SENATE RESOLUTION
8617
By Senators Lovick, Hasegawa, and Muzzall
WHEREAS, Dr. Carter G. Woodson and Jesse E. Moorland founded the association, Study of Negro Life and History, dedicating the association to research and promoting achievements by Black people in a time when he saw Black history "overlooked, ignored, and even suppressed by the writers of history textbooks and the teachers who use them"; and
WHEREAS, The beginnings of Black history in the United States was identified by the unfairly strenuous struggle of slavery, Jim Crow, and segregation that lasted far too long; and
WHEREAS, Even today, over 162 years after Black slaves were freed, Black Americans continue to face injustice and unfairness; and
WHEREAS, The 2025 Black History Month theme, "African Americans and Labor," brings to light the great deeds and efforts of African Americans to the workforce of the United States; and
WHEREAS, Martha Jones became the first Black woman to receive a patent for her improvement to the Corn Husker, Sheller in 1868, just three years after the passage of the 13th Amendment; and
WHEREAS, In 1889, William Owen Bush became the first Black American to serve in the Washington Territorial Legislature representing Thurston County; and
WHEREAS, Representatives Charles Stokes and Marjorie Pitter King were the first Black American man and woman to serve in the legislature following the proclamation of Washington statehood; and
WHEREAS, Shirley Chisholm became the first Black woman elected to Congress in 1968, where she worked on the Education and Labor Committee and helped form the Black Caucus, and she made history again in 1972, when she became the first Black woman of a major party to run for a presidential nomination; and
WHEREAS, In the words of poet and State Representative Maurice N. Corbett, who was born to an enslaved mother in 1859, Black Americans had grown accustomed to adversity before gaining freedom, "But worked he with celerity, to leave to his posterity, not laborer's legacy alone, but something real to call his own"; and