Her `Tribute' Reveals The Names Behind Those Public Landmarks

Henry's book

You can obtain a copy of Mary Henry's "Tribute: Seattle Public Places Named for Black People" from several area bookstores, or you can order it from Statice Press, P.O. Box 22198, Seattle, WA 98122-0198. Send $12, which includes postage, handling and tax. -------------------------------------------

A city's history is written in the names of its streets, parks and buildings, but too often the meanings of those names are as lost to us as if they were ancient Aztec artifacts.

Thanks to Mary Henry, I now know that the playfield our family refers to as the "castle park" is really Powell Barnett Park. Of course there's a sign, but it's not nearly as eye-catching as bathrooms disguised as a castle. And besides, the name didn't mean anything to me.

Henry has set out to make the words on that sign, and others like it, meaningful to more people.

She's a retired Seattle public school librarian and the editor of the newsletter put out by the Black Heritage Society of Washington. I met her son Neil a number of years ago in Nairobi when he was covering Africa for The Washington Post, which is how she knew about me and I her.

Recently she sent me a book she wrote and one of her daughters-in-law, Marilyn Henry, illustrated. It's called "Tribute: Seattle Public Places Named for Black People."

The book grew out of Henry's work as a librarian and her recognition of an opportunity for teaching young people (and old

ones, too) some history they might miss otherwise. She has given 100 copies to the Seattle School District.

Henry was the librarian at South Shore Middle School in the midst of a 27-year career when she noticed how much children struggled with a black history quiz. Many of the children were cared for at the Odessa Brown Clinic and swam at Medgar Evers Pool, but had no idea who the people were who lent their names to those landmarks.

Henry is of that generation of black people for whom dignity was paramount. Her home is immaculate and tastefully decorated. Her bearing and her language are gracious and graceful. She is the product of segregated schools whose teachers saw each child as a great hope not just for herself but for a whole race of people.

This country's movement forward and the people who kept it moving mean something to her.

"People lived their lives for some good. Places are named for them, but no one remembers who they are and what they did. I wanted there to be some record of who they were." Henry realized there were gaps in her knowledge, too. She used to visit her daughter on Beacon Hill and drive across the bridge named for Dr. Jose Rizal, and she'd wonder who he was.

It's easy enough to find out about the Yeslers and the Borens, but no books in her library mentioned Rizal. It took her several phone calls to find out that he is the national hero of the Philippines, whose resistance to Spanish rule and whose execution fueled the country's revolt against Spain.

Henry put together some information for students in 1979, and later made posters and a slide show about eight people of color who'd had things named for them, including Wing Luke, Rizal and Chief Leschi. She used them in her library and later gave talks around town.

When she retired in 1988, she decided to write a book about minority notables. She pretty quickly determined that given how hard it was to come by information, she might never finish it, so she concentrated on black people.

The book tells the stories of 23 sites in Seattle and the people for whom they were named. Many of them are people Henry knew and befriended.

Dr. Blanche Lavizzo was her bridge partner. The water play area at Edwin T. Pratt Park, 20th Avenue South and South Washington Street, was named for her, as is a another small park nearby. The Lavizzos and Henrys moved to Seattle within a few months of each other in 1956. That was the same year Edwin Pratt came to the Seattle office of the National Urban League. There were about 40,000 black residents in Seattle, but few professionals.

Lavizzo, a schoolmate of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., was a pediatrician. Her husband, Philip, was a surgeon. Lavizzo became the first medical director of the Odessa Brown Clinic and was known for caring about the clients not just as patients but as people. And as were most of the people in the book, Lavizzo was active in numerous community organizations.

Some of the people are familiar, their contributions known on a large scale. Others made their daily lives count for something in ways that any of us could emulate if we just had their vision.

There is Alvin Larkin. The little park on 34th Avenue and East Pike in Madrona was named for him in 1979, two years after his death. Henry says this is her favorite park from the book because it is quiet and peaceful like the man himself. Larkin was a social studies teacher (he taught Henry's daughter's teacher at Franklin High School) and jazz musician who was active in the Madrona neighborhood.

His story is part of Seattle's story. The Navy brought him here in 1943 as servicemen and defense-industry workers poured into the community. In 1942, when the federal government intervened to open Boeing jobs to black workers, there were 4,000 black people in Seattle. Within two years there were 12,000, all crowded into the Central Area because other areas of the city were closed to black people.

There were earlier waves of black immigration to Seattle, and names from those periods are represented, too.

Powell Barnett came to Seattle in 1906, and Prentis Frazier in 1916.

Frazier, an active Republican and successful businessman, is buried in Bellevue, but the small park named for him is on a patch of land behind his former home in the Central Area. Frazier helped start a newspaper, a theater and a funeral home.

Barnett worked in the coal mines around Roslyn in the late 1800s and for many years was a maintenance worker at the King County Courthouse. Outside of work, Henry writes, he was "a firm believer in racial integration, he was instrumental in uniting blacks and whites in the YMCA, the USO and the local musicians unions. He was the first black person to become a member of the once all-white Musicians Union Local 76." He organized the Leschi Improvement Council and helped organize the East Madison YMCA.

The children at Leschi Elementary School gave the park its name in 1969. None of the places in the book were named for black people earlier than 1969, the year when Forward Thrust money began creating new parks at a time when the civil-rights movement had made everyone more aware of black people and black people more active in working to leave some record of our impact on this society.

Now there are places named for Martin Luther King Jr., Medgar Evers, Thurgood Marshall, Frederick Douglas, Sojourner Truth, Langston Hughes. And locals such as Alvirita Little, Carolyn Downs, Flo Ware, Meredith Mathews, Randolph Carter, William Grose, Peppi Braxton, Russell Gideon.

Henry told me about looking around years ago and realizing what an impact her contemporaries were having on Seattle. Now she has laid down her stone in the path we are traveling.

She said of the people in her book, "They came here with vision. They had dreams." So does she.

Henry's book is a powerful reminder that no one has to settle for sighing over what isn't when a little action can fill a void. Were it not for each of the people in this book, something valuable would be missing from Seattle. ------------------------------------------- Jerry Large's column appears Sundays and Thursdays in the Scene section of The Seattle Times. You can reach him c/o The Times, P.O. Box 70, Seattle, WA 98111. Phone: 206-464-3346. Fax: 206-464-2261.