Victorio Velasco begins publishing Seattle's first Filipino newspaper, The Philippine Seattle Colonist, in 1924.

  • By Priscilla Long
  • Posted 3/21/2002
  • HistoryLink.org Essay 3738
See Additional Media

In 1924, Victorio Velasco (d. 1968) begins publishing the Seattle area's first Filipino newspaper, The Philippine Seattle Colonist. Velasco has just arrived from Manila where he was a young reporter for The Manila Times. The paper runs until 1927.

Velasco became a key leader in the Filipino community in Seattle. He was active in the Jackson Street Community Council and in other community organizations. In 1928, Velasco founded The Filipino Forum, also a community oriented newspaper.

Velasco was a cannery worker and union member. In 1968, he tragically burned to death at an Alaska cannery as he was trying to save his typewriter from a fire in a bunkhouse.


Sources:

Doug Chin, Seattle's International District: The Making of a Pan-Asian American Community (Seattle: International Examiner Press, 2001), 50.


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