Eva Abram will pose a formidable question in a talk Saturday at the Mukilteo Library. Her program is titled: “Defeating Racism Today: What Does It Take?”
Whoa, that is one huge question. A performer and storyteller with a focus on African-American history, Abram didn’t hesitate when asked if she could offer her essential idea for defeating racism. What does it take?
“It’s going to take all of us working together, not blacks and whites working separately,” the Seattle woman said Tuesday. “We need each other to understand each other’s perspective. That is a difficult thing.”
Abram, a speaker with the nonprofit organization Humanities Washington, will provide a chance to explore the difficult subject of racism during her free talk at 11 a.m. Saturday at the Mukilteo Library.
In addition to the Sno-Isle Libraries program, the city of Lynnwood will host a Black History Month celebration starting at 6:30 p.m. Thursday at the Lynnwood Fire Department Station 15. That event, titled “Building Bridges in Our Community With Trust and Inclusion,” will feature a keynote talk by Snohomish County Executive John Lovick.
Abram looks at today’s race issues through a lens of history. Yes, slavery and the era of Jim Crow laws that followed it are gone. In Abram’s view, what remains is a racial divide that is less visible, but unjust all the same.
She recalled a time not so long ago when places in our country were brazen in their display of whites-only signs. More subtly, many neighborhoods were off-limits to black residents.
“Things have changed. We don’t have those whites-only signs. We don’t have those covenants, the Supreme Court banned those,” Abram said. “But when the practice was supposed to have disappeared, people still had that internalized. White privilege and status were hard to give up. It’s been internalized in many ways throughout our whole system.”
Blatant racism is hardly ancient history. A University of Washington civil rights and labor history project includes photos of Ku Klux Klan gatherings in the 1920s in our region, among them a KKK float in a 1926 parade in Bellingham — four years after my mom was born.
The Klan also burned crosses on the shores of Silver Lake and at the intersection of Hewitt and Colby avenues in downtown Everett.
Carl Gipson, a longtime Everett City Council leader who turned 90 last year, endured the sting of racism when he moved his African-American family into an all-white north Everett neighborhood in the 1950s.
In 1977, when he had served on the council for five years and was a Boy Scout leader, Gipson was blackballed from membership in the Everett Elks Club. In a 1997 Herald article by Scott North and Bob Wodnik, he spoke about the Elks incident, saying: “It was one of the biggest tragedies that ever happened in my life. I guess it was ignorance on my part because I didn’t know they weren’t ready.”
Humanities Washington is a Seattle-based group that uses stories to spark conversations around the state. As a Humanities Washington speaker, Abram has shared episodes in our state’s past that have largely gone untold.
In a previous presentation, she spoke about Charles Mitchell, a boy born into slavery in Maryland. By 1860, he was 12 and living with a white family in Washington Territory, but was still considered legal property. His case became an international incident when he ran away to Victoria, part of the British Empire that did not accept slavery. He was freed by a court in Victoria.
“Kids need this history to understand our system, where it came from, and to continue to move forward,” Abram said.
She sees much in today’s news that is dismaying, from cases of black men shot during encounters with law enforcement to comments by former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani questioning President Barack Obama’s love of country.
“Those are racist comments, how he (Obama) doesn’t even love America like other presidents,” Abram said.
Still, she has hope that racism can be defeated. She is certain that frank conversations can only help.
“Racism is not an African-American issue, it’s an American issue,” Abram said. “It is ours, it belongs to all of us.”
Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460; jmuhlstein@heraldnet.com.
Talks on diversity
and black history
Lynnwood: The city of Lynnwood’s Black History Month celebration, “Building Bridges in Our Community With Trust and Inclusion,” is scheduled for 6:30-8:30 p.m. Thursday at Fire Station 15, 18800 44th Ave. W, Lynnwood. Free event includes keynote speech by Snohomish County Executive John Lovick; messages from Lynnwood Mayor Nicola Smith, Lynnwood Fire Chief Scott Cockrum and the Lynnwood Neighborhoods &Demographic Diversity Commission, music from the Second Baptist Gospel Choir, poetry readings, refreshments and safety demonstrations.
Mukilteo: Eva Abram, an actor and storyteller who focuses on African-American history, will give a talk, “Defeating Racism Today: What Does It Take?” at 11 a.m. Saturday at the Mukilteo Library, 4675 Harbour Pointe Blvd. Free event sponsored by Sno-Isle Libraries and Humanities Washington.
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