World War II spawned the first major African-American migration to the Northwest. Blacks came to the Hanford nuclear site for jobs to help make plutonium for the atom bomb. But their past followed them, a past of segregation and discrimination. Carol Cizauskas brings us the story of one African-American family in the Tri-Cities then…and now…
Bauman: “He was tied to a telephone pole in Kennewick, in downtown Kennewick, until the Pasco police came to pick him up. That sort of scene, of a black man tied to a pole, is the sort of visual image that we generally associate with the South.”
Bob Bauman, a history professor at Washington State University, describes what happened when an African American was arrested for riding in a car with two white friends during the years of segregation and discrimination in the Tri-Cities, Washington.
Broadcast on Northwest News Network.
Carol Cizauskas 