‘The story of civil rights in Washington state is long and rich,’ Zeiger says.
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Rep. Hans Zeiger, R-Puyallup, today gave a speech in support of House Resolution 4601, honoring the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Below is a transcript of Zeiger’s floor speech.
“Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It is a great honor for me to give my first speech in the House on this occasion.
A week ago today, Mr. Speaker, I was moved as we stood here and took our oaths to do our best in this work we’ve been given. Mr. Speaker, I haven’t quite learned all the ropes of this place yet, but I came to Olympia knowing this: our power here comes from the people who sent us.
Dr. King spoke up for people of all kinds. More importantly, he was a man of action. He dreamed of freedom; he stood for justice and dignity.
Central to Dr. King’s legacy and to the idea of our democracy is the belief that free men and women must give their consent to be governed. And why is that? The Declaration of Independence tells us that all are created equal. That our entitlement to a say in the proceedings of government rests not on our sex, color, or creed, but on our equality as human beings. And so we are the inheritors of a great experiment in civil rights.
The story of civil rights in Washington State is long and rich and often unremembered. Mr. Speaker, I hope we can do more in our state to tell that story. It has so much to do with our work here, and with those who have worked here before us.
It’s the story of Frances Axtell from Bellingham and Nena Croake from Tacoma who became the first women to serve in this body in 1912, eight years before the nineteenth amendment extended voting rights to women across the country.
It’s the story of Rep. Peggy Joan Maxie of Seattle, the first black woman in this Chamber, who served here from 1971 to 1983.
It’s the more familiar story of Warren Magnuson, the State Representative from Seattle who later went on to author the public accommodations section of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
And it’s the story of Owen Bush from Thurston County, the first black member of this House when the state was formed in 1889.
It was almost six decades before another black legislator came to this Chamber. His name was Charles Stokes. I have been learning about Representative Stokes in the last few weeks. He was a Republican from Seattle. He was a lawyer and later a King County District Judge. As an NAACP leader, he took an active role in pushing for the 1949 Washington State Fair Employment Practices Act. The following year, 1950, Mr. Stokes was elected to this body and served for three nonconsecutive terms. During the Korean War he gave a speech on this floor about the patriotism of black Americans, for which his colleagues gave him a standing ovation.
But it was in 1957 that Representative Charles Stokes helped to pass one of the greatest pieces of legislation in our state’s history. It was House Bill 25, and I have a copy of it from the State Archives on my desk if any of my colleagues would like to see it afterwards. House Bill 25 was Washington State’s Civil Rights Act. It really was a trailblazing piece of legislation, several years before the Civil Rights Act was passed in Congress. Mr. Speaker, would you grant me permission to read from this bill?
‘The legislature hereby finds and declares that practices of discrimination against any of its inhabitants because of race, creed, color or national origin are a matter of state concern, that such discrimination threatens not only the rights and proper privileges of its inhabitants but menaces the institutions and foundation of a free democratic state.’
Mr. Speaker, we are the stewards of our free democratic state today no less than our predecessors who wrote those words. But nothing more I can say could measure up to the significance of that law. So I’ll conclude.
It is right for us to honor the legacy of Dr. King, as it is right for us to honor the men and women like Owen Bush, Frances Axtell, Nena Croake, Warren Magnuson, Peggy Joan Maxie, and Charles Stokes who came before us in this House, who stood for a more just society. May we do our part to be like them in this time we’ve been given.”
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Contact: Kurt Hammond, Public Information Officer, (360) 786-7794
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