What the struggle over recognition for WSU's Gay Awareness student group shows is some of the similarities between rural and urban LGBTQ rights. Rural areas — especially college towns like Pullman or Moscow — are also queer places. People in cities who were against gay rights used the same tactic as those in Pullman—the public-referendum—to deny housing or employment Read More
Prohibition did not limit the demand of alcohol, and many people did not support it, including the police. On an early morning in March 1920, Seattle Police Lieutenant Roy Olmstead and Sergeant T.J. Clark met a crew of bootleggers loading a shipment of Canadian whiskey from Vancouver, B.C. for Seattle. Olmstead and Clark were not there to arrest the criminals, but to watch Read More
Washington’s sprawling Capitol campus features war memorials, a granite monument to fallen police officers, a replica of a Roman-style fountain and a brass sundial. As soon as this summer a new monument will join the collection. It will honor George Bush, Washington’s first Black pioneer, along with his son, William Owen Bush, who was the state’s first Black lawmaker, and Read More
In 1918 Walla Walla, the chief of police, refused to enforce a state mask mandate. He pointed out that he was going to meet heavy resistance and, anyway, that he had no authority to carry out a state directive, only city ordinances. Still, he also openly defied the instructions of the city’s health officer, J.E. Vanderpool, to follow the state health officer’s guidance. Read More
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