracks would soon be torn up and paved over to make the road safer for buses and cars. The Ark Lodge Masonic Temple is part of a long history of fraternal organizations in Columbia City. Fraternal groups such as the Masons were an important part of the social fabric in many American towns in the early 20th century: the 1919 Polk Directory lists 38 different fraternal organizations in Seattle, with over 200 individual chapters. The groups varied widely in their membership and purpose. The Freemasons famously included many of the nation’s political leaders, going back to George Washington and Benjamin Franklin; local chapters often included prominent community members and businessmen. The Modern Woodmen of America (who also had a chapter in Columbia) offered mutual aid to working people, and eventually evolved into a life insurance company. Women’s groups reinforced social ties – and stratifications – while their members did charity work in the community. The first fraternal organization we know of in Columbia was the Knights of Pythias, who built an elegant two-story building at 4863 Rainier Avenue in 1892. (The top half burned down in 1941, but the first floor is still there, home to the new Columbia City Bakery and Pet Elegance.) In 1898 the town’s attorney, H.H.A Hastings, built a building on Ferdinand Street known as Fraternity Hall, where various community groups met. (BikeWorks is at that site now.) In 1903, Ark Lodge #126 of the Free and Accepted Masons held its first meeting at Fraternity Hall, which was known from then on as the First Masonic Temple. The organization grew steadily. In 1905 an affiliated women’s group, the Ark Chapter #86 of the Order of the Eastern Star, was started in Columbia. In 1921 the Masons built the beautiful Ark Lodge building pictured here. It was designed by architect J. L. McCauley, who lived in the neighborhood and designed many of the buildings in the area. The Masons met on the upper floor, and the Heater Glove factory moved in downstairs. Freeman Heater, also a local resident, started the Heater Glove company in 1918. The factory began with one sewing machine at 4914 Rainier Avenue, in the alley behind the movie theater. The company grew quickly and eventually produced a complete line of leather gloves and helmets. Charles Lindbergh wore a Heater helmet on his trip across the Atlantic in 1927 – it is now in the Smithsonian, we hear. The company also made boxing gloves for Jack Dempsey, a personal friend of Freeman’s. In addition to providing world-famous heroes with the tools of their trades, the Heater factory was a great supplier of material for local schoolboys. Buzz Anderson, a student at Columbia School in the 1930s, remembers rummaging through the Heater garbage cans, looking for leather scraps big enough to make into slingshot pockets. After World War Two, the Heater Glove factory moved a mile north, and for the next fifty years the Ark Lodge building served primarily as a meeting hall for Masonic groups and others. The City Directories in the 1960s list Ark Lodge #126 of the Free and Accepted Masons; their sister group, the Order of the Eastern Star; and a half-dozen other fraternal organizations in the building, including the Order of De-Molay, the Order of Rainbow Girls, and Job’s Daughters. The first floor store-front space was occupied by several businesses over the years, including Roy Bailey’s insurance office and H. & R. Block tax services. Victorious Life Christian Center held services in the building in 2000. In 2003 the Masons finally sold the building – the small group continues to meet in Tukwila every week – and Paul Doyle transformed the Mason’s upstairs meeting rooms into our neighborhood moviehouse, the Columbia City Cinema. One final note: you may notice that the 1937 photograph was shot from high above the street: the photographer was standing on top of a hill that no longer exists. The current site of the Bank of America, Columbia Plaza, the Farmers Market, and the Hasegawa Professional Building was once a wooded knoll with several houses on it. The hill was razed in the 1950s when the bank was built.

