Pacific Northwest Labor and Civil Rights History Projects facts for kids
The Pacific Northwest Labor and Civil Rights History Projects are a group of projects that share history using different ways, like websites and videos. These projects focus on the history of working people and their movements in the Northwest, especially in Seattle.
One of the main projects, the Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project, has been praised a lot. It offers many original and secondary resources. It's also special because it was created by professors, community members, and hundreds of students working together. People see it as a great example of how to share history online and work with communities.
Exploring History Projects
The main projects in this series include the Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project, the Great Depression in Washington State Project, the Waterfront Workers History Project, the Labor Press Project, the Seattle General Strike Project, the Communism in Washington State Project, and the Antiwar and Radical History Project.
The Strikes! Labor History Encyclopedia for the Pacific Northwest brings together information from all these sites. It also adds more details about workers from many different jobs and communities in the region. Many of these historical materials have been scanned and put online only through these projects. They come from old archives and personal collections. Some materials are very rare, like the only known films of the 1919 Seattle General Strike and the 1934 West Coast Waterfront Strike.
Why These Projects Are Important
These projects are known as a new and important way to share history with the public. They show how the University of Washington and the Seattle community can work together. They record histories that are hard to find elsewhere, like the stories of Filipino cannery workers and the Chicano Movement in Washington state.
A special way of working together has allowed community members to have more say in the content than in typical academic research. This has also made students more interested in their work. The projects have made a real difference outside of universities. For example, Washington state law about neighborhood rules changed. This happened because the projects found information about old rules that stopped certain races from living in specific neighborhoods.
In other cases, the projects have shed light on topics rarely studied, like the Seattle Black Panther Party. The local chapter in Seattle was one of the first started outside of Oakland and lasted a long time. The Civil Rights and Labor History Project found many materials and did interviews with people. This created the largest collection of information on any Black Panther Party chapter in the country, even more than the original chapter in Oakland.
All the projects are known for how much information they make available online. The Labor Press Project has thousands of scanned articles from over thirty different union and radical newspapers. The Strikes! Labor History Encyclopedia has a day-by-day list of articles from the Northwest about labor. It covers important times like 1915-1919 and 1930-1939.
Video interviews are a key part of the projects. They show first-hand stories from people who lived through these events. These interviews are placed alongside new essays by experts and scanned historical documents. The projects also work with public schools in Washington. They help teachers design lessons using these materials. This helps students learn about the often-forgotten history of labor and civil rights in the Northwest and meet state requirements.
