Everett couple see hope in Obama inauguration
Published 10:53 pm Saturday, January 17, 2009
Zebedee Cobbs sees about 20 customers a day at his Everett barber shop and salon.
That’s 20 conversations.
“A lot of my customers are like family to me. I try not to talk about religion, sex or politics,” Cobbs said.
Come Tuesday morning, anyone looking for a haircut or a chat won’t find either at Zebedee’s, the Madison Street shop Cobbs has owned since 1980. The 58-year-old Everett man has cleared his appointment book for the morning.
Cobbs plans to be home. He’ll be watching the inauguration.
At the salon Thursday, Cobbs and his wife, Betty, talked frankly about racial prejudice they experienced in the past as African-Americans in Everett, and about the triumph of seeing a black man elected the 44th president of the United States.
To see Barack Obama sworn in will be to witness monumental change. As the New York Times reported on election night, Obama made history by “sweeping away the last racial barrier in American politics.”
Inauguration day will transcend politics.
“He’ll bring everybody together, Republicans and Democrats,” Zebedee Cobbs said. “Barack will be a president for all the people.”
Betty Cobbs, a human resources director with the Everett School District, spent 25 years as a principal, at Hawthorne, Garfield and Jackson elementary schools, and nine years as a teacher in the district.
“I’ve always said to students, ‘You can become anything you want to be — even president.’ But to actually have it happen? In my heart, I knew it would happen. I didn’t know when,” she said.
A black president must have seemed an impossibility when she came to Everett as a young teacher in the early 1970s.
“I couldn’t find a place to live. And I didn’t see any diversity,” said Betty Cobbs, 58. “At one place, a lady said she had to check with all the other people to see if they’d mind a ‘colored’ person living there. I said ‘Don’t bother.’ I didn’t want to live there.” While looking at apartments on Everett’s Rucker Avenue, she said she was told to look “on the other side” of town. So that’s what she did.
Today, Betty Cobbs has a doctoral degree from the University of Washington and works with new teachers through the district’s teacher assistance program.
In the 1970s, before opening his business on Madison, Zebedee Cobbs had a salon on Wetmore Avenue in downtown Everett. There, he said, inspectors visited far more frequently than they did at other barber shops.
In 1995, he was subject to a dreadful indignity when police officers entered Zebedee’s early one Saturday as Cobbs was opening his shop.
In a Herald article about the incident, Zebedee Cobbs was quoted as saying, “One of them kind of got next to me, and said, ‘We just want to find out if you belong here or not.’ I said, ‘Yes, I own the building, I own the business, I’ve been in this town for 23 years.’
“They saw a black man from the road, and assumed I was going through the till and robbing the place,” Cobbs said in ‘95.
Those ugly experiences haven’t been typical of their lives in Everett, the couple said.
“Everett has been very good to us,” Zebedee Cobbs said. “I’ve served a lot of people in 35 years — good people. We’ve raised two beautiful sons here.”
Zebulun Cobbs, 29, is an engineer, and 21-year-old Zachary Cobbs works for the Boeing Co. Both graduated from Cascade High School. “For them, they always thought the doors were open,” Betty Cobbs said.
“I came out of totally segregated schools,” said her husband, who was raised in Galveston, Texas. “We’ve come a long way from that.”
Zebedee Cobbs now serves on the city of Everett’s Diversity Advisory Board. “I really applaud Mayor (Ray) Stephanson,” he said. “The city’s changing, it’s a lot more diverse,” Betty Cobbs added.
On Tuesday, change will come to the White House like a fresh and healing breeze.
“So much attention has been based on race,” Betty Cobbs said. “Barack Obama really touched everybody. He also represents hard work, and he represents hope.”
Columnist Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlstein@heraldnet.com.
