Seattle voters elect slate of reformers and first African American, Sam Smith, to the City Council on November 7, 1967.

  • By Walt Crowley
  • Posted 1/01/2000
  • HistoryLink.org Essay 1989
See Additional Media

On November 7, 1967, Seattle voters launch a "revolution" on the Seattle City Council by electing the body's first African American member, State Senator Sam Smith (1922-1995), and reformers Phyllis Lamphere and Tim Hill. The latter two candidates are sponsored by CHECC (Committee to Choose an Effective City Council) and the election of all three represents a rebuke of the city's conservative, business-dominated leadership.


Sources:

Walt Crowley, Rites of Passage: A Memoir of the Sixties in Seattle (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1995).


Licensing: This essay is licensed under a Creative Commons license that encourages reproduction with attribution. Credit should be given to both HistoryLink.org and to the author, and sources must be included with any reproduction. Click the icon for more info. Please note that this Creative Commons license applies to text only, and not to images. For more information regarding individual photos or images, please contact the source noted in the image credit.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License
Major Support for HistoryLink.org Provided By: The State of Washington | Patsy Bullitt Collins | Paul G. Allen Family Foundation | Museum Of History & Industry | 4Culture (King County Lodging Tax Revenue) | City of Seattle | City of Bellevue | City of Tacoma | King County | The Peach Foundation | Microsoft Corporation, Other Public and Private Sponsors and Visitors Like You