500 Hundred Black Workers Brought to Work at Franklin Mine

In April of 1891 the white workers at Newcastle Mine were on strike. This protest of a recent contract with the mine’s owners was called by the union that most of the workers there belonged to, the Knights of Labor. About 25 miles southeast, in Franklin, the owners of the Newcastle Mine, the Oregon Improvement Company (OIC), had been preparing to keep production going in spite of union attempts to preserve their wages and the eight-hour day by reopening the Franklin Mine. Upon hearing news of the strike the month before the OIC sent Theron B. Corey, new superintendent of the Franklin Mine, to the Midwest to recruit as many Black workers as he could. Washington State chapters of the Knights of Labor’s previous discrimination against Chinese railway workers gave the OIC reason to believe that the Knights of Labor would not accept Black workers into their ranks although the national union had several all Black chapters throughout the country.

Corey was able to recruit 500 Black miners and laborers to come and work in the previously shut down Franklin Mine and they departed the Midwest on a train out of St. Paul, Minnesota. The train arrived in Palmer, and to avoid being spotted by the Knights of Labor, workers marched to Franklin under cover of darkness arriving on May 17, 1891. What they arrived to were new homes the OIC had promised, protected by barbed wire and armed guards. Their arrival did not go unnoticed though. The new Black miners were reported in that morning newspaper in Seattle where they were referred to as “invaders” by the press.

Many of the new hires were unaware they were being used to undermine the union. Although not technically scabs, since Franklin Mine was shut down before the strike, the OIC knew that the Knights of Labor would see it that way. Enough workers to operate the mine already existed in the area but, they were mainly union members and sympathizers. Moving Black miners into Franklin was a part of a larger plan by the company to rid all their mines of union workers.

On the morning of June 28, the OIC ordered that sixty Black miners travel from Franklin to Newcastle to cross union lines and work in the Newcastle Mine. While still on the platform in Franklin waiting for the morning train they were shot at by armed miners from Newcastle. Although none on the platform were injured, a man who met the shooters elsewhere, Ben Gaston was shot and fell downhill 30 feet. His attackers stole the gun he carried and fled. He was taken to the hospital and survived. This attack outraged the Black community of Franklin but intervention by private company guards and the county sheriff kept them from retaliating.

The violence did not end there. Around 7:30 PM that night the hired guards noticed two armed men hiding near Franklin station and made them leave. Two shots rang out as the train arrived and a guard on board returned fire. As he did so, everyone on board who was armed began to shoot in every direction. At the sound of the shots the Black community nearby also took up arms.

One group from Franklin believed the attackers to be hiding in the “flats” by the Green River and they headed there, taking a position facing the white miner’s homes. They opened fire on the houses and residents fled, hiding in the surrounding terrain. Several were injured but again, there were no reported deaths. Elsewhere, OIC manager Park Robinson though, shot two striking miners dead, claiming they had run towards him during the conflict.

The fighting was stopped when the National Guard arrived. The governor ordered that King County mines be disarmed and that the hired guards employed by the OIC be removed. Although the Knights of Labor denied involvement in the hostilities they would be largely blamed for this incident and violence around unions would soon lead to the end of the organization.

Black workers remained in the area after these incidents and continued to work in the coal mines. Forming their own social club which offered comradery and some protection by still sometimes hostile white workers.

The Eastside Heritage Center is working to bring more of the stories of this community to you. If you or anyone you know has information they can share with us about the Black community in eastern King County please email us at info@eastsideheritgecenter.org or simply respond to this email.

---

Resources

The Coals of Newcastle - A Hundred Years of Hidden History. 2020 Edition. Published by Newcastle Historical Society. Newcastle, WA.

