"...looks at black life in 19th century Seattle from many angles. The combination of newspaper files, county records, and oral history gives a density to the historical picture." John Berry, Seattle Sun -- Back cover.

Seattle's first black resident was a sailor named Manuel Lopes who arrived in 1858 and became the small community's first barber. He left in the early 1870s to seek economic prosperity elsewhere, but as Seattle transformed from a stopover town to a full-fledged city, African Americans began to stay and build a community. By the early twentieth century, black life in Seattle coalesced in the Central District, a four-square-mile section east of downtown. Black Seattle, however, was never a monolith. Through world wars, economic booms and busts, and the civil rights movement, black residents and leaders negotiated intragroup conflicts and had varied approaches to challenging racial inequity. Despite these differences, they nurtured a distinct African American culture and black urban community ethos. With a new foreword and afterword, this second edition of The Forging of a Black Community is essential to understanding the history and present of the largest black community in the Pacific Northwest.

Winner of the 2017 Virginia Marie Folkins Award, Association of King County Historical Organizations (AKCHO) Winner of the 2017 Hal K. Rothman Book Prize, Western History Association Seattle would not exist without animals. Animals have played a vital role in shaping the city from its founding amid existing indigenous towns in the mid-nineteenth century to the livestock-friendly town of the late nineteenth century to the pet-friendly, livestock-averse modern city. When newcomers first arrived in the 1850s, they hastened to assemble the familiar cohort of cattle, horses, pigs, chickens, and other animals that defined European agriculture. This, in turn, contributed to the dispossession of the Native residents of the area. However, just as various animals were used to create a Euro-American city, the elimination of these same animals from Seattle was key to the creation of the new middle-class neighborhoods of the twentieth century. As dogs and cats came to symbolize home and family, Seattleites’ relationship with livestock became distant and exploitative, demonstrating the deep social contradictions that characterize the modern American metropolis. Throughout Seattle’s history, people have sorted animals into categories and into places as a way of asserting power over animals, other people, and property. In The City Is More Than Human, Frederick Brown explores the dynamic, troubled relationship humans have with animals. In so doing he challenges us to acknowledge the role of animals of all sorts in the making and remaking of cities.

Offers information on finding female ancestors in each state, highlighting those laws, both federal and state, that indicate when a woman could own real estate in her own name, devise a will, and enter into contracts. In addition, entries contain information on marriage and divorce law, immigration, citizenship, passports, suffrage, and slave manumission. Material is included on African American, Native American, and Asian American women, as well as patterns of European immigration. Period covered is from the 1600s to the outbreak of WWII. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

"Emancipation is an important and impressive work; one cannot read it without being inspired by the legal acumen, creativity, and resiliency these pioneer lawyers displayed. . . . It should be read by everyone interested in understanding the road African-Americans have traveled and the challenges that lie ahead."—From the Foreword, by Justice Thurgood Marshall

Now available in paperback! This biography is the compelling story of Amanda Berry Smith, a former slave and washer-woman with less than a year of formal education who rose to become one of the nineteenth century's most important and successful Christian evangelists. Based on letters published in Christian newspapers, copies of her own newspaper The Helper, and numerous public records and documents, this biography puts Amanda Berry Smith's eventful life in a proper historical perspective, evaluating the significant impact of her deeds. It traces her beginnings as the child of freed blacks in antebellum Pennsylvania, her turbulent marriages, her search for communities and faith in New York City, and her eventual prominence as a camp-fire missionary and as a world traveler of spiritual faith. This thoughtful individual study probes the complex relationship between herself and other contemporary reformers, black and white, and answers many questions left unanswered by Smith's own autobiography.

Describes the lives of women of various backgrounds as they traveled west, established homes, worked inside and outside the home, and helped to develop settled society

This book "is a selected list of books in the collections of the Library of Congress compiled primarily for researchers of Afro-American lineages. Included in this bibliography are guidebooks, bibliographies, genealogies, collective biographies, United States local histories, directories, and other works pertaining specifically to Afro-Americans. Emphasis is on books that contain information about lesser-known individuals of the nineteenth century and earlier, although Afro-American business and city directories published through 1959 are listed"--Introd.

Breaking glass ceilings, organizing clubs, and making history as the first in their fields, these trailblazing Black women paved the way for new generations. From Nettie Craig Asberry, founder of the Tacoma NAACP, to Dr. Dolores Silas, now honored by a school bearing her name, these women forged a path amid adversity. Black women were crucial to the war effort, working as Rosies at Boeing during World War II, and in the post-war years, Seattle musicians like Edyth Turnham and Her Knights of Syncopation were in high demand. These teachers, scientists, and politicians served on boards, led protests, and fought for civil rights across the state. Join author and historian Marilyn Morgan as she chronicles the incredible lives and contributions of Washington's Black women.

Finalist for the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize A landmark and collectible volume—beautifully produced in duotone—that canonizes Frederick Douglass through historic photography. Commemorating the bicentennial of Frederick Douglass’s birthday and featuring images discovered since its original publication in 2015, this “tour de force” (Library Journal, starred review) reintroduced Frederick Douglass to a twenty-first-century audience. From these pages—which include over 160 photographs of Douglass, as well as his previously unpublished writings and speeches on visual aesthetics—we learn that neither Custer nor Twain, nor even Abraham Lincoln, was the most photographed American of the nineteenth century. Indeed, it was Frederick Douglass, the ex-slave-turned-abolitionist, eloquent orator, and seminal writer, who is canonized here as a leading pioneer in photography and a prescient theorist who believed in the explosive social power of what was then just an emerging art form. Featuring: Contributions from Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Kenneth B. Morris, Jr. (a direct Douglass descendent) 160 separate photographs of Douglass—many of which have never been publicly seen and were long lost to history A collection of contemporaneous artwork that shows how powerful Douglass’s photographic legacy remains today, over a century after his death All Douglass’s previously unpublished writings and speeches on visual aesthetics