These pictures arrived in our office last week, sent by Mr. Vern Farrow. They may not seem all that spectacular at first glance, but they were greeted with great fanfare. The Farrow family lived at 5120 S. Juneau St., just up the hill from Seward Park, for more than fifty years. The house faces a knoll to the south known then – unfortunately – as “Chink Hill.” (This racial slur may refer to Chinese laborers brought to the area to work on nearby railroads, who may have had a camp on the hill at one time. A very slightly less offensive etymology holds that the hill was populated by Chinese pheasants, which Mr. Farrow hunted on occasion. Either way, the name certainly says something about the racial climate of the early 20th century.) Back to the photographs: we have heard for years that there was an anti-aircraft gun on the hill during the Second World War. According to historylink.org, the Army installed batteries of 3-inch guns in several locations around Seattle in January of 1942, just a month after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. These guns were to protect Seattle and its military production from enemy planes that might venture across the Pacific on aircraft carriers. The gun on the hill south of Juneau Street may have been part of this operation. After searching various photo collections, and trying in vain to track down Army records, we had pretty much given up on finding a photograph of the gun on “Chink Hill.” But then came the surprise package from Mr. Farrow. Here we see a pile of ammunition partially covered with a tarp, next to one of the tents used by the soldiers camped at the base of the hill. In the upper left corner of the photograph is the gun itself. The second photograph documents another feature of homefront life that we hear about often. This view looking west over the Farrows’ house shows the sky above the Boeing plant dotted with twenty barrage balloons. These blimp-like craft hung over many military production sites, including the Boeing plant and the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard at Bremerton. Cables tied from the balloon to the ground kept enemy planes from flying over the target. Jim Lough, who grew up on Empire Way (now M.L. King Way) in the 1940s, remembers a barrage balloon company stationed near his house; the Loughs invited the men in the company over for dinner on occasion. Lough explains, “Boeing Field was surrounded by these little companies that were [each] in charge of one barrage balloon.” When all the balloons were in the air with their cables, “It would be like netting, almost.” The Farrow photograph confirms this description: it’s hard to imagine flying a plane through this obstacle course. Anti-aircraft guns, barrage balloons – these and other homefront defenses illustrate the terrible fear of Japanese attack along the West Coast in the 1940s. Kids like Vern Farrow and Jim Lough grew up in the shadow of the war. They knew that at any moment the ammunition stockpiled across the street from their house might be needed to shoot down enemy bombers, that their friends at the barrage balloon company were ever on the alert. Students at Whitworth knelt in the coatroom with their jackets over their heads during air raid drills. Japanese American schoolmates were sent away to internment camps – an injustice fueled by the same fear of attack. Of course, no Japanese plane ever made it to Seattle to be shot down by anti-aircraft guns or foiled by barrage balloons. Likewise, the smokescreen over the shipyard proved to be unnecessary. So were Boeing’s attempts to disguise its hangars as residential neighborhoods by building fake houses and trees on top of them. But the threat and the fear were both very real. The hill south of the Farrows’ house is now covered with handsome post-war homes with well-manicured gardens and enviable views. There are no traces of the anti-aircraft gun or the pile of ammunition, and nobody calls it “Chink Hill” anymore. But perhaps as the neighbors gather there on the 4th of July to watch the official and unofficial fireworks displays all over the city, they’ll take a moment to remember the Chinese laborers that may have camped there, the barrage balloons that once filled the sky to the west, and the anti-aircraft gun that sat right behind them, ready for action, all those years ago.

