Glen Mansfield worked for civil rights
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It was by chance that Glen E. Mansfield began his 27-year career as a human-rights advocate.
The year was 1949. The new state Board Against Discrimination in Employment was looking for a "man" to fill an opening.
And when a woman at Mansfield's church showed him the gender-specific advertisement for the position, he didn't catch the irony.
"I completely missed her point about the male chauvinism of the situation," he said later.
But Mr. Mansfield got the job and went on to show an attentiveness to discrimination issues that led many to call him a civil-rights pioneer.
Mr. Mansfield died early Friday (March 30) in his sleep. He was 94.
Raised on a 100-acre farm near Davenport, Lincoln County, Mr. Mansfield spent his early years in Eastern Washington. In 1924, he enrolled in a teacher-training program at Cheney State Normal School, now Eastern Washington University.
A year later, he began teaching in a one-room schoolhouse in Davenport, returning to college in the summers to finish his degree. Several years later, he moved on to jobs with the Bureau of Reclamation at Coulee Dam and the War Assets Administration, an agency that liquidated wartime assets.
When Mr. Mansfield started working for the Board Against Discrimination in Employment, it handled primarily racial complaints. In time, its oversight encompassed complaints based on age, sex, marital status and disabilities. He chaired the agency from 1958 to 1969. In 1971, it became the Human Rights Commission.
But Mr. Mansfield is remembered primarily for his work against racial discrimination. Claude Harris, later a Seattle fire chief, became the first black firefighter in the state in 1959 because of the intercession of Mr. Mansfield.
According to newspaper accounts, Harris passed the strength, written and oral exams as Mr. Mansfield looked on. But a doctor first tried to disqualify Harris because he had flat feet - and then found other problems when Harris objected. But Mr. Mansfield's presence eventually forced the department to relent.
Mr. Mansfield retired from the commission in 1976.
Widowed in 1952, he met and married Louise "Susie" Mansfield in 1955.
"He was the happiest person," she said. "A keen sense of humor. Kind to everybody."
Three of Mr. Mansfield's five children from his first marriage were born deaf and blind, Louise Mansfield said. Two of them, Colleen and Daniel, have died.
But Mr. Mansfield's passion for civil rights didn't spring from having disabled children.
"Either one was enough to keep you busy," Louise Mansfield said. "He could have devoted full time to the aspect of the handicaps or full time to his civil-rights activities. He was active in both."
Mr. Mansfield is survived by his twin daughters, Marjorie Wallace of Lebanon, Ore., and Glenna Bennett of Seattle, and by daughter Pauline Mansfield of Seattle.
A memorial service will be held at 9:30 a.m. tomorrow at the Aurora Church of the Nazarene, 1900 N. 175th St., Shoreline. Remembrances can be made to the Nazarene World Missions Fund at any Church of the Nazarene.