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BS: So these guys would meet because the minority contractors, especially black contractors, were putting pressure on the construction industry to get more contracts in the labor industry, in the contracting industry. And their meetings were pretty loud and tough. These guys, they wanted, they wanted jobs and they were being cut out of all this, all the construction jobs that were happening in the area. There were a couple of demonstrations that they had to voice their concern about not getting any of these contracts and these jobs, and parallel to that Tyree Scott was putting together groups of minority, mostly black, young black males who wanted to be construction workers so the contractors would have construction workers to bring to the table. Tyree Scott was an electrician. And when all this is happening I happened to be appointed by a guy named Mayor Miller, he was, it was the mayor, Brahman, and he left for health reasons or something and Mayor Miller was the interim mayor, mid '60s somewhere. And I got appointed to Seattle Human Rights Commission, probably as the only Asian that was involved in the Civil Rights Movement at that time, which was false. I wasn't. I was, it was Reverend Katagiri, Jim Takasaki, Fred Cordova, a lot of these people were involved before I was, but I happened, my name happened to go up to the city, to the mayor's office, so I got appointed. So I'm on the Commission, and Tyree Scott asked me one day, "Bob, we're getting our members together, and then what we have to do is we're gonna drive around," Tyree would drive around the neighborhood and find construction jobs, and he'd look to see the construction, the team, and if there were, if they were all white, no blacks on 'em, he would come back to St. Peter Claver Center and meet early in the morning when the Black Panthers opened up the door. He would come in and his group would meet, and the next day they would go to the construction site where there were no black workers and they would surround the construction site, and as the white workers came to work they would tell 'em, "Why don't you guys go back home and we'll talk to the superintendent of this job to get jobs for our people, and if we get some of our people hired on this particular job then you all can come back to work." I mean, it was, it was as simple as that.

TI: But were they kind of threatening the white workers as they were coming, like, stay away?

BS: Stay away.

TI: Okay.

BS: It's you against us. We're just gonna shut you down. And that was working. That started to work, and so more guys were getting jobs at the small construction firms that were doing business in the Central Area, and it started to escalate into larger constructions around the Central Area. And Tyree wanted to pick the jobs that had, that were being funded in part by federal funds because, don't forget, in 1964 -- this is about '65, '66, '67, and the Civil Rights Act had passed by President Johnson, and talking a little bit about affirmative action and all that stuff, not hard and fast rules, but there was language on the books. So Tyree and, started working with other minority groups because it was a lot of federal money going to construction sites at the University of Washington, and it was about that time Tyree got his group of people together with the Oriental Student Union, Al Sugiyama, Tony Oglivie, all these were young students then. Mayumi Tsutakawa, I think she was in that group. And they shut down a job at the University of Washington. Dolores Sibonga was involved in that, her husband, Marty Sibonga, Larry Matsuda, all these folks. And so this was our first involvement in a minority demonstration, joining the black construction workers and the contractors. More meetings were held at St. Peter Claver Center with the contractors and United Construction Workers with Tyree Scott.

Tyree Scott became a little more, he became more of a leader in this movement, in this construction industry movement with the workers and the contractors, and one of the biggest, one of the biggest construction jobs going up in the, in our neighborhood was the administration building at Seattle Central Community College, that... they razed the old Broadway High School building and they were building this new administration building. And I think it was five stories. So Tyree and his group met at St. Peter Claver Center one Monday morning and said, okay, we're gonna go on and we're gonna try to shut down this job at Central, Seattle Central Community College. So there was about twenty-five, thirty demonstrators, and I didn't go then. I didn't go that day. Michael Wooand some of these guys went, and they went out to the, out to the construction site and it was a battle between the construction workers and, the demonstrators and the cops. They didn't get very far. They got to Broadway and then they, and I think the cops were tipped off and so the cops, there was a pitched battle in the middle of the street somewhere, and a bunch of people were arrested and let go that night.

