Legacy Project honors Bremerton civil rights pioneer Lillian Walker
A 95-year-old Bremerton civil rights pioneer is the latest Washingtonian to have her life story told by The Legacy Project, the oral history program established in 2008 by the Office of the Secretary of State.
Lillian Walker helped found the Bremerton branch of the NAACP in 1943 and went on to serve as state NAACP secretary. She was conducting sit-ins and filing civil rights lawsuits when Martin Luther King was in junior high.
A biography and oral biography based on sit-down interviews, plus photos and other materials, have just been posted at www.secstate.wa.gov/legacyproject/oralhistories/lillianwalker/default.aspx.
A rollout ceremony took place Tuesday in Secretary of State Reed’s office at the Capitol, featuring remarks by Congressman Norm Dicks, Reed, chief oral historian John Hughes and Dianne Robinson, Bremerton councilwoman and co-founder of the Kitsap County Black Historical Society.
The ceremony is available on streaming video at www.TVW.org.
The Legacy Project e-publishes oral histories and biographies of Washingtonians who have been instrumental in shaping history. The materials are published online and are free for easy click-on reading or downloading.
They are excellent resources for school and college projects.
In the past nine months, The Legacy Project has offered up profiles of Charles Z. Smith, the first ethnic minority on the State Supreme Court; pioneering female journalist Adele Ferguson; rocker-turned-civic activist Krist Novoselic; former Chief Justice Robert F. Utter; and trailblazing federal judge Carolyn Dimmick, who was the first woman on the state Supreme Court.
Soon to be published are the oral histories of former first lady Nancy Bell Evans and astronaut Bonnie Dunbar. An oral history with former Governor Booth Gardner is in preparation and a biography of the late Congresswoman Jennifer Dunn also is in the works.
“It is a real privilege for Washingtonians to learn more about the inspiring Lillian Walker story, which is emblematic of the work of so many in this state for racial equality and equal rights for all,” Reed said. “It also reminds us the clock is ticking if we don’t want to lose the chance to preserve these stories. The Legacy Project, which is part of the planned state Heritage Center on the Capitol Campus, is hard at work, on a shoestring budget, to preserve this part of our history and our heritage.”
Walker and her late husband James arrived in the Navy yard city of Bremerton in 1941 together with thousands of other African-American wartime workers who thought they had left racism behind in the South and industrialized cities of Midwest and East. But many Kitsap County businesses, including cafes, taverns, drug stores and barber shops, displayed signs saying, “We cater to white trade only.”
In a landmark case, the Walkers took a soda fountain owner to court and won.
They also discovered there were “a lot of righteous white folks” in Bremerton.
Sixty-five years later, the centennial year of the NAACP finds Mrs. Walker still in the trenches, reminding people about The Golden Rule.
She is a charter member of the YWCA of Kitsap County, former chairman of the Kitsap County Regional Library Board, a 68-year member of Ebenezer African Methodist Episcopal Church and a founder and former president of Church Women United in Bremerton.
Lillian Walker exudes dignity, pluck and perseverance. One of 11 children born to a mixed race couple on a farm in rural Illinois, she dreamed of becoming a doctor, but she was the wrong color and the wrong gender at the wrong time in the wrong place.
Still, there’s no bitterness over the fact that she and her late husband took on an assortment of part-time janitorial jobs for 40 years to make ends meet and give their kids a better life.
Their son graduated from Stanford University, went on to earn a Ph.D. and is an epidemiologist for the Centers for Disease Control.
Someone once asked her why she was always smiling.
“Frowning and cursing,” she replied. “That’s not going to make you any friends.”
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