Enlightened Free Thinking Nubian Kings And Queens

John T. Gayton, one of Seattle’s earliest black residents, a community leader, and patriarch of one of the city’s most outstanding black families, came to Seattle in 1889.  He was born in Benton, Mississippi to former slaves.  With little formal education, he moved to Yazoo City, Mississippi, and made the fortuitous decision to work for a physician, Dr. Henry Yandell, as servant and coachman.  It brought him to Seattle when Dr. Yandell joined the movement to the new state of Washington.    Soon after his arrival in Seattle, he tried his hand as a painter, painting contractor, barber, and bellboy.  He worked as a waiter at the Arctic Club and later at the Rainier Club, where he was promoted to head waiter.  In 1901 he became the first black steward at the Rainier Club, overseeing the servants and the preparation of food.   Before long, he was called upon to cater large parties and banquets.  He also catered every day for a downtow...

Edward Gardner was born in Birmingham, Alabama in December 1898. Shortly after his birth, his family moved west and eventually settled in Seattle. Gardner returned to Alabama in 1914, to attend Tuskegee Institute, where he learned a trade as a steam engineer and became a star on the school’s track team. By 1921, Gardner was living in Seattle and began competing in the annual Ten Mile Washington State Championship, sponsored by the  Seattle Post Intelligencer .  Gardner won the race three times from 1921-1927, setting course records as he went and beating the best amateur and military runners in the Pacific Northwest.  As he trained, he adopted his trademark outfit, a white towel tied around his head, a white sleeveless shirt and white trunks.  His Seattle fans would call out “oh you Sheik.” The name stuck and Eddie Gardner became known as "the Sheik” of Seattle. In 1928, Gardner entered the first foot race across America, nicknamed the “bunion derby” (A 3,400 m...

Hutchen R. Hutchins, born on June 30, 1903, was part of a small but active cadre of African American Communists operating in the Pacific Northwest during the 1930's. Originally from the East Coast, Hutchins attended the Lenin School in Moscow in the late 1920's. In 1932 he was sent to Seattle by the Communist Party USA's Central Committee in New York to serve on a three-member District Executive Committee. That same year he helped organize one of the largest demonstrations of unemployed workers in the state's history. Hutchins reportedly clashed with Party members in the Northwest who, considered him overbearing and doctrinaire. In 1933 he was replaced, along with the other two members of the Executive Committee, by a new Executive Secretary. Hutchins stayed in Seattle and retained a Marxist political orientation, although it is unclear whether he remained an official member of the Communist Party. Throughout the latter half of the 1930s he served as president of ...

Martha Settle Putney was one of the first Black women to join the Women’s Army Corps during World War II. After the war, Putney became a historian and author who notably focused on the contributions of African-Americans in the military. Putney was born Martha Settle on November 9, 1916 in Norristown, Pa. After working as a political campaigner as a young girl, she won a scholarship to Howard University from the candidate she helped get elected. Putney was a focused student, earning her bachelor’s degree in history in 1939 and a master’s in the same discipline the following year. While she originally wanted to become a teacher, Putney couldn’t find employment because of her race. Instead, she took a job with the federal government’s War Man power Commission. Putney toiled in the lowly job fo...