We are grateful to a student researcher, L.S., for bringing the Dixon family to our attention. We have gleaned much from archival documents, census records, newspapers, and local books. We present here a story about the Dixon family who were among the first Black property owners and residents in Rainier Valle y. Roscoe Dixon is credited with being the first Black business owner in Astoria, Oregon. One hundred years later his youngest daughter, Theresa Dixon Flowers, donated Dixon and Flowers family photos to the Oregon Historical Society in 1984. The Biographical Notes included with the collection reference his birth in Virginia in the 1840s. After time in Portland and Astoria, Oregon; Victoria, B.C.; Dyea, Alaska and additional unknown elsewhere in between, the Roscoe Dixon family lived in the Brighton Beach neighborhood as early as 1908. Roscoe Dixon and his younger brother Robert’s birthplace was Richmond, Virginia. By 1850 they, with their mother Agnes and George Lee, had escaped slavery there via the Underground Railroad to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where whaling ships fed the economy. Roscoe was seven and Robert was four years old. The Fugitive Slave Act, recently passed by the U.S Congress, threatened runaways with arrest and return to their enslavers in the South and the family was subject to this Act. Agnes Lee was still in residence in New Bedford when she wrote her last will and testament in 1885, though she had by then lost George to death. At some point in time, Robert and Roscoe Dixon had both headed west. Roscoe worked in Portland, Oregon, as a “col., [colored] cook” (Polk’s Portland, Oregon, City Directory, 1874) and “oysterman” at the Gem Saloon at First and Stark. Roscoe soon established an oyster saloon in Astoria, where he offered “Fancy Roasts and Fried Oysters” for 35 cents and Boston Crystal Ice Cream. In 1880, Roscoe Dixon married Theresa Brown, a young woman originally from Macon, Georgia. The 1870 U.S. Census has 12-year old Theresa Brown as part of the household of a cooper (barrel maker) and his wife, in their 30s and white, living about 20 miles east of Astoria on the Columbia River. The Biographical Notes mention a sea captain that brought Theresa to Astoria around Cape Horn. She received training as a nurse in the area and provided private duty care and midwifery services into the 1920s. Her daughter Theresa was interviewed by Seattle historian Esther Hall Mumford in August 1979, when she recalled of her mother, “She worked for many years. I know times when she wouldn’t get home to stay for a year. She’d go from one case to another.” (Seattle’s Black Victorians 1852-1901, p. 130). Roscoe’s brother, Robert Dixon had first arrived in Seattle in 1865; he gave cuts and shaves downtown on Columbia Street for nearly 50 years. In 1883 Robert, then in his 40s, married Rebecca Grose, daughter of well-known and successful Black entrepreneurs William and Sarah Grose. William Grose had purchased some 12 acres of land from Henry Yesler at East Madison and became the first Black property owner in the area. Over the years parcels were sold to other Black families ready to build their homes. This area formed the north end of today’s Central District. Back in Astoria, Roscoe Dixon lost his oyster house business in about 1885. Daughter Theresa later attributed the failure to the railroad collapse—the transcontinental railroad had fallen short of reaching Astoria by a mere 58 miles. The town’s big dreams of expanding into a major port town to rival Portland had to be put on hold. The Dixon family was growing and the children’s birthplaces trace their travels. Roscoe and Theresa’s son Chester Ingersoll Dixon was born in Astoria in November of 1882. First daughter, Christine Mabel, was born in Victoria, B.C. in November of 1885 and Theresa Virginia, in Seattle in December of 1894. The Black population of Seattle’s four wards in 1890 was 286 of the nearly 43,000 total residents in the city (U.S. Census). Roscoe found work as janitor, conductor, grocer, waiter, cook, and steward that decade. In October of 1891, he was considered for a position as city hall janitor, but political concerns involving race were raised and the motion for the appointment failed (The Seattle Post-Intelligencer). This is the first mention of Roscoe Dixon in Seattle newspapers. He did eventually work for Seattle City Hall. Other opportunities presented themselves. Robert Dixon and his brother-in-law George Grose became investors in the Seattle Klondike Grubstake and Trading Company in 1897. In a letter published in The Seattle Republican in June of 1898, the column “Alaskaites Write” mentions Roscoe Dixon’s plans to stay in Dyea for the summer and, if times got better, to move his family up. How this venture ultimately fared as the gold rush in Dyea soon fizzled is unknown. Since arriving in Seattle, the Dixons had lived on 10th and 17th Avenues, on Washington Street, and various other locations. Mrs. Theresa Dixon signed the real estate contract for two lots in the Palace Garden replat of Tract 32 of Kelsey’s Brighton Beach Acre Tracts with a purchase price of $1,600 to be paid in $20 monthly increments in 1908. By the time Roscoe and Theresa Dixon settled in their Rainier Valley home with their daughters, their son Chester had been in the U.S. Navy for 11 years. As a teenager in Seattle, he had enlisted as apprentice boy and eventually served 37 years, a veteran of three wars. In 1920 Mr. Dixon was noted to be the only Black Chief torpedo man with permanent appointment (The Northwest Enterprise, 4/25/1945). During an unusually cold and snowy January of 1916, Roscoe Dixon succumbed to heart disease at 72 years of age. Mrs. Dixon remained in the family home with daughter, Theresa, who was working as a nurse. After Mrs. Dixon’s death in 1927, Theresa Dixon remained living on 43rd Avenue South until about 1938, when she left for California to work at the Los Angeles County Tuberculosis Hospital. Sister Mabel returned to the family home until the 1940s while working at the King County Tuberculosis Hospital. Early Black residents of the Pacific Northwest, the Dixons called Rainier Valley “home” for some 30 years. This family contributed to the health and well-being of Seattle residents from their arrival just prior to the financial panic of 1893 up until the Second World War with Chester’s military service and the women’s work in public and private health.

