In 1981, decades before mainstream America elected Barack Obama, James Chase became the first African American mayor of Spokane, Washington, with the overwhelming support of a majority-white electorate. Chase’s win failed to capture the attention of historians—as had the century-long evolution of the black community in Spokane. In Black Spokane: The Civil Rights Struggle in the Inland Northwest , Dwayne A. Mack corrects this oversight—and recovers a crucial chapter in the history of race relations and civil rights in America. As early as the 1880s, Spokane was a destination for black settlers escaping the racial oppression in the South—settlers who over the following decades built an infrastructure of churches, businesses, and social organizations to serve the black community. Drawing on oral histories, interviews, newspapers, and a rich array of other primary sources, Mack sets the stage for the years following World War II in the Inland Northwest, when an influx of black veterans would bring about a new era of racial issues. His book traces the earliest challenges faced by the NAACP and a small but sympathetic white population as Spokane became a significant part of the national civil rights struggle. International superstars such as Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong and Hazel Scott figure in this story, along with charismatic local preachers, entrepreneurs, and lawyers who stepped forward as civic leaders.  These individuals’ contributions, and the black community’s encounters with racism, offer a view of the complexity of race relations in a city and a region not recognized historically as centers of racial strife. But in matters of race—from the first migration of black settlers to Spokane, through the politics of the Cold War and the civil rights movement, to the successes of the 1970s and ’80s—Mack shows that Spokane has a story to tell, one that this book at long last incorporates into the larger history of twentieth-century America. Dwayne A. Mack is Carter G. Woodson Chair in African American History and Professor of History at Berea College, author of numerous articles on African American history, and co-editor of Beginning a Career in Academia: A Guide for Graduate Students of Color . Black Spokane The Civil Rights Struggle in the Inland Northwest By Dwayne A. Mack UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA PRESS Copyright © 2014 University of Oklahoma Press All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-0-8061-4489-4 Contents List of Illustrations, Acknowledgments, Introduction, 1. Paving the Way: Spokane's Black Pioneers and the Settlement of Washington State, 2. The Impact of the Second Great Migration on Spokane, 3. Responding to Racial Discrimination in the Inland Northwest, 4. The Elusive Double Victory: Race Relations during the Postwar Period, 5. The Momentum Swings: The Struggle for Racial Equality during the 1950s, 6. Challenging Racial Barriers in the 1960s, 7. Political Currents in Post–Civil Rights Era Spokane: Black Empowerment, Notes, Bibliography, Index, CHAPTER 1 Paving the Way Spokane's Black Pioneers and the Settlement of Washington State During slavery blacks were treated inhumanely; even most free blacks were refused citizenship and disenfranchised. Some managed to escape the horror of slavery and their repressive conditions by traveling westward along the Oregon Trail. In the mid-1800s a small number of blacks moved into the Washington Territory. Circumventing the prevailing racist conditions, some of these early Washington pioneers, through self-determination and hard work, became influential business and civic leaders within their respective communities. More importantly, these individuals laid a strong social and economic undergirding that facilitated late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century black migration into the state and ultimately the Spokane area. Among the early African American pioneers in the Pacific Northwest was successful farmer and cattle trader George Washington Bush. In 1844 Bush left Missouri with his family and several other families and started an eight-month wagon trek across the two thousand miles of the Oregon Trail. They migrated north of the Columbia River into what eventually became the state of Washington. A "whites only" clause in the Oregon Donation Land Claim Act of 1850 prevented Bush from owning the land he settled on. However, five years later, Bush and other community members successfully petitioned the Washington Territorial Legislature to allot Bush a 640-acre homestead. His land formed the area called Bush Prairie in what would become Thurston County, Washington. Another black Pacific Northwest pioneer, George Washington, was born in 1817 in Frederick County, Virginia, to an enslaved father and a white mother. During his childhood Washington was sold to J. G. Cochran and his wife, Anna, who relocated their household (along with Washington) to Missouri. In 1850 Washington and his owners left Missouri in a wagon train. Their fo