“Employing Racism: Black Miners, the Knights of Labor, and Company Tactics in the Coal Towns of Washington”. Jourdan Marshall . The Seattle Civil Rights and Labor Project. https://depts.washington.edu/civilr/black_miners.htm

"Oregon Improvement Company completes purchase of Seattle & Walla Walla Railroad Company and Seattle Coal & Transportation Company on November 26, 1880." John Calbick. Historylink.org. 2014. https://historylink.org/File/10920

Franklin: Everything you always wanted to know. Black Daimond History. 2011. https://blackdiamondhistory.wordpress.com/2011/02/04/franklin-everything-you-always-wanted-to-know/

African Americans used as strikebreakers at the Franklin coal mines starting on May 17, 1891. Greg Lange. Historylink.org. 2000. https://historylink.org/File/1941

“Knights of Labor.” History.com Editors. 2019. https://www.history.com/topics/19th-century/knights-of-labor

"Knights of Labor." Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Knights-of-Labor

Housing Discrimination

EHC is home to nearly 600 cubic feet of archival materials. Our archive hosts things like photographs, books, newspapers, and letters. One such letter showcases a painful chapter in one family’s journey to the Eastside. Far from exceptional, the Martin’s story is one of many who have faced housing discrimination both on the Eastside and in the United States.

Home Owners' Loan Corporation Security Map and Area Descriptions, January 10, 1936.

From Notes:

“D-4 Area: This is the Negro area of Seattle.”

“D-5 Area: This district is composed of various mixed nationalities. Homes are occupied by tenants in a vast majority. Homes generally old and obsolete in need of extensive repairs.”

(Mapping Inequality Project, University of Richmond)

View fullsize

2008.051.001 Letter by Georgia Martin

Tim and Georgia Martin were looking to buy a home. In 1958 they were living in a two-bedroom house in the Central District in Seattle, with three children sharing one room. They needed more space and wanted to leave the Central District to pursue more opportunities for their family. There was just one problem - Tim Martin was Black.

During their house-hunting in Seattle, they were routinely met with discriminatory practices. Real Estate Agents refused to show them homes, banks declined to approve them for loans, and whole neighborhoods were off limits to them. A letter penned by Georgia in 1962 outlines the challenges they faced during this time.

“The person who answered the phone at Wallace Realty asked if we were Negro, Japanese or Caucasian. He said it made a difference and that he would not show the house to Negroes. He had nothing which he would show us.”

— Georgia Martin, 1962

View fullsize

2008.023.003 Seattle Magazine, First Issue 1964

The first issue of Seattle Magazine, also in our collection, features an article written about Tim Martin and the challenges his family faced. This article elaborates on their eventual home-buying experience.

Tim and Georgia turned their sights east, to Bellevue. Tim had gone through the effort to become a licensed real estate agent, so he could draw up contracts and negotiate deals on his own behalf. When he saw an ad for a home in Lake Hills he was prepared to make a deal. The owner, while surprised by Martin’s race, was willing to sell to him and they quickly came to terms. After nearly two years of searching, they had a home.

Living in Bellevue was not easy for the Martins. Neighbors were distant and classmates shouted racial epithets at their children. After several months, they were gradually accepted into the community. Better schools and job opportunities for the Martin’s made the move worthwhile, but Tim had no illusions about their standing on the Eastside.

“Some people who have finally accepted me think that proves they are real, 14-carat liberals. It makes them feel oh so very proud. But if and when more Negroes move in, they’ll get the same treatment I did - and the white residents will use their acceptance of me as living proof that they aren’t bigots.”

— Tim Martin, Seattle Magazine 1964

---

Tim and Georgia Martin were members of the Seattle Chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE).

Georgia’s letter was written August 18, 1962 and presented as testimony to Seattle’s Mayor, Gordon Clinton, and the Mayor’s Advisory Committee on Open Housing.

To learn more about this history, check out this article from the Civil Rights and Labor History Consortium, University of Washington. The 1964 Open Housing Election.

---

Resources:

2008.051.001 - Letter from Georgia Martin, 1962.

2008.023.003 - Seattle Magazine, April 1964. “A Pioneer’s Lonely Path”.

Jan, Tracy. “Analysis | Redlining Was Banned 50 Years Ago. It's Still Hurting Minorities Today.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 27 Apr. 2019, www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/03/28/redlining-was-banned-50-years-ago-its-still-hurting-minorities-today/.

Gross, Terry. “A 'Forgotten History' Of How The U.S. Government Segregated America.” NPR, NPR, 3 May 2017, www.npr.org/2017/05/03/526655831/a-forgotten-history-of-how-the-u-s-government-segregated-america.

