As promised when posting Barbara Thomas’ remarks, here is a very brief primer on Mt. Zion Baptist Church and involvement in Seattle Civil Rights history.
Mt. Zion Baptist Church was founded in 1894 with 8 founding members who met in a building on the University of Washington campus. In its early years it moved several times and had a number of pastors. Buying property at 19th and E. Madison in 1918, it remains there today.
Between 1920 and 1957, there were only 5 pastors and several were active in the community as voices for civil rights.
- Reverend F.W. Pennick (1940-1942) was a civil rights activist
- Reverend F.B. Davis (1942-1954) ran for Seattle City Council in 1946. There were only 3500 registered African American voters in the city but he got 27,000 votes.
- 1948-1958 brought Reverend Samuel Berry McKinney to Mt. Zion.
- 1961–McKinney hosted Dr. Martin Luther King at Mt. Zion. This was King’s only visit to Seattle.
- 1963–McKinney led a march of 400 to promote and end to Seattle’s housing segregation.
- 1966—500 children attended a Freedom School at Mt Zion during the Seattle schools boycott. This Freedom School was one of 7 churches and 2 YMCAs participating, for two days (3/31 and 4/1) when about 4000 children boycotted the public schools, protesting the segregation of the schools and the quality of the education.
Throughout the years Reverend McKinney and Mt. Zion have maintained their activist activities. And for many years we could watch Reverend McKinney, along with Patronella Wright and the Total Experience Gospel Choir perform Langston Hughes Black Nativity at the Intiman.
For more information:
Blackpast.org. http://www.blackpast.org/aaw/mount-zion-baptist-church-seattle-washington-1890
Seattle School Boycott of 1966. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_school_boycott_of_1966
Moments 