Articles

We have completed a project researching and documenting the history of community activism in the Rainier Valley. We were interested in...

This project was completed in 2011 and was founded by a special project grant from King County 4Culture. John Hoole and I began our...

Community organizing starts with problems—a rat infested apartment, the steady drip drip from the ceiling of an elementary school after a...

Kubota Garden Entrance Gate - photo by Laurel Mercury Most first-time visitors to the garden are amazed to find a mature 20-acre garden located in a residential neighborhood a few blocks from the southern city limits of Seattle. The story of the garden is also amazing. It is the creation of Fujitaro Kubota and his family and unique to the Pacific Northwest. The Historical and Economic Background The story begins in Meiji Japan, with the rapid westernization and industrializat

2010 marks the 100th year of operation for the Lakewood Seward Park Community Club Take a look at the Seward Park peninsula today and...

In the 2008-09 school year, fifty 6th grade students from the New School explored the rich tapestry of faith traditions in the Rainier...

Children's issues were deemed an appropriate arena for women: Washington Women started voting in school elections in 1890. The Rainier...

Women were not given the vote; they earned it.

This exhibit was created in 2009 in conjunction with the Washington State History Society's Exhibit, "Women's Votes, Women's Voices"....

When Marion Southard married Phillip Weiss in 1926, she gave up her career as a social worker in order to raise her children. Back then,...

A hundred years ago, women's roles in the public sphere often grew out of their experience as wives and mothers at home: women worked as...

"We decided to make a quilt. It’s cool. It shows all kind of things that happened in history in this neighborhood. We learned to work...

In the spring of 2005, a group of fourth and fifth graders at Orca @ Columbia School researched the history of the stream that used to...

Urban Archaeology in the Rainier Valley An unusual crowd filled Courtland Place for five days in October 2002. This tiny street that runs...