Robert K. Nelson, LaDale Winling, Richard Marciano, Nathan Connolly, et al., “Mapping Inequality,” American Panorama, ed. Robert K. Nelson and Edward L. Ayers, accessed December 1, 2020, https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining/.

“Home Owners' Loan Corporation Security Map and Area Descriptions, January 10, 1936.” The Seattle Public Library, cdm16118.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p16118coll2/id/379.

Archaeology Around Japanese American Communities at Barnestown

Edited by David R. Carlson

Around 1898 to 1924 a small town existed in southeastern King County known as Barnestown. This town was created for sawmill and lumber workers recruited to work in the area. Building towns like this allowed workers and their families to live in a community and enjoy some comforts in between hard labor. The needs of workers and their relations is why a store, bathhouse, and school were all built. The buildings have since been taken down by the Kent Lumber Company and the lumber sold, but remnants of Barnestown’s occupants, can still be found today. The material objects left behind are clues about how Japanese Americans there spent their days and the kind of changes and pressures they faced living in a new land.

 Recently, University of Washington PhD student David R. Carlson has conducted archaeological research into the site focusing on Issei (first generation) and Nissei (second generation) Japanese Americans who lived and worked at Barnestown. By first conducting a surface survey and then excavation, Carlson and his team explored what material culture was left behind to tell about the Japanese American laborers lives and some of their experiences around adapting the life in the USA, labor relations, and racial discrimination. From documented histories about our region we know that adjusting to life in the USA was not easy for many immigrant groups, mainly because of the discrimination they often faced. For Japanese American laborers bigotry took the form of pay inequality, legal exclusion from settlement, and even outright violence. By looking at written records and the layout of the town of Barnestown, Carlson was able to create a workplan that could potentially shed light on the day to day experiences of Japanese Americans in sawmill towns like this. Carlson hopes to discover this and more about how the pressures of discrimination affected their daily lives.

Although issues such as adjusting to cultural changes and racial discrimination are not always directly evidenced in excavated material or blatantly obvious in styles of living, research into history creates an understanding of the context which typically guides archaeological research. For example, one of Carlson’s research questions is to figure out the patterns and activities related to alcohol consumption in the community. This requires him to understand what kinds of alcohol were consumed and where, and to contrast the different kinds of alcohol consumed in public versus private areas. These patterns might not seem significant, but with an understanding of existing pressures at the time, these patterns can be given more meaning. Well-documented bigotry was prevalent among many more established immigrants of European descent towards newer Japanese American immigrants. Because of this, influential members of the Japanese American community often discouraged drinking in order to help avoid dangerous situations for their fellow community members. This kind of information, can help archaeologists like Carlson imagine how certain patterns of alcohol consumption—such as a community avoiding high-proof, hard alcohol consumption—can point to larger ideas of socially acceptable alcohol consumption and racial discrimination.

This is just one example of how a more holistic view of history and material evidence can lead to important connections. The above example indicates why this is so important to put material evidence into a larger context. Archeologists rely on the physical materials and chemical evidence discovered during excavation to give clues about the reality of people’s lives in the past. Trained archaeologists have the skills not only to apply a historical context from researching paper records, they also learn to document findings during excavations in a way that tells much more than any one object could. Without this kind of information even the most interesting artifact can become useless in learning about the past. Unfortunately for this particular project, much of the analysis of physical objects had been delayed by the global Covid-19 outbreak, but David R. Carlson shared his preliminary work with us this July, and we look forward to hearing more when he is able to continue his work.

 Special thanks to University of Washington PhD. candidate David R. Carlson (pictured left) for sharing his work with us and providing the information for this article.

David R. Carlson’s research was funded by a UW Department of Anthropology Pilot Study grant and a National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant (ID # 1743498). It was conducted with the permission and support of Seattle Public Utilities and the Cedar River Watershed Management District. This project further relies on assistance and/or material from the Cedar River Watershed Education Center, the DENSHO Encyclopedia, the Northwest Nikkei Museum, the Hoover Institution Archives, the Seattle Municipal Archives, and the University of Washington Special Collections Library, as well as a large number of incredible and dedicated volunteers! Special thanks to these organizations and Mr. Carlson for bringing this research to the Eastside Heritage Center.