Each week on The Newsfeed, host Paris Jackson and a team of veteran journalists dive deep into one topic and provide impactful reporting, interviews and community insights from sources you can trust. Each day this week, this post will be updated with a new story from the team.
Gospel music remains a spiritual refuge for Black Americans
By Paris Jackson
This week marks 100 years since the first Black History Week, which was subsequently expanded to what we recognize now as Black History Month. This week on The Newsfeed, we’re highlighting a genre of music that is a cornerstone of the Black American experience: gospel.
For decades, Elder Sam Townsend Jr. has led choirs all over Seattle as the minister of music and worship arts at Great Glory Ministries.
“Gospel music means the good news. The gospel itself means the good news of Jesus Christ. So it's the life, the death, the resurrection of our Savior. Gospel music means hope,” Townsend said.
The genre has evolved over hundreds of years, through generations and historical periods. Yet it remains a spiritual refuge as a center of faith, resilience and hope for Black folks.
“Psalm 46 it says, God is our refuge and our strength, a very present help in the time of trouble. And as the Psalm goes on, it says, though the earth be removed, though mountains shake, though waters be troubled, there is still a river, who streams make glad the city of God. And that's why I think gospel music is important because it remains that stream, that stream that moves around rocks, it moves through rough terrain. It never stops. It's a, it's a source of strength,” Townsend said.
On a crisp February evening, he brought a collection of singers together from his various ministry groups to his family church to sing “Total Praise” by the late gospel singer and composer Richard Smallwood.
“Gospel music isn't something that you can just tell people about. They have to experience [it]. They have to sit, in the midst of a gospel song. It doesn't have to be a church service. It could be a choir rehearsal. You know, just sit in the midst of a gospel song, get a gospel CD, and just let it play through your house. You will feel the joy infused through those lyrics and infuse through those words, through those, those notes. And it will pierce your soul and it will change your life,” Townsend said.
‘Mother of Afrofuturism’ Octavia Butler changed science fiction
By Jaelynn Grisso
Literary legend Octavia Butler reshaped science fiction writing with her work from the late 1970s until her death in 2006.
She was a prolific author whose novels include Kindred, The Parable of the Sower and the Patternist series. She also wrote her final novel Fledgling in her home in Lake Forest Park, where she lived for the last 7 years of her life. She won Hugo and Nebula awards. In 1995, she was the first science fiction writer to receive the MacArthur Genius Fellowship.
Often referred to as the “Mother of Afrofuturism,” she was known for centering Black women in her writing because she didn’t often see herself in other science fiction works.
She is also now known for her uncanny predictions of the future. Her work created new worlds, while often providing incisive commentary on our own.
“It's a little eerie to see the world now and to have read her work 20 years ago and kind of see how so much of it has played out into a present reality,” said Rashida Smith, program director of Clarion West and a former student of Butler’s. “It's a little disturbing, but I think it's also really hopeful because she wrote a lot about community and the people who weren't the big change makers, but who managed to make a difference in whatever circumstances they found themselves in, which can be incredibly inspiring.”
Butler’s legacy lives on, well past her passing nearly 20 years ago in her Lake Forest Park home. In 2023, the City of Lake Forest Park dedicated the street she lived on as Octavia Butler Avenue.
Seattle Black Panther Party co-founder keeps legacy alive
By Paris Jackson
As we commemorate Black History Month, one founder of the Black Panther Party’s Seattle Chapter is keeping its legacy and impact alive for future generations.
In 1966, the Black Panthers were founded in Oakland, California amidst the Jim Crow South, rampant discrimination, and police brutality across the country.
Two years later in 1968, teenage brothers, Elmer Dixon, a Garfield High School student at the time, and his older brother, Aaron, a University of Washington student, co-founded the Seattle Chapter, with other young activists.
“We grew up in an era of assassinations because they were one right after another. Seeing Bloody Sunday. The battle on the [Edmund] Pettus Bridge. The same year, seeing the murder of the four young girls in the 16th Street Baptist Street Church, Medgar Evers being assassinated. Two years later, Malcolm X being assassinated. The rebellions in Watts. The rebellion in Detroit. It was very tumultuous time,” Dixon said.
The Panthers’ goal was to build a revolutionary Black political party to give voice to the conditions in the Black community and take direct action to address them, according to BlackPast.org.
