Racial discrimination and protests have long history in Tri-Cities | Guest Opinion

As scores of Tri-Citians have joined hundreds of thousands of citizens across America in demonstrating against racial injustice and violence this summer, it is important to remember that the Tri-Cities has a long history of protests against racial segregation and discrimination in this community.

That history of racial violence dates back to as early as 1908, when an unarmed black man named Henry Williams was killed by law enforcement in Kennewick. During World War II, native peoples were evicted from their traditional lands, and local Japanese Americans were imprisoned and faced discrimination simply because of their heritage. And, beginning in the summer of 1943, thousands of temporary African American workers arrived at the Hanford Site, recruited by the Du Pont company to build the secretive Plutonium works.

After the war, the expansion of Hanford (from 3 reactors to 9) and the construction of many dams on the Snake and Columbia Rivers again drew thousands of African Americans to the Tri-Cities, but this time to stay.

The Tri-Cities was thus a small but important part of the largest migration in American History, the Great Migration. During WWII and after, African Americans could only find living spaces in the dormitories on the Hanford Site or in segregated East Pasco, literally “across the (railroad) tracks” and connected to Pasco by a dark underpass.

By 1950, 20% of Pasco’s approximately 10,000 residents were Black, almost all segregated in substandard housing in East Pasco, while few lived in the new atomic community of Richland and none in “lily-white” Kennewick, a fact of which Kennewick city leaders at the time were proud. In the post-war world, African American migrants may have found construction work in and around Hanford, but they were forced to endure broad discrimination in employment, housing, and education.

In the Spring of 1963, at the same time that Martin Luther King, Jr. was leading marches in Birmingham, Alabama, the first of many demonstrations in support of Civil Rights and against segregation began in Kennewick and Pasco.

Earlier that year, Kennewick had been dubbed the “Birmingham of Washington”, alluding to the housing and employment discrimination practiced there, although as one local pastor noted: “People are saying that Kennewick is worse than Birmingham, for Negroes CAN LIVE in Birmingham.”

At that protest in 1963, marchers carried signs advocating that “Kennewick Racism Must Go” and asking “Why is Kennewick All White?” In addition, protests in Pasco in 1969 and 1970 addressed residential segregation and the ongoing use of violence and intimidation by police against black residents.

Those demonstrations in the 1960s led to some significant changes both nationally (the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965) and locally (increased hiring of nonwhites at Hanford and the creation of a Human Rights Commission in Richland). But, these changes did not address much of the systemic and institutional racism deeply ingrained in American history.

These are just a few of many examples of actions taken to address inequalities historically in the Tri-Cities. The gains over the years were many: the ending of segregated bussing during World War II; creating integrated schools; and opening better jobs for nonwhites at Hanford and in the surrounding communities.

In the upheaval currently roiling our nation it’s important to understand the successes and failures of the civil rights movement in the Tri-Cities.

While there were tactile gains, many of the injustices and inequalities were not addressed, a fact that we see reflected in the economic and health disparities by race in our communities, the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement and the recent protests over the killing of unarmed black citizens by police forces.

Clearly, the work of the civil rights era is still present and immediate today. Those demonstrating against continued racial inequality and injustice are continuing a long and important history of activism. And, as both our national and local history demonstrate, significant and long-lasting change has happened only through direct challenges to those systemic racial inequalities.

This story was originally published September 28, 2020 at 12:48 PM with the headline "Racial discrimination and protests have long history in Tri-Cities | Guest Opinion."