This year’s return to the annual RVHS Founder’s Dinner and Auction was one of the best! We gathered on October 14th to honor founder Buzz Anderson’s legacy and celebrate RVHS 2023 History Makers Kubota Garden Foundation and community leader Herb Tsuchiya. The event was a fantastic success with ukulele musicians starting off the social hour, followed by an Asian themed menu, heart-warming award presentations, and a fun live auction with Mary Charles’ debut as auctioneer. Critical funds were raised for our educational programs and archives care from the generous donations in the room. We extend our heartfelt gratitude to those who attended the dinner and contributed to an enjoyable time for all. Herb Tsuchiya - History Maker 2023 Herb Tsuchiya’s Japanese parents emigrated from Hiroshima prefecture in 1917. The Tsuchiya family were rice farmers in Montana where his father worked as a railroad laborer. Herb was born at Harborview Hospital in Seattle in 1932, the youngest of seven, and was named for U. S. President Herbert Hoover. His mother, Momoyo, was working as a waitress for a Japanese restaurant when his father, Nobuichi, left the family for Japan just as Executive Order 9066 forcing the relocation of West Coast Japanese inland came into effect and the family had to assemble with their two suitcases each for the bus caravans to Puyallup. After release from the 3.5 year incarceration, Momoyo Tsuchiya and her family were first housed at the Seattle Japanese Baptist Church and then in public housing at Stadium Homes on Empire Way, and finally settled in at Rainier Vista on Columbian Way which felt “luxurious.” Herb Tsuchiya went on to be honored with numerous professional and community awards based on his work with underserved populations including seniors, immigrants and low-income children. When Herb co-founded Kin-On Health Care in 1985, it was the first nursing home in the nation serving non-English speaking elderly. He worked for King County Public Health at both Rainier Park Medical Clinic and Columbia Health Center after he owned and managed the Genesee Street Pharmacy for his profession. In the 1990s Herb joined a community theater group for a production of “Breaking the Silence” as a way to share the Japanese experience of incarceration in the 1940s. Herb commented, “the whole Japanese-American community did not talk about the camps and yet it’s what totally defines all of us. We all had that common thread of experience.” Herb Tsuchiya passed away on August 21, 2023. His celebration of life was held on November 25, 2023. Herb’s three rules of life, “Be Kind, Be Kind, Be Kind” steered his life of caring for, giving to, helping, and serving others. His legacy of service will be remembered. Kubota Garden Foundation - History Makers 2023 Kubota Garden Foundation, (KGF) was established in 1989 to support, enhance, and perpetuate Kubota Garden within the spirit and vision of Fujitaro Kubota and his son Tom Kubota. KGF has led or partnered with others on over 10 construction projects including the Terrace Overlook, the Ishigaki drystack stone wall, the Ornamental Wall, the Entry Gate, and made ADA accessibility improvements; KGF has partnered with Seattle Parks & Recreation on programming and events at Kubota Garden in Rainier Beach making lasting contributions to Southeast Seattle and beyond. History of Kubota Garden Foundation Fujitaro Kubota was interested in the garden becoming a public space. When he passed away in 1973, the family approached the City of Seattle to discuss their purchase of the garden, but the City declined. In the late 1980s, when developers were eager to purchase the 20-acre property and build condominiums, community members advocated for the City of Seattle to purchase the garden. Councilwoman Jeanette Williams found the necessary funds to make the purchase in 1987. Several of those community members formed Kubota Garden Foundation in 1989 to continue a partnership with the City and assure the preservation of the entire garden as envisioned by the Kubota family.