Elmer says the Panthers were not initially a social service organization, although they became known for their free health clinics and children’s breakfast programs. He says programs came out of community survival.
He says the group dealt with police raids, heavy surveillance and death threats because they were fighting for the rights and protection of Black people.
“We were called terrorist, and we know who the terrorist are and were at the time. And, so people need to understand, you know, their history and I, you know, my favorite audience, by the way, are the K through 5th graders because they just eat it up and they love it because they know the difference between truth and lies,” Dixon said.
Now, nearly six decades later, Dixon wants young people to learn the history of the Panthers, but also create their own identity and fight for something.
Dixon says this Spring, the Seattle Black Panther Interpretive Center will open at the Metropole building in downtown Seattle. He says a permanent location for the center is in the works.
How King County got renamed for Martin Luther King, Jr.
By Venice Buhain
While there are more than 1,000 streets in the world named after Martin Luther King, Jr., King County could be one of the largest – if not the largest – jurisdiction named after the civil rights leader.
Former King County Councilmember Larry Gossett remembers the community effort it took to make the name change official and to get the logo redesigned.
“Renaming a county after a Black man is not something easy to do. I believe you know this, in the United States of America,” Gossett told Cascade PBS.
King County was first named in 1852 for the then-vice president-elect William Rufus DeVane King, an Alabama politician and a slaveholder who died less than six months after King County was founded.
In 1986, King County councilmembers Ron Sims and Bruce Laing pushed for the rededication of the county name. The move came a few years after the establishment of the national holiday honoring King and after Seattle renamed Empire Way to Martin Luther King, Jr., Way.
While the county unofficially adopted its new designation, it took nearly 20 years for the change to become official through state legislative action.
Gossett said at a Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration at Garfield High School in 1999, community activists, including Eddie Rye, Jr., pushed for him to make the namesake official and get the county logo changed from a crown. It took six years.
“The support that we got from Black, Latino, Asian, Native American and progressive white communities all over King County was something else,” he said. He said 26,000 people signed a petition supporting the official redesignation.
But Gossett said there were some who vehemently opposed the change, including sending epithets and threats. Gossett, who has been a civil rights activist since the 1960s, said it was among the worst he had experienced.
“I'm a founder of the [Seattle] Black Panther Party and the Black Student Union,” he said. “I never got all the kind of phone calls I got around the Dr. King thing during that period of time.”
The Washington State Legislature passed the law in 2005, which Gov. Chris Gregoire signed. Later that year, King County replaced its old logo with a stylized image of King with the blessing of his family.
The effort was recognized nationally, including by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the civil rights organization led by Martin Luther King, Jr. that was instrumental in the March on Washington and the Selma Voting Rights Movement, among other actions for racial equity.
“Thunderous ovation honoring me for leading the effort to rename this county in which Seattle is located – and way up there in the Pacific Northwest – after Dr. King,” Gossett said.
The man behind the largest online encyclopedia for Black history
February is Black History Month, and this week, we’re bringing you stories from the largest Black online encyclopedia: BlackPast.org.
In 2004, the website was created by the late University of Washington Professor, Dr. Quintard Taylor.
It seeks to provide reliable information about Black history in the U.S. and across the world. It’s home to more than 14,000 pages of content.
“You don't have to go to an ivory tower, you don’t have to go through a paywall or a subscription, because that was one of Dr. Taylor's visions. To ensure that this information would be available to the public. So there will be no excuse for any ignorance at all about the contributions and achievements of Black people. But also it tells a story of not just resilience, but also of triumph,” said Dr. Quin'Nita Cobbins-Modica, Vice President of BlackPast’s board of directors
In September, Dr. Taylor passed away. Earlier this month, people from across the country converged together to celebrate his life at a memorial service in Kent, including Dr. Cobbins-Modica. She began working with Taylor on the project when she was one of his students.
“There's a lot of propaganda that is out there that distort, that recreate or revise history. And with BlackPast, we challenge those myths and those distortions and those lies,” Cobbins-Modica said. “And so it's a great resource for anyone who is interested in learning more about the past and particularly of African people of African descent.”
Now, Dr. Cobbins-Modica is carrying her mentor’s work forward as a professor in California.
“And when I see students coming to the classroom, and see how little they know, because what they have been taught is a very sanitized and romanticized version of history,” Cobbins-Modica said. “And when they get in my classroom, this is the first time they are hearing of these stories and these narratives.”