And the next day -- it was in the paper, of course -- the next day Tyree says, okay, we're goin' back. So this time, from twenty-five to thirty people, it was about eighty to a hundred people. And we start at St. Peter Claver Center and Tyree says, "Okay, brothers and sisters, nonviolent now. This is nonviolent," because of the scuffle before, the day before. So we go down Jefferson, up the hill to Broadway, and then north on Broadway to the school, and we're chanting and we're having fun, and I'm at the end of the demonstrators. Human Rights Commission, right? I'm a commissioner. So we go towards the campus and we go into the gate -- there's a fence surrounding the construction site -- and we're marching to the superintendent's trailer. And Tyree said, "Don't forget, brothers and sisters, nonviolent." So we go to the trailer, and the construction workers, they were all throughout the building, they all come down to the second level and they're yellin' at us -- they're all white -- they're yelling at us and giving us the finger and throwing little pieces of wood down at us. And we're marching. Nonviolent, nonviolent. And finally they start throwing down little pieces of lumber, two by fours and stuff, and it was pissing us off, the demonstrators, so like in unison we say, "Nonviolent, bullshit," and up the ladders we went. For some stupid reason the construction workers left the ladders on the sides of the building, so up the ladders we went, up to the second floor. And there's this Nordic American guy, this baldheaded foreman, and he's fifty, fifty-five years old and standing, "You'll come up here over my dead body." Well, everybody just went over his body, man. Up and then the pitched battle starts with the demonstrators and the construction workers. And these guys are armed, right? The construction workers, they're armed. But we had our two by fours, the signs on two by fours, not little old piddly pieces of wood, but two by fours, so boom, boom, boom, pitched battle. And about ten minutes someone yells, "Tack Squad," so we look out and here comes, down Broadway, from the north, comes the police in their visors and so everybody says, "Let's get the hell out of here." So down the ladders they go, out the gate. And I'm still there 'cause I'm worried about this old guy, he's bleeding and I'm bending over him and saying, "Man, you look bad. We better call an aid car." So I'm with him 'til the aid car comes. Those guys come up and take care of him, and so I leave. I'm down, I go down the ladder, I look around, I'm alone. And so I go out to the gate, and to the side is this tree, and under the tree is Tyree Scott, Todd Hawkins, Michael Ross, Sylvester Carter, and they're in handcuffs. And I just glance over and see them, and I'm walking out the door, and Michael Ross says, "Hey officer, he's with us." [Laughs] And and the cop runs up to me, says, "Are you with them?" I said, "Yeah, I guess so." So boom, I get arrested, right? I'm under the tree with them guys.

And then they take us downtown and they book us, and they put us in a cell two at a time, two to a cell, and I'm with Todd Hawkins, the old crusty construction worker, and he goes right to the cot and he lays down and shuts his eyes. And I'm nervous, right? I'm thinking of police brutality in the South, Bull Connor and the dogs and all the commotion that was out there. I said, oh my god, we're gonna get beat up. And I stand up and I start humming "We Shall Overcome," 'cause I think all the demonstrators had to follow us down to the jail, right? [Hums] And Todd says, "Bob, will shut the F up? I'm tryin' to sleep." I said, "Todd, man, I've never been in this situation before." So I sit down and the arresting officer comes in and says, "Okay, you guys, we'll let you go you sign a citation." It's like a parking ticket. "You sign a citation and you'll get a court date." And so I jump up to sign, and Todd says, "Bob, we're not signin' nothin'. We're here to give them a message. We're gonna stay here a week. We're goin' on a hunger strike." And I say, "Todd, Todd, my wife and kids expect me to come home and cook tonight. I got to go." So I sign the citation and I leave. Todd stays there. The next morning, of course, it's on TV, front page, and it shows Tyree and Todd Hawkins and me being led by the cops to the paddy wagon with handcuffs on and stuff. So I go to St. Peter Claver Center the next morning for the next demonstration and all these guys are yellin' and screamin', "Right on, Uncle Bob," and all this kind of stuff, and I said, "Yeah, we're gonna stay there for a week. We're gonna go on a hunger strike," and they all laugh and all that stuff. So that was the first of a series of five demonstrations at Central Seattle Community College. Every day, and the demonstration became larger and larger and larger. The Indians came, the Latinos, Roberto Maestas and the Latinos came, and the antiwar hippies, they were involved, and the last couple demonstrations two or three hundred people. And the cops were, knew they were overwhelmed, so the administration, the chief of police and some of his captains, lieutenants, met with Tyree and Sam Martinez and Eddie Rye, said, "Listen, would you guys mind if we did a symbolic arrest so that we hold down the injuries and stuff?" And Tyree agreed. He says, "Okay, there'll be seven of us, six or seven of us that will go through the fence or climb the fence, and then we'll do that." And that sort of set the tone for the rest of the movement in Seattle, where the police officers were less inclined to beat up the demonstrators and retaliation and vice versa. It wasn't, wasn't extremely calm. There's always still a lot of tension, but the police were willing to talk to Tyree to hold injuries down at these demonstrations.

TI: So there's almost like a pre-demonstration negotiation with the police?

BS: Yeah.

TI: And they say, "Okay, so we know you guys need to make a point and we have to do our job, so let's, in this case, do a ceremonial arrest and then go from there."

BS: Right. Yeah. So there was a whole week there and a lot of changes were being made, lot of the superintendents of these construction companies knew that they couldn't carry on business as usual. They had to really think about training programs, and they were funding training programs and they were hiring more people of color into the industry. Don't forget now, the unions were the ones that hired the carpenters and, various unions hired these skilled workers, so they had to be educated. Not only the superintendents and the construction companies but also the unions, they were hard to get into, hard to get blacks and other minorities into the unions. You had to go into their apprenticeship programs and all that, and they were, they were tougher than the contractors.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.